BWG recently conducted a survey of 55 executive management and professional supply chain businesses, and, together with Perficient and IBM, have published findings in the report Supply Chain Modernization During the Pandemic and Beyond. The findings analyze how the global supply chain has drastically changed over the last year and a half because of Covid-19. Supply chain disruptions are nearly inevitable due to low inventory and high consumer demand. Retailers are turning to modern supply chain systems, specifically order management, to determine how to manage inventory, visibility, and supply production.
Digital Analytics in Order Management
Prior to the pandemic, organizations heavily relied on ERPs to streamline order fulfillment. However, the Covid-19 crisis changed consumers’ shopping behavior, and online sales drastically increased. Suddenly, organizations needed more bandwidth to meet the surge in online demand. Adding order management to ERPs improved the backend processes. Updates included a business rules management system, (BRMS), service level agreements, (SLAs), and contract pricing. Organizations are also updating their order management system with AI and ML insights. Both insights improve the order-to-cash cycle by accelerating processes, reducing errors, improving efficiency, and lowering cost.
Creating an Omnichannel Experience
Omnichannel order management solutions deliver a connected shopping experience, personalized at every stage of the customer journey. Retailers need omnichannel capabilities and order management for visibility purposes. Giving customers a clear view of store inventory prevents customer disruption. The inventory in a brick-and-mortar store needs to have the same product visibility online.
“If you don’t have the right visibility into what inventory is in your brick-and-mortar store, you are potentially adding some disruptions to both your associates as well as your customer,” said Jennifer Clark, Product Marketing Manager at IBM Sterling.
Supply Chains Post-Pandemic and Beyond
As supply chains mature, survey experts predict organizations will focus more on the digital customer journey and same-day delivery to create a holistic customer experience. Adopting a data-driven approach to supply chain management enables organizations to suggest products to shoppers through store merchandising and omnichannel efforts.
“A lot of businesses and retailers are reaching out to us and asking us to help them define their strategy for the next year. We guide them in what is happening in the market, what the latest trends are, and what they should be doing next,” said Devanshu Sood, Director of Commerce and Order Management at Perficient.
To learn more about supply chain modernization and its role in helping organizations reach end-to-end visibility watch Supply Chain Modernization & Transformation: During the Pandemic and Beyond.
