Originally published by SupplyChain Digital, September 2024
Mark Holmes, Senior Advisor for Supply Chain at InterSystems, says organisations should prioritise enhancing the supply chain technology they already have
At the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, countless businesses – many of them retailers – rushed to adopt new technologies in a bid to simply survive.
But in hindsight, was this the right thing to do?
Mark Holmes, Senior Advisor for Supply Chain at InterSystems, says a policy of enhancing existing systems can be more beneficial than some may think.
Many organisations raced to adopt new supply chain solutions to mitigate the pandemic's impact on their business.
How has this affected businesses in the longer term?
We saw that there was a real rush to embrace the latest supply chain technologies, which is nothing new. Businesses often find themselves chasing trends rather than achieving real improvements and the COVID-19 pandemic certainly intensified this impulse. It led to many organisations making necessary but hasty, reactive changes to their supply chain ecosystems, adding new solutions without having the time to strategically review the integration between systems and solutions or fully considering their long-term strategic use and impact.
As is so often the case, for many organisations these "shiny" new solutions – which delivered in the short term – further complicated the supply chain ecosystem with greater layers of "legacy spaghetti”.
This legacy spaghetti, whereby organisations are dealing with multiple systems and solution providers and disparate data points, is a common problem across almost all industries. And continuing to add more and more technology solutions to solve more immediate challenges is only exacerbating the problem. Rather than constantly introducing new solutions, organisations should prioritise enhancing and optimising the technology they already have to gain greater ROI and efficiencies and to support future business goals.
How should organisations approach tech modernisation to leverage what they already have?
Existing supply chain systems have demonstrated their reliability and effectiveness over time so shouldn’t be discounted purely because they are “old”. By refining these trusted tools instead of replacing them, organisations can unlock greater benefits while minimising risk and avoiding the disruption of a complete overhaul or adding further complexity and increased data silos.
Adopting a smart data fabric architecture enables companies to create a connective tissue to extract more value from the data within the existing proven systems to empower modern supply chains, eliminating the need for costly "rip and replace" strategies and avoiding adding further complexity to the supply chain.
What is a connective tissue and how does it help improve the 'legacy spaghetti' situation for supply chain organisations?
Built on modern data platform technology, the smart data fabric enables accessibility, transformation and harmonisation of data from multiple sources, on demand. This enables organisations to leverage usable, trustworthy data to make faster, more accurate decisions.
A wide range of advanced data science capabilities are embedded within the fabric, including analytics, AI and machine learning (ML). Together, these capabilities make it faster and easier for supply chain organisations to gain new insights and power intelligent predictive and prescriptive services and applications.
By allowing existing legacy applications and data to remain in place, a data fabric approach enables organisations to maximise the value from their previous technology investments, including existing data lakes and data warehouses, without having to rip and replace any of their existing technology.
This complementary approach avoids adding further complexity to the supply chain, shortening the time to decision and proactively providing organisations with the insights needed to progress innovation initiatives and drive digital transformation across the entire enterprise.
In addition to technology, what else should supply chain leaders consider to strengthen their operations?
People, process and technology are at the heart of any supply organisation, so ensuring each of these three pieces of the puzzle fit together is essential. That’s why investment in people and culture is also vital for successful digital transformation and to ultimately build a robust, resilient and agile supply chain.
Part of this requires supply chain leaders to help their employees understand not just how technologies like AI and ML will empower them, but how the need for timely, accurate and real-time data is essential to improve operational agility and resiliency.
Resilience and agility within the supply chain are essential. How can they be unlocked?
Agility is significantly improved as organisations become able to respond more quickly to changes in demand, supply disruptions or other market shifts. Staying ahead of the curve and having technology support proactive adjustments rather than reactive firefighting is key.
Enhancing existing solutions to enable a data-driven approach across the entire organisation enables a continuous optimisation of operations.
Integrating and harmonising data from disparate and multiple sources, providing real-time visibility and insight, allows continuity even in the face of disruption. Legacy systems remain functional, valuable and enhanced, preventing the need for costly overhaul, increased staffing or training while enabling more innovative capabilities like AI. Having all the data at the point it’s required ensures businesses can quickly adapt and thrive.