Supply Chain Resilience and Power of Supply Chain Networks

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The four key capabilities to optimize your pandemic response

The four key capabilities that businesses need to achieve, and the strategies to get them.

The past year has been a year like no other. For many firms, the pandemic has exposed enormous gaps in real time data, processes and systems.

“More than 200 of the Fortune Global 500 firms have a presence in Wuhan, the highly industrialized province where the outbreak originated, and which has been hardest hit.”
Covid-19: Managing Supply Chain Risk and Disruption, Deloitte

In booming industries – like grocery and high tech, recreational equipment and home goods – companies have struggled to meet sky high consumer demand – often up one hundred, even 200 percent, or more. In just a few months, some firms have seen levels of growth in ecommerce they had not expected to see for 5 years.

For stalled industries – like restaurants and retail – the impacts have been devastating with lock downs and plummeting demand. For many of these, recovery still lies ahead. And for some, it may never come.

Video: The 4 key capabilities every organization needs to master to stay competitive in volatile times… Share on X

Supply Chain Resilience Takes Center Stage

It’s become a world focused on supply chains. The crisis has moved the discussion of supply and demand into board rooms worldwide. Companies are asking themselves, “What could we have done differently, and what should we do now?”

Today, the need for real time information, resilience, and visibility has never been more apparent to more people around the world. The winners in this “next normal” will be those firms that can address their gaps, make adjustments as things change, and capture new market opportunities first.

“Consumers will continue to want low prices (especially in a recession), and firms won’t be able to charge more… The pressure to operate efficiently and use capital and manufacturing capacity frugally will remain unrelenting.”
Prof. Willy C. Shih, Harvard Business School

Four Capabilities of Resilient Supply Chains

So what needs to be different?

If you could eliminate information delays across your supply chain, then a change in demand at one end, would ripple quickly across every tier of supply – to all your suppliers and their suppliers as well, in real time. With immediate information, you and your partners could be more responsive.

What if you had real-time visibility into every order, every shipment, and all your inventories across the globe – with consolidated demand and a view into every point of supply? Then you could match demand with supply in real time, and do so continuously. This means when demand shifts occur, you could reallocate inventories optimally. The benefit? Increased service levels, fewer expedites, and lower costs.

If you could automate routine tasks, then you can free up your expert staff to focus on the exceptions – where they can add the most value. And if they had an army of intelligent agents available to predict problems, rank choices and run optimizers, they could use prescriptive analytics to find solutions sooner, when there are still many low-cost options. That would further increase agility and lower expenses.

Finally, if you and your suppliers, your carriers, and your customers all worked together on the same platform, you could share plans and forecasts, orders and shipments, inventories and ETAs. In other words, you could operate together, based on a single version of truth, in a unified, orchestrated process. The elimination of errors and inefficiencies would make everyone more competitive.

And with these processes in place, new partners could be on-boarded much more quickly.

Real-Time Multi-Enterprise Supply Chain Business Networks

One Network’s multi-enterprise network platform makes all of this possible.

From inbound supply to outbound order fulfillment and logistics, you’ll achieve greater resilience, even as you reduce inventories and lead times.

You’ll have the flexibility to handle new business models in ecommerce and direct-to-consumer, that the pandemic has made more essential. And with advanced optimization, you’ll deliver the highest possible service levels to your customers, at the lowest possible cost.

Today, we know that lashing together sluggish, siloed, legacy systems no longer works. A network platform offers you the best path to cost savings and faster realignment of your supply chain. It will enable greater collaboration with partners, and the fastest capture of new revenue opportunities.

Lashing together sluggish, siloed, legacy systems no longer works. A network platform offers you the best path to cost savings and faster realignment of your supply chain. Share on X

In fact, the One Network platform helped one of North America’s largest retailers successfully navigate these times to become 2020 Retailer of the Year! Find out how you can harness the power of business networks by registering for our webinar: Resilience, Continuity, and Operational Readiness: Today’s Power Triad.

Supply Chain Resilience and the Power of Business Networks

The four key capabilities to optimize your pandemic response

Supply Chain Resilience Takes Center Stage

Four Capabilities of Resilient Supply Chains

Real-Time Multi-Enterprise Supply Chain Business Networks

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