Building resilient, intelligent supply chains
Recent worldwide disruptions have revealed structural weaknesses in existing supply chain models
Overview
Structural weaknesses in existing supply chain models have highlighted the need for industry-wide reinvention. With the right strategy and support, you can reinvent your supply chain to lower costs and transform your business. Turning supply chains into intelligent, responsive workflows can enable new ways of doing business — and generate unique advantages.
The opportunity
Supply chains aren’t just a necessity, they’re an opportunity.
The old way: Supply chains are a cost to be minimized and a process to be optimized. The new way: More sustainable, resilient supply chains power innovation, a better customer experience and growth.
Takeaway
Next-gen supply chains won’t just efficiently move material from here to there — they’ll underpin truly resilient, sustainable business operations.
reduction in structural costs seen by IBM with intelligent supply chains.¹
better asset utilization with transformed supply chain.²
increased demand forecast accuracy with new supply chain.²
Resilience
The core tenets of supply chain resilience
Visibility, agility and security. A supply chain is a workflow, which means that like any workflow, you can make it more intelligent. By taking an integrated approach to data and AI, you can increase real-time awareness (visibility), enhance the ability to pivot quickly (agility) and protect against threats (security).
Takeaway
A better understanding of real-time operations helps you prevent problems, respond with agility and support new business models.
Customer experience
Your supply chain is vital to improving the customer experience
For the modern supply chain, efficiency is table stakes. A supply chain engineered for resilience makes transactions feel frictionless — supporting personalized recommendations, real-time order status updates and simple fixes if things go wrong.
Takeaway
The B2B organizations that replicate the B2C customer experience first will have a profound competitive advantage.
Clean data
Clean, connected data is essential
Building more resilient supply chains means intelligently designing how the many moving parts come together. Successful organizations deploy fit-for-purpose tools, including ERPs, digital twins and automation solutions. But the benefits these solutions provide are only possible if the data they run on is clean and connected.
of CSCOs understand the strategic value of data.³
of business leaders view data silos as a top barrier. ⁴
Takeaway
Increased functionality and flexibility depend on creating a truly integrated data environment.
Hybrid cloud
The hybrid cloud is a powerful connector
The hybrid cloud is infinitely scalable, robust, secure and resilient to disruptions. It allows you to connect systems to integrate data, opening up the predictive power of AI to better forecast demand, streamline logistics, get real-time answers to complex questions and turn all your hard-won experience into insights you can act on.
Takeaway
A better understanding of real-time operations helps you prevent problems, respond with agility and support new business models.
Next steps
Footnotes
¹ Based on the IBM cognitive supply chain case study, featured in Creating a virtual enterprise by reimagining workflows, IBM, October 2021.
² Based on self-reported data from 1,677 surveyed supply chain managers, compiled in IBM’s internal report Supply chain planning: Digital transformation, 2022.
³ The resilient digital supply chain, IBM Institute for Business Value, April 2022.
⁴ Breaking Out of Data Silos—Again and Again, Dell, 25 May 2021.