Immersive Outlook 3

Some organisations are more equal than others. Supply chain disruptions, the epicentre of many a business conversation today, have brought this truism to light. Industry leaders contend these disruptions – which originated with the pandemic – are here to stay. For organisations with the wherewithal to invent and innovate, that doesn’t spell bad news. Resilience and agility combined with sustainable operations have helped these organisations double their profits, exceed customer expectations and simultaneously enable the seller ecosystem.

Evidently, resilient supply chains hold the key to business success, a fact also evinced in PwC’s 26th Global Annual CEO Survey. Nearly 50% of India CEOs are concerned about supply chain disruptions. The Survey underlines that given these disruptions and rapidly changing customer demands, 67% of India CEOs are adjusting supply chains to mitigate exposure to geopolitical conflict and are concurrently looking at reinventing their companies over the next five years with the required investments in technology and people.

This third edition of Immersive Outlook, then, turns its attention to the supply chain ecosystem. Our contributors look at the future trends, elaborate on the art of building resilience, the importance of sustainability and reduction of Scope-3 carbon emissions, and explain how connected and integrated supply chains can propel growth. In all of this, data is perceived as the centripetal force that helps deal with variables, counter uncertainties and build resilience.

‘The supply chain game at the end of the day is a data game. All technology that we build is to collect the data at every stage, collect it in time and then, on the basis of the data, trigger certain actions that will eliminate anomalies,’ emphasises Sandeep Deshmukh, Co-founder and CEO of ElasticRun, India’s B2B ecommerce platform for rural India, in an online interview with Vivek Prasad, Markets Leader. For ElasticRun, the pandemic resulted in a shift in trajectory from a complete network shutdown to 10x growth owing to a massive spike in business. This unicorn has consolidated all its supply chain elements onto a single platform and as it went about its business, it transformed lives, spurring social inclusion and financial wellness of those at the bottom of the pyramid.

In another video interview, Akhil Saxena, Vice President, Customer Fulfilment Operations, APAC, MENA and LATAM, and WW Customer Service, Amazon tells Sudipta Ghosh, Industrial Products, and Data and Analytics Leader and Kunj Vaidya, a Chartered Accountant, ‘Seamless data which flows through different parts of the supply chain to provide end-to-end visibility is a piece that many companies are now working on.’

Amazon, he says, has a laser focus on the customer, middle mile and last mile connectivity to transform the way that India buys and sells. For Mr Saxena, sustainability is an opportunity, while alliances are a necessity to play together and come out on top. Mr Saxena also highlights the role of the Central and state governments in helping scale up and strengthen the backbone of supply chain operations.

The remaining three articles in this edition touch upon other supply chain aspects. In Paradigm shift in supply chain management, Ajay Nair, Somick Goswami, Vishal Nanavati and Anurag Sehgal trace the trends that account for the current supply chain headwinds from increasingly conscious buying practices to seeking enhanced customer experience and buying environmentally sustainable products. As the article throws light on the way forward, it discusses why several companies are taking measures to decouple their supply chains by building higher buffers and backward integration, establishing strategic partnership with critical suppliers and recalibrating skills to propel a future-fit transformation in anticipation of tomorrow’s demands.

A five-step approach to building a resilient supply chain, authored by Sudipta Ghosh and Nitin Soundale, focuses on building resilient supply chains that can weather multiple disruptions and unknown risks while balancing customer service and efficiency. Elaborating on the five-step model of Define, Anticipate, Assess, Analyse and Act the authors explain why it is important to build redundancies in a supply chain without significantly impacting costs and service levels across it.

Last but not the least, in Reimagining tomorrow’s supply chains, Ajay Nair and Saurabh S. Jain provide a sneak peek at the supply chains of tomorrow that will need to be customised, autonomous, integrated and powered by data and technology to serve new customer channels, and adjusted dynamically to new scenarios. Integrated supply chains, they underline, are used by businesses to match supply and demand, and give the cooperating parties the same ability to agree on a common understanding of the projected demand as done by an enterprise’s sales and operations planning processes. The parties are thus able to spot possible production or transportation capacity gaps and recommend alternative network resources to bridge the gaps.
We hope you find these critical insights on the various dimensions of the supply chain ecosystem of relevance to your business. Reach out to us if you would like to have a more detailed discussion on any of the aspects we have touched upon.

Vishnupriya Sengupta, Director, Markets

According to PwC’s 26th Global Annual CEO Survey: India perspective, nearly 50% of India CEOs are concerned about supply chain disruptions, and around 67% India CEOs are adjusting supply chains. Ajay Nair, Somick Goswami, Vishal Nanavati and Anurag Sehgal trace the trends that account for the current supply chain headwinds and throw light on the way forward.

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Supply chains of tomorrow will need to be connected, autonomous, integrated and powered by data and digital capabilities. Ajay Nair and Saurabh Jain provide the lowdown.
 

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