February 14, 2020
Roadmap to Implementing an E2E Digital Supply Chain
We believe that the 2020s will truly become the Decade of Supply Chain. This will be the decade that supply chain managers will achieve the visibility they deserve within their organizations. There are so many signals pointing to a breakthrough year for supply chain:
- Increased emphasis on supply chain as a business differentiator.
- The rise of supply chain titles in the C-suite (Chief Supply Chain Officer, Chief Procurement Officer, etc.).
- Increase in programs devoted to supply chain at top universities.
There will also be more pressure on supply chain managers than ever.
Enterprises are concerned about economic, regulatory, and even climate-related volatility, and want to be able to leverage digital technologies to help overcome these challenges. But in order to do this they need to develop fully digitized E2E (end-to-end) supply chains that promote circularity. But surprisingly few supply chain managers have actually done this, relying instead on siloed systems, spreadsheets, and even paper records.
What’s holding them back? A very understandable fear of making a mistake that could cost millions or billions of dollars— and in all likelihood their jobs. Supply chains are unbelievably complex, and when it comes to managing them, results trump efficiency.
Digital Supply Chains Are The Future
Time is running out, however, and companies that have started digitizing their supply chain a few years ago are starting to pull ahead of competitors. It’s these forward-thinking companies that will be well positioned to take advantage of technologies like AI, machine learning, and IoT as they mature.
As we wrote in this article about starting the journey to digitization, it’s important to take that essential first step, and there are a few approaches that can work well.
To supplement that article, we’ve developed a roadmap that will help enterprises stay on track as the decade of supply chain unfurls. Our roadmap isn’t a literal timeframe; the steps below could be executed more quickly to kickstart the benefits of supply chain digitization.
Year 1: Develop a Digitization Plan
Most organizations cite an almost epic level of resistance to change as a major reason they’ve been slow to adopt digital technologies. The first year of the 2020s is not only the right time to start shaping a digitization plan, but to start getting the message across that change is needed in order to cope with current market volatility and to leverage future technology.
Passive resistance will fade if you start with a pilot project and woo your team with a system that actually works for them. In order to do that, new systems will need to:
- Follow logical workflows used by your team, with no need for complex workarounds
- Be easy to use, requiring only a one- or two-hour training session
- Have immediate response on customer service
- Automate repetitive tasks, freeing staff time for analysis
As the old saying goes, “nothing succeeds like success”.
No matter what system or systems you use, following a good project management process is essential. This includes stakeholder consultations and requirements gathering at the start to help achieve that all-important buy-in.
It’s also important to understand that you’ll need to make an investment in terms of people-power. Expecting swamped employees to take on all the legwork for a digitization project dooms it to failure.
Year 2: Ensure Asset and Inventory Accuracy
One of the best ways to start digitizing your supply chain is with better asset management. Start with what you own, where it is, what is it doing, how old is it, how often it is maintained, etc. This is a project that can seem daunting, but can more manageable when you leverage technologies like:
- Digital scanners for paper records
- Systems that can import spreadsheets
- Systems that can be easily used via mobile device
- Drones to help locate items in warehouses or in storage yards
There’s also a small feature that can help prevent the “garbage in, garbage out” syndrome: a system with an autosuggest. If someone starts creating a duplicate record, seeing the existing name will tell them where to find the record that already exists. They can then determine if that record needs to be expanded.
As part of the transition, newly purchased assets will go to digital data entry before being deployed. Over time, your team will start to trust the digital records more than the original spreadsheets or paper files.
Year 3: Step Up Your Asset Disposition Game
Once your enterprise’s asset records are digitized, you’ll start noticing assets that are surplus, or otherwise ready for decommissioning. Finding the online markets to dispose of these assets will not only help offset the costs of your digitization project, they may generate free cash that exceeds costs of digitization.
The key is to go beyond the scrap market for better ROI, and start selling to refurbishers, resellers, and even back to OEMs.
Year 4: Workflows and RFQ Management
Asset record digitization and disposition are the easy wins that will help provide to supply chain teams that digitization can make their lives easier, not harder.
The next steps are to start layering on workflow-oriented solutions to help you manage procurement, compliance, and full asset lifecycles.
Procurement especially involves a lot of duplication: when sending out an RFQ, it’s common to get information from suppliers in a format that has to be rearranged in order to be understood. This is laborious enough with costing information; when you get to technical evaluations it can be a nightmare. Choose a solution that removes that tedious reformatting.
Year 5: Cross-Platform and API Integrations
No one system can realistically manage every function your business relies on (can you imagine a supply chain system trying to out-salesforce Salesforce?). That being said, the goal is to have as few systems/platforms as you can, and to seamlessly integrate those solutions into one corporate view of everything.
This integration can be done through an application/program interface (API), which basically allows different systems to talk to one another, ideally without help from a developer. So when you’re out shopping for tools, one item on your requirements list should definitely be a procurement software with API.
Year 6: Integrate AI and Machine Learning Technologies
By this point, we think that technologies like AI and machine learning will have matured enough to be of practical help with tasks like pattern recognition and forecasting. While supply chain managers will still need to use their experience and judgement in deciding whether or not to act on recommendations, we think that by 2026 tools like this will be usable.
Digitize Your Supply Chain With Requis
If supply chain is the central nervous system of a business, the Requis platform will become the central nervous system of your supply chain.
Requis allows you to buy, manage and sell assets on a mobile-friendly E2E cloud-based platform that you can learn to use in just an hour or two.
That’s because it was designed by supply chain and technology professionals for supply chain professionals. Unlike that bloated ERP system at your company that no one really uses, it follows logical procurement and supply chain workflows.
Find out how easy it is to use Requis.