by Janus Boye
There is an upsweep of interest in sectors and industries that many software product managers historically ignored.
In short, we seem to be moving to a ’Supply Chain Thinking’ environment. The enforced isolation has put a spotlight on the global supply chain, from food through energy to pharmaceuticals and beyond. Their critical role in keeping the world operable, and the sheer scale of these operations is capturing the attention of product managers.
The potential is there, the scale is there, but few know how to even start to build and sell into these markets. In a recent conference call for our a few of the product managers in our community, experienced industry analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe shared his latest thinking with us.
Supply chains will be transformed
According to Alan, a potential revolution is coming out of this pandemic as supply chains will be transformed.
In the opening of the talk, Alan shared figure 1, which shows the supply chain of the 90s according to Alan. Some of the characteristics still apply in B2B environments today, as many need to overhaul outdated processes.
During our discussion, we also touched on OCR, which was broadly recognised as both boring and mature technology for data scanning. While it gain widespread adoption back in the 70’s, there’s still plenty of room for OCR to improve the supply chain in many organizations.
Supply chains in the near future
The appetite for change is there at the moment, and there’s big steps being taken, also with help from emerging technology like robotics process automation, blockchain and AI/ML.
Alan shared Figure 2 to illustrate what’s happening and how technology is playing a role.
The technology that’s transforming the supply chain
How to get into the supply chain?
As Alan said in the call, the learning curve is steep, but the potential is there and it’s a very big market. He used a food distribution supply chain to illustrate how the problems are real, but also difficult to address.
To be fair, the supply chain is far from as sexy as other industries, and furthermore it actually works well most of the time. The current situation shows that problems do happen, when the workforce is disrupted and consumer patterns change.
Here’s a few examples of where you can start your journey in addressing the market. Alan and a few of his analyst colleagues have just released this analyst brief which has even more: Crisis Paves the Way for Supply Chains to Go Digital (PS: it’s free of charge).
Use process mining to find better ways to work.
Explore the use of blockchain to create shared and trusted supplier networks - see the post from Bebo White’s 2017 keynote: The End Of The Beginning Of A Totally New Financial System
Consider machine learning and artificial intelligence, like solutions that automatically read documents with remarkable accuracy and extract information and data - see also How AI Assistants Will Impact Businesses And Consumers
Learn more about supply chain thinking
We’ve previously written a case study on software robotics. While not from the supply chain, it still shows the effort required: Are Robots Taking Over Jobs At University Of Copenhagen? Automation One Step At A Time
You can browse the slides (PPT) or enjoy the 26 minute recording from the call below.
Finally, if you want to get out from behind your screen, do consider joining our product management peer groups.