In today’s business environments, companies expect their supply chains to provide holistic outcomes – agile and responsive to demand, optimize total costs, and resilient to disruptions all in a sustainable manner.
The times when primary focus was to manage costs is passé. In fact, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the efforts to support new customer experiences and drive profitability quickly gained momentum that were taking shape prior to the outbreak of the crisis.
Meanwhile, supply chain leaders need to reimagine their supply chains to serve these expectations. Every investment decision and transformation initiative must be in line with customer needs and environmental and social responsibility.
In order to create future-ready supply chains, Accenture recommends a triple mandate of 3Rs –
Relevant – customer – centric to provide tailored experiences
Resilient – protect the company, customers, and partners from disruption of demand/supply
Responsible – trust-based understanding for long-lasting relationships, respect for communities and the planet
Importantly, future-ready supply chains focus on to create 360 degree value entailing visibility, velocity, and new ways of working. The foundation of supply chains of the future is based on flexible digital architecture including data, shared business proposition between value chain partners, hardware instrumentation, integrated platforms that work jointly to drive the triple mandate.
An Accenture report on future-ready supply chain operations reveals only 4% chief supply chain officers opine their operations to be future-ready, and 34% expect the operations to materialize by 2023, which is ambitious. Investments for a customer-centric, intelligent supply chain network are also making way for profitability and efficiency for companies.
Global research shows, leading companies to experience 13% incremental revenue growth, 3 times higher contribution to growth, and 2.5% higher EBITDA margin on implementation of future-ready supply chains.
The vision of the makers of future-ready supply chains is to help clients endure change by reimagining tomorrow’s supply networks to influence business, society, and the planet positively.