According to a recent survey, 22 percent of companies are utilizing digital investments and customer-centricity to transform their supply chain strategy as they focus on powering growth opportunities and achieving competitive agility. While these industry leaders have proven track records of success, most companies still fall far behind. In fact, 78 percent of executives and their companies still aren’t taking advantage of the supply chain’s power to drive growth.
According to Scott Fletcher, President and CEO of LocatorX, if companies are not fully investing in their digital transformation, how can their supply chains modernize? He also ask how much time do these laggards have until their processes drive their business into the ground?
In conversation with Digital Journal, Scott Fletcher discusses how companies can transform their supply chain and operations, something that’s essential to guarantee a successful future full of growth and innovation.
Digital Journal: What advantages can be gained from the digitalization of the supply chain?
Scott Fletcher: There are many advantages to be gained from the digitalization of the supply chain. From a logistics standpoint, digitalization promotes better inventory control and reduced counterfeiting. The ability to have a more accurate view of where a product is in relation to where it needs to be will allow for more stability within the supply chain. Additionally, digitalization will increase customer satisfaction through more accurate delivery information, increased product knowledge, and other factors that will contribute to a better customer experience.
DJ: Why are so many companies making slow progress?
Fletcher: Companies are making slow progress on digitizing their supply chains because their current supply chains are complex and old with on-premise systems that are highly customized to their current demands, and therefore difficult to modernize. In most cases, incremental improvement isn’t an option, a rip and replace is needed, but this perceived as high risk, disruptive and expensive.
DJ: What are the consequences if companies are slow to modernize?
Fletcher: The consequences of companies failing to modernize their supply chains include reduced margins because of increased costs (due to counterfeiting, less competitive pricing, higher shipping, et cetera), lower customer satisfaction, and loss of business.
DJ: Which sectors of the economy are ahead of the game?
Fletcher: Businesses that are “born on the Internet” are already ahead of the game in terms of supply chain digitalization because they don’t have legacy systems to replace. They can immediately adopt the most modern and up-to-date systems.
DJ: How can the digital supply chain be used to generate mean fuel data?
Fletcher: Although our product is not focused on fuel efficiency, the improvements that we bring to the supply chain will still have an impact on the bottom line of fuel consumption. By collecting location data and tracking environmental status of the product, our solution can enable fine-tuned temperature control to bring more precision and lower cost to the supply chain.
DJ: What advantages can be leveraged from analyzing supply chain data?
Fletcher: You can’t manage what you can’t measure – our product allows significant insight into temperature control, location, and unit-level tracking. We bring enhanced benefits into the supply chain and all the way into the customer relationship side to bring IoT benefits into the customer engagement side as well.
We bring trust into the supply chain through anti-counterfeiting, improved accuracy of what is in the supply chain, enhanced inventory management, and improved management of cold chain.
We can now connect the steps from planning, sourcing, making, and delivery in a very powerful way by managing every step of the supply chain. Our product is able to track and trace at the lowest unit level and at a significantly lower cost.
