Digital Technologies in Supply Chain Management
This report emphasize on how technology has been of great importance in supply chain management. Digital technologies increase supply chain visibility and supply chain agility by identifying and building relationships with diverse portfolio of suppliers and vendors. Therefore, digital transformation in supply chain is the way current digital technologies are used to radically change the business shape of a particular company in terms of how they perform their business in a productive way, as the main target is to deliver to achieve valuable customer needs and demands in the market (Hartley and Sawaya, 2019). Technology has opened the world to many opportunities that can be explored and one can benefit from numerous market gaps. Teleconferencing is seen as breakthrough to most business in achieving their objectives within the set deadlines as cost and time is reduced significantly. Therefore, this task will outline how digital business has improved in supply chain management.
Considering its efficiency to cut costs, reduce risks and promote growth in a supply chain, it promotes easy operations as it ensures implementation and use of integrated systems thus it commission planning, sourcing and effectively leverage analysis and interpretation of high quality data. It also entails planning, designing and controlling of logistic activities of a firm. Digital economy also influences strongly the supply chain as it improves online business functions by use of modernized mobile phones and rather current digitalized mobile devices. Moreover, this topic is critical for various business stakeholders to know critical role technology play in ensuring efficient and quality delivery of services to consumers. Hence main focus here is to create value in digital marketing therefore this promotes advanced links between people and organizations, by this these digital platforms such as social media, e-commerce and mobile networks helps them to search, do proper research and shop on commodities of their choice across the globe (Attaran, 2020).
Digital development has increased business performance by solving analog model’s related problems in terms of efficiency and reliability therefore it consists of chain of interrelated networks that comprises personnel, departments, activities and resources involved in movement of products and services from manufacturer to the consumer in the market. In America currently, there is a classic example of digital supply chain called Amazon which spends as little as 12% of its revenue in technology by focusing on drones, robotic automation, sensor-based monitoring, artificial intelligence and augmented reality makes Amazon to lead in revenue growth in consumption and retail supply. Firstly, company must take into consideration which type of goods they do require in order to start their business, this will depend on the market demand and supply hence there is need for a company to do a proper survey before launching their business. Second major development in digital business is the employee commitment by use of digital tools in connection to one another and others externally hence, workforce targets digital transformation.
Therefore, every company’s target is the role and capability of employees through their experience and commitment in order to equip themselves with the current developments and cope with the competition in the market supply and demand. Thirdly, business should also focus on suppliers as this also affect their marketing so its plausible to select good suppliers appropriate to their demands. Lastly is the management of sales and marketing by the company by assigning a manager and a task force team to oversee the entire process (Korpela et al., 2017).
Impacts of Digital Business in Supply Chain Management
The first technology used in this topic is cloud technology, which comprises grid, distributed and parallel computing technologies which maintains data hence offers efficient computing in areas such as memory and processing (Xu et al., 2019), therefore this form of technology allows business to completely digitize their organizations. Secondly, Quantum computing is very essential in that it plays a role in powering machine learning systems and all platforms to better improve, understand and interpret large data sets. The best way to develop it is to replace its probabilistic versions of probabilities transition by probability amplitudes hence this can prove to be efficient (Attaran,. 2020). Lastly, the use of 5G network for swift and faster transmission of data to scale technology in an appropriate way across all mobile networks in the globe.
The first organization is PayPal full-service digital payment that adopted new modernized technology in connection to companies. This has grown and developed in the current emerging and competitive market and from this kind of view, it partnered with a big company called Braintree. Mobile payment, Paydiant, cybersecurity among others therefore, a progressive growth has been realized as opposed to the diminishing. Another focus will be on organization called Progressive: Telematics and Analytics that uses their data to supervise the behavior in driving through rewards of good job and charges higher premium at the time of renewal. Whenever the job was handled inappropriately and from the experience with digital technology in the supply chain, the customers have been enjoying good and customized premium from the company and at the same time, their improved innovation in the field of technology makes sure a constant and an improved customer experience.
- Relationship with course content and Emerging technologies
This topic is highly linked with digital business and new technologies, as it is able to build automation, forecasting and robotics, all innovations that will replace analog supply chain management strategies and focus of data efficiency.
The course provides various technological platforms and software used in implementing digital technologies in supply chain. The current world is advancing in terms of technology; there is need of advancement in supply chain sector in terms of technology too through understanding its technological platforms, tools and software used to develop it and their effectiveness and how it can attain its major objectives of a digital business. The Digital Technologies in a supply chain innovates and develops a given business strategies and ensures functions for planning and managing inventories in a supply chain objective. The digital technologies moderates planning and managing inventory relations therefore there is a disparity in terms of moderation as witnessed in the case in pre Covid 19 pandemic when business operations was as usual and post Covid 19 pandemic period when moderation of the business had to be higher than usual (Nakasumi, 2017).
Concerning its efficiency, there is a need to engage interactions of parties with an aim to achieve a common goal that creates a lot of impact to the parties involved and to the consumers at large. Digital technologies also have advantages such that data collected, analyzed and shared by various companies gives room for companies to predict their current and future requirements. It helps in daily operations hence improves efficiency in terms of production and customer satisfaction. It also becomes accessible in that data collected are thoroughly recorded hence ease of access in future, at the same time it eliminates supply chain glitches by ensuring a company never runs out of stock, hence they become accountable in ordering their stocks to improve accountability at the same time avoiding mass wastage of stock in a warehouse.
Types of Technology in Supply Chain Management
Digital technologies are facilitating businesses to grow over digital platforms and internet (5G) is playing an important role. For example, Amazon has been using digital technology to advance its business in supply chain to meet consumer’s demand. It uses block chain, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics, Internet of Things (IOT), 12% of its revenue is used in digital marketing programs and hiring. In addition these tools have help Amazon not only to ensure quality output but also has enhance security which is critical in reduces losses the company incur
The best way of transforming the supply chain is by evolving customer expectation by proper evaluation distribution techniques bearing it in mind that customer interactions in terms of habits do change as experienced during the Covid 19 pandemic and post Covid interactions therefore firms borrow knowledge, techniques and experiences from retailers and focusing on their stability. Technology can also help in carrying out market analysis and research that involves consumers in any part of the world. Indeed technology helps in ensuring accuracy, accountability and timely delivery of market analysis. Various tools have been develop by scientist to help business organization meet market demand and ensuring quality delivery.
Supply chain managers should focus on one-time investment on their tools in order to reduce costs and they need to shift their attention from cutting costs to enable new processes to make corporations that are more valuable in the entire enterprise. There is need for a company to invest in big data in their business and the profit realized by members together with the company would be as result of meeting the requirement of big data costs (Da Silva et al., 2019).
The digital business technology in supply chain uses latest technological tool which helps in saving money and time. This helps the business to achieve more in less time with no detriment to services and also earlier on the services performed by specific individuals are now performed by technology hence technology have replaced repetitive tasks which were performed by human hence this helps in saving employee’s cost or having them work in areas where their services are highly needed.
Moreover, some opportunities will allow digital technologies to adapt to ever-changing and rapidly growing technology. The current world, which focuses on stiff competition in the market, is the security of their data and by this, several companies have adopted strict measures to keep their data as well as customer security, thus tight security is imperative to reduce risks in cyber-crimes and data breaches.
Another important issue of concern discussed about digital business and new technologies in a supply chain management and its relevance with the course content is its rapid emergence in the current market in that it requires specific organizational structure and bears consequences of the metrics used to calibrate the performance (Nasiri et al., 2020). However, there are many occasions that may render business to choose digital transformation and the best-preferred reason is its survival. Issues such as the wake of Covid 19 pandemic, it was very critical for organization to cope up with the chain distributions, consider customer expectations that always changes rapidly with time with focus on market demands hence business at this level attains higher level in competition marketing and supply.
Corporation of various stakeholders including learning institution, government, business organizations and various agencies is critical in ensuring technology is fully implement in ensuring business activities run smoothly. Technology indeed has open up market where people trade online across the globe hence saving time and cost of doing transaction. Moreover, technology has brought transparency and accountability in the sector since most activities nowadays are done online. Amazon has fully implanted technology in its operations, which has seen the company expand its services across many continents over few years of its operations. Indeed Amazon is seen as a good example for many firms to emulate to achieve its goals within stipulated time limit in achieving market objectives.
Conclusion
In summary, the role of digital technologies is critical to businesses as it plays fundamental role in shaping and ensuring the growth of a particular business. Therefore, advances in the supply chain has been propelled by rapid growth of technology and as time goes by we shall experience a joined up supply chain with efficient technological systems. In addition, companies always do face challenges to meet the best level of business sustainability now of implementing the digital technologies in order to focus in its advancements in the competitive market. This topic is linked with course content because it focuses on the impact on new technology on the business by expanding it digitally to make a difference in its efficiency, time saving and cost reduction.
References
Agrawal, P., Narain, R. and Ullah, I., 2019. Analysis of barriers in implementation of digital transformation of supply chain using interpretive structural modelling approach. Journal of Modelling in Management.
Attaran, M., 2020, July. Digital technology enablers and their implications for supply chain management. In Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal (Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 158-172). Taylor & Francis.
Da Silva, V.L., Kovaleski, J.L. and Pagani, R.N., 2019. Technology transfer in the supply chain oriented to industry 4.0: a literature review. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 31(5), pp.546-562.
Hartley, J.L. and Sawaya, W.J., 2019. Tortoise, not the hare: Digital transformation of supply chain business processes. Business Horizons, 62(6), pp.707-715.
Korpela, K., Hallikas, J. and Dahlberg, T., 2017, January. Digital supply chain transformation toward blockchain integration. In proceedings of the 50th Hawaii international conference on system sciences.
Nakasumi, M., 2017, July. Information sharing for supply chain management based on block chain technology. In 2017 IEEE 19th conference on business informatics (CBI) (Vol. 1, pp. 140-149). IEEE.
Nasiri, M., Ukko, J., Saunila, M. and Rantala, T., 2020. Managing the digital supply chain: The role of smart technologies. Technovation, 96, p.102121.
Xu, L., Gao, R., Xie, Y. and Du, P., 2019. To be or not to be? big data business investment decision-making in the supply chain. Sustainability, 11(8), p.2298.
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