Supply Chain trends 2016

In this perspective, we see the following important trends for the coming years which we believe will generate a lot of interest and focus:

• The combination of Transport Management and Order Management in one common process, with the aim of closing the critical information gap between order status and shipping status. The importance of closing this gap, and the business value it creates, is to an increasing extent catching the eyes of both supply chains and software vendors focused on solving the problem.
• Supply Chain Collaboration is definitely here. We can see an increasing collaborative activity upstream the supply chain in Automotive and Industrial & Electronics. In the CPG and Healthcare sector the activity scope is covering both customers and suppliers, end-to-end. A completely new industry on the Nordic scene, is the Building & Construction industry, where big steps are taken towards standardized processes and automation.
• Speaking of standardized processes, this need is increasingly becoming the name of the game in several verticals’ supply chain processes, which in turn requires systems integration and improved collaboration for broad adoption.
• Cloud based solutions increase the capability of visualizing critical supply chain information for your trading partners in real time. In addition, cloud based solutions are definitely the technology that will enable increased supply chain collaboration and establishment of standardized processes, resulting in higher level of automation and agility.
• Understanding the benefits that can be realized through better collaboration, higher degree of standardization and well spread cloud based solutions, can be hard. However, more and more companies see the potential. One hindering factor is still the general belief that these kind of projects require a huge direct investment, which they don’t. Today’s technology enable global set-up and roll-outs with a step-by-step approach to both cost and benefits. Therefore, the return on investment, ROI, is high from day one.

PipeChain as a vendor within the supply chain management space, can verify the collaboration trend in the partnership segment as well. During 2015 we have entered partnerships aiming at collaborating for broader and better solutions for our customers, within the ERP segment, the Transport Management segment and within systems integration. Typical for these kind of partnerships is the “broader and better” perspective for our customers. No single vendor is controlling everything. Instead, the customers’ need is in focus and best-of-breed is the answer.

The trend towards faster global deployment is clear. Many of our customers are mature enough and have the right prerequisites for rolling out the supply chain improvement solution globally. During the year, PipeChain has increased the number of projects in both the US and Asia.

It is a positive thing for everyone, that supply chain trends that have been discussed for several years now, are starting to get realized.