Exploring Modern End-to-end Supply Chain for Business Growth

By CIOReview | Thursday, November 22, 2018

The needs that influence the global supply chain network are customer expectations, adoption of new technologies, competition, and also change in the economy. But now the customers have advantages like having more choices for a single product due to which the customers can expect better services or easier delivery.

Smart leaders are using a demand-driven supply chain which is an integration of supplier and customer data into an interconnected network and companies have to ensure that they use a technology-enabled network. Digital supply network (DSN) enables businesses to create a digital version of the physical supply chain which is a hybrid model that can fully capitalize on connectivity, system integration, and information producing capabilities. These enable businesses to make intuitive decisions and predict unnecessary incidents. The digital supply chain has processes that can monitor real-time inventory levels, customer interactions, and uses this information to plan and execute different levels of performance. DSN has a geospatial technology that improves visibility and transparency for the entire supply chain and increases the operational efficiency.

Despite the adoption of DSN, businesses have to be creative and innovative to meet customer requirements. They invest in new waves of fulfillment, automation, delivery technologies, and IoT devices which includes having sensors that provide information on items. The items can be tracked, monitored, and businesses can be alerted to avoid minimal disruptions. Companies can take advantage of facilities like cloud platforms, driverless vehicles, and drone deliveries. With the real-time data, businesses can choose the shorter routes. As a result, businesses can reduce fuel costs and operational costs while meeting the customers’ demands for faster delivery. These technologies can provide better and quicker fulfillment options to the consumer.

Digital technologies make the data flow informatively into the organizations to make better-informed decisions at different levels of digital supply chain planning. There is a need to access the right data that can visualize and analyze data to get better insights and make strategic decisions. Incorporating Al and ML into organizations makes them predict the outcomes and establish new networks. The present-day organizations have much to predict like the products required by the customers, the best customers, and the services that would generate high revenue. The use of predictive algorithms to forecast demand and maintenance with predictive analytics will help achieve profit margins. With the help of deep learning algorithms, meaningful data can be derived and analyzed which creates better insights, observations, and accurate predictions about customer behavior.