Get digital, stay human: Right-sizing your digital supply chain transformation

Welcome to supply chain planning 2023: Lights, camera, action!

⏱️ 3-min read

Ongoing complex market conditions are accelerating the need for supply chains transformations and for companies to build digital planning capabilities for the future. The COVID-19 pandemic – in hindsight, the start of a perfect supply chain storm – demonstrated that companies at the forefront of digital transformation have a more resilient and responsive supply chain to deal with global market disruptions. At the same time, recent Gartner research outlined that more than 50% of organizations have not yet started to build a roadmap for the digital transformation of their supply chain or lack a good long-term digital strategy.

For companies that are still at the start, but also for those that are already on the way, we advise you to reflect on your transformation approach taking the following typical challenges into consideration:

• Moving too fast for what the organization can absorb: Transformation requires big efforts of your organization. You need to right-size it to make sure the organization can follow, and you can neatly integrate advanced digital capabilities in your day-to-day operation.
• Moving forward with a suboptimal sequence: It is critical to ensure that there is a balance between processes, digital tools, people capabilities, and data availability and maturity.
• Falling into the trap of a technology push: Rather than trying to force a fit, take the time to properly assess how different digital technologies can best support the dynamics of your business.
• Creating digital silos and black boxes: Advanced planning capabilities have a big potential to create value but also to create new silos you had broken down before. In addition, planner activities need to be well segmented to make sure you don’t fail in adoption because of a black box effect.

Supply Chain Transformation: Doing it the EyeOn way

At EyeOn, we have consolidated our project best practices into guidelines to support you in building sustainable digital planning capabilities and transform your supply chain.

5 focus areas to build sustainable digital planning capabilities

1. Clear direction: As mentioned, before going into execution mode it is essential you define a complete and realistic digital transformation vision and roadmap. Make sure that the long-term development of digital planning capabilities fits neatly with your overall supply chain strategy. Next to that take the time to re-assess your supply chain planning operating model to set clear operating principles that will guide your transformation journey.
2. Foundational capabilities: The success of digital planning applications depends heavily on having good foundational capabilities. That means having well-integrated end-to-end processes, clearly defined and future-proof planning roles, and a master data backbone that supports data-driven planning and advanced analytics.
3. Fit-for-purpose planning tool stack: The tooling landscape is constantly diversifying and offers more and more niche capabilities. With that in mind, you need to assess how different applications, from fast planning solutions, to APS, to systems of innovation, can best serve your needs over time. Also taking into consideration the system integration needs, end-user experience, and capability development requirements.
4. Effective organizational capability building: Digital evolution requires you to re-think your organizational structure (central vs decentral capabilities), planning profiles (digital planning, business IT and data science capabilities) and how to effectively implement these changes in the organization.
5. Smart automation: Using cognitive planning to empower planners to work smarter – automate the obvious, flag where human intervention is required and provide actionable recommendations to planners to improve future planning enrichments.

Co-creating your digital future

Now is the time to build resilient, agile, and sustainable supply chains, maximizing the benefits of digitalization and advanced analytics. Digital transformation in essence is a journey rather than a project. It is more about people than technology. Those companies that focus first on changing the mindset as well as the organizational culture and processes are better set for long-term success. With that said, we believe that the best, most lasting solutions are co-created together. Depending on where you are in the journey, we can help you in any of the above domains with our in-depth expertise and hands-on attitude from end to end.

Curious about how EyeOn can help you right-size your digital transformation? Contact our expert Bart Paridaen or visit the end-to-end transformation page on our website for further inspiration.

Explore our trends 2023 page, where we address further supply chain challenges you will be facing this year.