The Top 5 Supply Chain Concerns of Business Leaders – 2020

Each year, the Team at B2C Logistics makes an extensive literature review of current publications that reflect the supply chain concerns of business leaders around the globe.

From this wide array of surveys, consultant research, blogs, industry journals, general media, economics reports, CSR and annual company reports, and interviews with industry leaders, we categorise and evaluate each issue raised, and then select the top five that are considered to be at the top of most business leaders minds.

Based on research conducted during Q2 and Q3 of 2019, we believe that the following five supply chain issues will be at the forefront of business leaders concerns as we draw to the close of yet another decade, and enter the 2020’s.

We have started at the #5 position and counted down to the biggest concern at #1;

Number 5. Global Economic Uncertainty

Speculation surrounding a global economic slowdown and multiple trade wars is disrupting and delaying strategic investments in supply chains and infrastructure, causing inventory imbalances around the globe.  It appears that a number of issues will be carried into 2020, such as;

• The US-China tariff war
• Slowing US growth
• Chinese debt crisis
• Brexit
• Recession current or looming for countries such as Germany, Argentina, Iran, South Africa, Turkey, Venezuela and Australia.

Number 4. Customer Service

Customer behaviour, preferences and expectations are changing rapidly.

Understanding a customer’s expectation is not an easy thing to achieve, let alone actually satisfying that expectation.

This challenge is then amplified by the speed of change, and the demands that omni-channel services place on organisations and their supply chains.

Nothing can replace good employees who are empowered to deliver top levels of customer service, but they need to be supported and informed through quality information systems.

Number 3. Talent Acquisition

As the complexity of developing and managing supply chains increases, so too does the difficulty of sourcing qualified and capable supply chain professionals.

Upon joining the team, supply chain team members at all levels need to be retained with attractive work conditions and career prospects, and with continuous upskilling programs.

Number 2. Security and Risk Management

Supply chains face a broad range of threats, ranging from physical to cybersecurity threats.

Aside from the perpetual physical threats, our collective dependence on technology is opening up new potential disruptions to supply chains information, communications and coordination, not to mention data theft.

As the nature of risk is both moving and subjective at any point in time, it is best to develop a Supply Chain Risk Management program with a suitable team sourced internally from within the organisation supplemented by the knowledge and perspectives of an external expert.

Number 1. Technology and Innovation

Technology is advancing and reinventing nearly every aspect of the supply chain, and the pace of change seems to be accelerating, ironically driven by the exponential improvements in computing power and data management.

Emerging technologies can be exploited, or they can represent a form of threat. Examples include mobile connectivity and IoT; autonomous guided vehicles; drones; renewable energy and energy storage; machine learning and AI.

Now traditional business models must be revolutionised to adapt to new economic forces that technologies such as platforms and crowd sourcing brings, and businesses must learn to be much more agile in responding to shifting markets.

We would like to add one more issue, which we believe is currently under-stated; “Information”

The IoT and the instrumentation of many more devices, plant & equipment, people and processes brings with it a vast amount of cumulative data.

Even with Moores Law (that states our computing power doubles every 18 months), we are still struggling to process our available data in a constructive way. This is where machine learning will come into force, and it seems we are still in a very nascent stage of realising how powerful this can be in developing deep analytics that will facilitate much better decision making across the supply chain.

As an interesting comparative study on how concerns are changing, here is our 2017 List of Top Supply Chain Concerns;

1. Financial Performance (cost control)
2. Customer Service
3. Risk Management
4. Visibility
5. Future-Proofing

Contact us at info@B2CLogistics.com to learn more.

www.B2CLogistics.com