In April, 2022 I was invited to present at Unicorn Partners’ Supply Chain Intelligence Summit. They wanted to have “an intensive and critical examination of the reality and the dream of end-to-end supply chain visibility”.
For anyone who follows Supply Chain Game Changer, you know that we view end-to end Supply Chain connectivity and visibility as the foundation to create the Digital Supply Chain of the future.
Further, we believe that we are now at a massive inflection point in the history of Supply Chain Management. This was a great opportunity to share our view of the current reality and our vision of the definitive Supply Chain of the future.
We were asked to open the summit with the presentation of our extensive article “Supply Chain’s Moment of Truth“.
In this article we characterize the current state of Supply Chain as we enter the third year of the pandemic wherein we are hopefully moving past the worst of the pandemic, which exposed the fragility of Supply Chains everywhere. We continue on discussing what factors have contributed to the failure, or success, of Supply Chains both through the pandemic and in to the future.
At this point we also believe that we have arrived at the historic inflection point. Moving past the pandemic, will companies revert back to their old ways of doing things (despite all of the disruption we experienced), or will they embrace a bold new vision of the future, what we call “The Supply Chain Renaissance“?
Whether due to lack of leadership, being in denial, or lacking resources or know how, many companies will go backward. The lessons of the pandemic will be lost on them.
On the other hand, there exists a confluence of many dynamics which create the environment to launch an unprecedented period of rebirth for decades to come, a period of Renaissance.
All of this is what we call “Supply Chain’s Moment of Truth”. Which way will companies go? Backward to the old ways or forward to a great new future?
We captured our presentation on video and we provide that to you here so that you can hear us go through the presentation about Supply Chain’s Moment of Truth.
As we had surveyed our audience previously, through supplychaingamechanger.com and our social media channels, at the end of our presentation we polled the audience on where they view their company with respect to their future direction.
Our survey question was “When the Pandemic is over will your company improve its Supply Chain operations?” Possible responses were:
- In denial and won’t change (Denial)
- Wants to but doesn’t know how to (Status Quo)
- Will make modest improvements (Modest)
- Will make serious investments (Serious)
When we did the survey previously we had 14% of respondents in Denial, 22% in the Status Quo category, 32% making Modest changes, and 32% making significant changes.
At the end of our presentation at the Supply Chain Intelligence Summit we likewise surveyed the attendees. Interestingly 14% said their companies were in Denial, the same as our survey results. However zero said they were in the Status Quo, 57% said they were going to make Modest improvements, and 29% were going to make serious changes.
It was encouraging to hear that the majority of companies were moving forward, whether slowly or quickly. It sounded like progress to me.
Regardless, it is clear that it is important to spread the message that we discuss in “Supply Chain’s Moment of Truth” and “The Supply Chain Renaissance”.
It will be far too easy for companies to go backward, whether because they are in denial or they just don’t know how to move forward. We need to continue to convey our message given that Supply Chain is now viewed by everyone as more important than every before (even though us in Supply Chain already knew that).
Supply Chain has never been more recognized and more talked about. Supply Chain has never been in the news and social media everyday. Supply Chain has never before been at the forefront of so much continuous global disruption. And Supply Chain has never before been in such a great position to lead us all out of this disruption and into an exciting future.
The Supply Chain Renaissance that we speak of will last for decades. This is not the type of change that will happen in days, weeks, months or even few years. Several generations of Supply Chain leaders will be a part of this Renaissance period.
It’s going to be more exciting to see how the future evolves and unfolds than it has ever been!
In closing I’d like to thank the team at Unicorn Partners and Supply Chain Intelligence for the opportunity to be a part of the summit. I would also like to thank my fellow panelists, Muddassir Ahmed and Mauritius Geiger, as they continued to bring my vision down from the clouds and discussed practical applications for the future.