A new world is unfolding in the global supply chain universe. What was thought to be the time for the recovery of the supply chains continues to pose new challenges. With sanctions against Russia, the invasion of Ukraine, followed by the US-China trade war in 2018, the COVID-19 pandemic, and natural disasters, supply chain management has always remained volatile.

Corporations are focusing on developing technological sovereignty. More plants are being developed, in several locations, and by outsourcing parts and materials from a wider range of suppliers, the global supply chains are beginning to resemble supply webs. According to Nathan Resnik, President and Co-Founder of Sourcify, this evolution from supply chains to supply webs is referred to as “multiple sourcing.” In addition, Gartner also adds to the situation, in a survey of supply chiefs, stating that

30% of respondents shifted their focus from a global to a regionally based supply chain model.

(Source: Gartner, 2021)

This shift from global to regional supply chain models underway could lead to the migration of jobs, demand surges, and production worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decades. In such a context, companies are turning to comprehensive efforts to strengthen their supply chains for future challenges.

How to get started?

Such objectives require huge transformative efforts in data transparency, AI technologies, the cloud, automated data-driven decision-making, headless commerce, and multi-sourcing service integrations. All that is necessary to break through the barriers and develop a robust supply chain.

Embrace digital ecosystems:

As a one-size-fits-all strategy is no longer viable, the supply chain industry requires major investments in modernized supply chain management technologies. One of the optimal solutions is to bring multiple channels under a single roof. This will empower businesses with a digital ecosystem, that negates data silos while promoting supply chain transparency. When all partners are connected, this ensures more checkpoints, faster response times, and process efficiency, enabling a better understanding of the market demand.

Henkel, a Germany-based consumer goods firm, was able to leverage this strategy by integrating various channels into one. The firm leveraged a cloud platform that enabled them to make real-time assessments and supply tracking. After connecting 33 of their factories across the globe, they were able to get real-time insights into inventory levels, vehicle logistics, and consumer preferences.

Invest in data transparency:

Consistent, predictive, and actionable analytics are at the heart of end-to-end supply chain visibility. Supply chain companies can challenge the industry disruptions by combining MPS, ERP, SRM, and supplier data. This will empower them with real-time access to information across all platforms for better evaluations and informed decisions across the value chain.

Strengthen your synchronization capabilities:

Data synchronization enforces supply chain transparency, so both go hand-in-hand. When digitally synchronized, supply chain companies can strengthen their ability to estimate risks and optimize inventories while meeting customer demands without waste. Such transformative efforts can not only help you proactively identify vulnerabilities but also lower redundancy, generate faster lead times, enhance communication, and give a crystal-clear picture of your entire sourcing system.

Save time with automated, data-driven decision making:

Traditional supply chains with manual processes, inventory surplus, and no visibility are limited to meeting the upcoming market demands. Constraints in daily performance monitoring and production, as well as the traditional consensus forecasting approach, take companies four to five weeks’ worth of time to reach a demand-planning consensus, by which time the data gets redundant.

A better solution to eliminate such process inefficiencies and save your company a week’s worth of time is to unite all data into a single system. Garnering and updating data points from all partners within the network will empower your team to proactively recognize trends, flag threats, and help trigger preventive measures, all while saving time since the decisions are taken on real-time occurrences.

As a result, automation frees up time for managers to focus on more profitable operations, like negotiating better rates and expanding their firm.

Explore multi-sourcing service integrations

The changing global supply chain dynamics, following rising labor costs, pandemic-induced shutdowns, and surcharges in the US-China conflicts, are some of the reasons why supply chain companies must not rely on a single vendor. However, opting for a multi-sourcing supply chain strategy empowers businesses to source products across geographical boundaries, and thanks to digitization, communication with the suppliers ensures transparency and supplier portfolio balance.

This opens doors to diversification and can help companies lower the risks of supply chain disruptions, reduce prices, and safeguard against market volatility. This approach is further validated by Gartner, stating, “It’s important to build a model that reduces reliance on single-sourcing locations wherever possible. This strategy protects supply chains from future sourcing shocks caused by unforeseen disruptions.”

Deliver personalized user interactions

Integrated supply chains and visibility throughout your supply chain management is not enough to tackle the disruptive supply chain industry. Increasing customer interactions is also an essential element that is needed and requires businesses to create unique and flexible customer experiences.

Such solutions can be implemented by creative services like Headless Commerce, backed by PartnerLinQ. A scalable solution that leverages API-driven integrations and enables personalized user interactions, increasing the speed of value delivery to customers across the value chain — Meeting your business where it needs business functionality.

Realize the true disruptive supply chain solutions with the right partner.

Turning industry challenges into opportunities is the key to success for any business. This is where turning to a reliable supply chain management ecosystem partner such as PartnerLinQ comes in. While “BIG VAN” will glorify their network, the truth is that it’s all about your network and your trading partner ecosystem. 

How smoothly you onboard trading partners translates into how resilient your trading partner ecosystem is.

PartnerLinQ’s cloud-native platform ensures a smooth transition for you, working exceedingly well with custom ERP integrations while our Common Processing Workflow reduces the friction to support smooth partner onboarding. Also, easy trading partner onboarding can facilitate you turning to the new trading partners and making up for the inventory gap.

Our end-to-end supply chain visibility comes at no additional cost, whereas ‘Black Box’ EDI solutions are typically time-efficient, helping your team to spend more time on other industry dimensions. Also, with built-in analytics and a home screen monitor, we help supply chain companies proactively determine inventory shortages before they occur. Additionally, we offer Transaction and Error Analytics, a well-defined set of business rules that reduce friction, and built-in alerting, which is configurable to any supply chain condition you want to know more about.

Bottom Line

A trailblazer in digitized supply chain solutions, PartnerLinQ leverages multi-channel integrations to deliver customers and partners with enhanced experiences, helping them realize the above goals and reimagine their connected commerce. Get in touch with one of our experts to learn how to achieve digitization and transparency across your supply chain.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the instability of global supply chains which resulted in crisis across industries. Supply chains everywhere are still facing pressures in changing consumer demand. Consumption patterns have shifted as well – leading to higher shipping volumes and freight costs.

Today, it is important that organizations understand the factors that get in the way of supply chain recovery. They can then take the right measures to ensure not only the survival but also the success of their business.

What Hinders Supply Chain Recovery?

Supply chain recovery is a fundamental aspect of supply chain resilience and disaster management. According to a study published in the engineering management review, supply chains usually take longer to overcome more demanding challenges such as pandemics. This makes identifying challenges vital so that organizations can plan and create apt and effective strategies to carry on with their business.

One such challenge has been longstanding bottlenecks in supply chains. They have not only raised costs but also shortages in labor. As of December 2021, theUS Bureau of Labor estimated that there were only 11 million job openings in the country. The drastic decrease in job openings has slowed down overall growth and contributed to inflation, which at one point, sat at a 29-year high.

Due to such high inflation, most companies are passing the costs along, damaging supply chains even more due to rising input costs. A survey of 52 items, including forest products, agricultural products, energy, metals, and more, has shown how this impact is far wider than commonly believed. The survey showed that the average input increase has been 95% when compared to pre-pandemic levels.

There’s Light at the End of the Tunnel

By most estimates, this disruption is likely to persist throughout 2022 at the very least, with 2023 touted as a more likely possibility by some business leaders. This situation may be somewhat normalized in the long run. To understand the state of change that global businesses are going through, it is important to consider real-life examples to see how global enterprises are reacting to the crisis.

For General Electric Co., issues in its supply chains were present across all its business units. However, its healthcare unit especially faced more problems than any other part of its business. As a result, GE drove up its expenses for transportation and raw materials which, in turn, affected its onshore wind business. This is why the company raised prices and tried to suppress costs while looking for new suppliers, sourcing alternative parts, and redesigning product configurations. Such a period of transition saw GE’s Q4 2021 revenue take a hit.

According to S&P Global, however, many non-financial corporations worldwide have found it easy to absorb or cancel out cost inflation. They have been able to do so via demand shifts and offsets, hedging, product mix adjustments, cost pass-throughs, positive operational gearing, and a low rate of pay growth. But they still expect profit margin pressure to rise in 2022.

The Answer

One study has recommended a framework for supply chain management and operations during the pandemic across six distinct perspectives— digitalization, preparedness, adaptation, recovery, causality, and sustainability.

In the middle of present uncertainty, such a wide outlook can help organizations recover from supply chain issues quickly and efficiently. Today, solutions need to account for evolving requirements of enterprises, concerning supply chain integrations and all-around visibility. Only then can a solution help them overcome this situation with ease.

Explore PartnerLinQ:

A Supply chain visibility app ecosystem, with Native Applications that offer rapid interoperability and next-generation monitoring.

Some of the native apps in the PartnerLinQ app ecosystem include:

1. Order to Cash
2. Procure to Pay
3. Ecommerce Order Management
4. Return Verification & Management
5. Intelligent Invoice Matching
6. Web EDI
7. Cross Dock, DTC & Drop Shipments
8. Freight Integrations
   
    

Step into the next frontier of supply chain resilience. Contact us for a demo today!

Exploring PartnerLinQ’s Extensible Platform with Native Applications

The post disruption New Normal brings with it valuable lessons as we begin the new year. The importance of flexibility, visibility, velocity, and resilience are among those lessons and while many faced a fluid and unexpected path, most did emerge with a clearer understanding of what to expect over the next few years and how to overcome obstacles.

At PartnerLinQ we believe that resilience is a key to continued success in the New Normal. Flexibility, visibility, and velocity are the pieces that combine to build that resilience.

Before the disruptions of the last few years, flexibility, visibility, and velocity in supply chain was treated as optional, often provided by way of ‘add-on’ or ‘value- add’ services which is not quite good enough anymore.

Today’s emergent iPaaS and SaaS solutions are designed to meet evolving integration needs by providing API connections and transformations in easy to consume, point and click modules that connect one system to another in a SaaS environment. In short, this enables interoperability between systems quickly.

PartnerLinQ is not unlike many of the iPaaS, Cloud, and SaaS solutions built for the cloud and ease of use; but it is the Native Apps built to provide the key supply chain context to these integrations that takes this to the next level where the solution not only connects to your supply chain but also provides the visibility and velocity of implementation required to ensure that your supply chain is resilient as well.

PartnerLinQ’s App Extensible Platform

While many of our competitors1 continue to sell the “competitive advantage” of value-added networks, the concept of the network has shifted significantly. With PartnerLinQ, YOU own your network.

PartnerLinQ’s App extensible platform helps you connect with your supply chain quickly and easily, which translates into a significantly better ROI and a real competitive advantage.2

PartnerLinQ’s apps can be added to your PartnerLinQ subscription by a simple click of a button delivering instant value to your existing connection.

Here are some of the key Business Process Apps that are available:

Business Process Apps

• Order to Cash
• Procure to Pay
• E-commerce Order Management
• Cross-Dock, Direct to Consumer and Drop Shipments
• Return Verification & Management
• Freight Integration & Shipment Status Messaging
• Returns Management

Order to Cash

The Order to Cash App provides visibility into the Order to Cash process for both B2B and D2C business. This app gives you real time insights into your business in terms of value delivered and bottlenecks, allowing you to optimize the experience for your customers.

Procure to Pay

Procure to Pay works the same way through the PartnerLinQ Platform App, integrating your system and ensuring that your business, systems, and team are resilient, and now have a digitized, automated procure-to-pay process. Installed, configured, and activated within minutes by our team or yours, your team can easily manage buys, approvals, payments, suppliers and supply chain visibility and compliance on a global scale and in real time.

We’ve made processing inbound invoices simple with prebuilt integrations to more than 70 ERP, TMS, WMS systems. Robotic Process Automation also ensures that your team can convert your manual invoice processes into electronic transactions at the “Speed of Business.”

E-commerce – Order Management

PartnerLinQ’s extensible platform with native applications E-commerce – Order Management app unlocks real-time interactive shopping experiences by allowing seamless visibility to your products and inventory to boost online sales and increase customer engagement. Run your eCommerce business from the desktop, delivered your way, according to your schedule, providing flexibility, visibility, and velocity in a nimble, scalable platform

Cross-Dock, Direct to Consumer and Drop Shipments

Drop Shipment through the PartnerLinQ Platform App provides a seamless experience for Cross-Dock, Direct to Consumer and/or drop-ship environments.

The PartnerLinQ Drop Shipment App provides for the ability to onboard and connect with your drop ship partners and work with their catalogs in a seamless way, providing express distribution and or delivery requirements for your location and for your partners. The app includes detailed specifications for electronics, food service, and drug supply chains with precise traceability requirements without the need for yet another project.

Freight Integration & Shipment Status Messaging

The PartnerLinQ App makes freight integration effortless by connecting with the Top TL, LTL, Intermodal, logistics and Third-Party operators through the Platform. Tenders and responses are the lifeblood of the supply chain. Ensuring the right goods reach the right place at the right time is critical to supply chains in the New Normal. When it comes to deep freight integration, PartnerLinQ is ready and connects with more than 1,000 Land, Sea, and Air freight operators, handlers, and carriers, all available through our extensible platform with native applications.

Instant Ocean makes Land, Sea, and Air Visibility possible, and PartnerLinQ makes it happen. Your Port – Your Container, Trans-Atlantic, Trans-Pacific and everywhere in between. Our support team will be there, if needed, to ensure that 100% of your freight shipments are tracked from your ERP to destination with shipment status updates by way of email messages or infinitely scalable reporting.

Return Verification & Management

Returns Management, a feature often overlooked by our competitors, is also available. The PartnerLinQ Platform App provides a seamless experience for managing any type of returns including the Returns ASN for the cosmetics industry (RASN).

Drug supply chains are also enabled through the PartnerLinQ App whether you are ready to leverage EPCIS or not, and the GS1 Verification Messaging Standard is available from within PartnerLinQ.

Returns can be configured for delivery to your warehouse or a third party and, if needed, verification or validation is available to PartnerLinQ subscribers in just a few clicks.

[1] Are Value-Added Networks the Way to go for B2B Communication?

[2] Value-added networks provide competitive advantage

What’s new this holiday season?

While the Thanksgiving holiday has passed and we remain grateful for another wonderful year, we were treated to a visit from the technology elves on our return. The elves mentioned that they were hard at work finalizing the new release of PartnerLinQ as the holidays approach and were stopping by in order to demonstrate some its advanced features.

The Platform

The platform has been given an upgrade and the dashboard is sleek, smooth and faster than ever before. an ever before.

Recent Activities, located in the center, ensures PartnerLinQ customers remain proactively informed of the latest activities.

Recently Assigned Customers are just to the left, ensuring PartnerLinQ customers actively engaged in onboarding have a front row seat. It’s here that PartnerLinQ customers can visually ascertain the status of any onboarding customer at any point in the onboarding process.

Systems and Tasks alerts are on the right, and subscriptions can be toggled on and off by the user at any time.

Further down and always visible is a Support button that helpfully opens the support window.

With one-click you can search the support FAQ and access email and telephone support. The platform features Google-like search functionality at the top of the page, ensuring that anything a PartnerLinQ customer is looking for is one click away.

We make it easy. We keep it simple. And it is all in one place.

The Evolution

This holiday season, we are reminded that the evolution of PartnerLinQ has been a special process.  From the very beginning, our commitment to “making it easy and keeping it simple and putting everything in one place” has been an inspiration to not only our team and the technology elves, it has also inspired prospects to become customers and strangers to become friends. Now, having been on this path for a few years, the next few years are looking even more promising.

The Extensible Platform

Putting everything in one place is a core tenet of the PartnerLinQ extensible platform. Everything is accessible, from a selection of widgets that can be added to the user’s home screen to a selection of APIs and tools that can be added to your PartnerLinQ subscription. Speaking with some of our customers recently, the reaction to the new extensible platform has been, “I can’t wait for Christmas!”

The Upgrade

The upgrade to the new PartnerLinQ Platform, like everything else we do, is included with the platform. We’re all about making it easy and while the Azure-hosted subscription model has been available for some time, some self-hosted and licensed PartnerLinQ instances remain. PartnerLinQ customers keeping it simple today on the self-hosted and licensed PartnerLinQ instances will benefit from the ways we are making it easier tomorrow.

The Apps

We think of the apps as the best presents under the tree this year. Instant Ocean and Scan2EDI are the first of many PartnerLinQ solutions moving to the PartnerLinQ “in-app” subscription model. Available exclusively to PartnerLinQ customers, PartnerLinQ apps connect subscribers with Visionet IP products, factories, distributors, 3PL service providers, payment gateways, and more.

Instant Ocean is the newest PartnerLinQ IP and brings real value to PartnerLinQ customers who are also ocean freight participants. Instant Ocean is an “in-app” subscription to complete container visibility delivered to the user dashboard. Imagine integrated, automated, and reliable ocean status at your fingertips. Instant Ocean container updates can be delivered to the PartnerLinQ dashboard or directly to the enterprise. Instant Ocean even makes use of business rules and alerting so you can have it your way. Your port, your container, Trans-Atlantic, Trans-Pacific, and everywhere in between. Instant Ocean removes human intervention from your ocean-going freight and delivers real business insight.

Scan2EDI assembles the best modern technologies in one easy-to-use solution reaching well beyond that of ordinary optical character recognition (OCR). Beginning with OCR, PartnerLinQ makes use of robotic process automation (RPA) for data retrieval and data extraction, OCR for transformation, indexing, and image storage, and document management software in our intuitive PartnerLinQ platform interface.

PartnerLinQ’s business process outsourcing ensures that any transaction not immediately recognized receives an initial review and response so that PartnerLinQ customers have the option to add transactions, integrations, vendors, and customers mid-flow. This can happen because mapping and error handling are fully automated, the function includes business rules that fit our client’s business expectations, and with built-in alerts, no transactions are ever overlooked or missed. Artificial intelligence ensures transactions are sorted, tagging, and routed through processing and should an unexpected transaction be encountered, automated error handling takes care of the alerting your business team.

Application integration is what PartnerLinQ’s Scan2EDI was designed for and with our enterprise integration framework, Scan2EDI transactions land as expected in the enterprise whether they’re purchase orders (POs), advanced ship notices (ASNs), invoices, shipping documents, or any of the 500-plus available transactions that Scan2EDI was designed to handle out of the box.

Happy Holidays!

Whatever holidays you celebrate, we think that PartnerLinQ’s evolution is a reason for good cheer. With better visibility and flexibility, we’re adding even more resilience to your supply chain, and in these uncertain times as we sort out the “new normal,” resilience is the key to success.

So, enjoy the time off from work, spend time doing the things you love, and we’ll see you in the new year with a new evolution of the PartnerLinQ solution that will keep you singing “Happy Holidays” well into the new year. Talk with our experts to learn more.

By Thomas A Smith Senior EDI Implementation Strategy Consultant  

On a warm morning in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at a symposium in 2005 the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) made the following statement…

“While the techniques and instruments to absorb fluctuations have improved, there is uncertainty about how they will perform in a serious downturn.”

The speaker was Ragham Rajan and while he was widely ridiculed at the time, his speech would prove to be prophetic. The 2007-08 financial crisis to follow occurred because market changes and advancements were concentrating risk despite appearing to diversify risk.

The Great Disruption

The world is witnessing an unprecedented level of disruption beginning with COVID-19, followed by supply chain issues, and a growing disruption within the labor market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the flight of workers from the hospitality industry in September, with a reported 863,000 leaving their positions, fully 6.6% of the hospitality workforce. Across the world we see acute shortages for commodities, including computer chips, furniture, and mobile devices among them. Fortunately, there are no nationwide shortages of food. Although in some cases we might have certain foods with low inventory, food production and manufacturing are widely dispersed in North America. Global Industrialization is suffering, and many manufacturers in the US are reporting a wait of more than 90 days to procure materials and assemble parts to make their products.

The Disruption Today

Beyond the supply chain shortages and bottlenecks there are multiple causes for disruption. The emerging cause can be attributed to a shortage of labor, especially truck drivers, which has stalled production operations across plants, distribution points, and delivery centers. Despite rising unemployment, the gap between labor and unfilled positions is increasing.

With global production chains divided into specialized links over many decades, different industries have become inextricably connected over a period of time. Supply shocks have spread across unlikely industries, such as automobiles and semiconductors, or food and fertilizer.

Perhaps an even more visible cause for disruption lies in oversea shipping. The port crisis in the US has received global attention over the last year due to the immense buildup of ships and the never-ending influx of cargo. What supply chain professionals initially viewed as temporary is now threatening to change global shipping infrastructures from the size of ships to business practices, which relied on speed rather than on efficiency, availability, or visibility. Container ships are now circling ports and remaining at sea for longer periods increasing costs. Sea containers cost more to ship, resulting in exorbitant prices, and the accumulation of goods at shipyards, rail yards and warehouses, a direct result of the aforementioned labor shortage, dominated by a shortage of truck drivers.

Supply Chain News

Attending a supply chain conference last week for the first time in more than 18 months, I had an opportunity to listen to several speakers. One by one each delivered his or her view of what happens next, after the great disruption.

One speaker stated simply, “Supply chain is sexy again” and that caught my attention, for starters, I would agree. Having been largely automated and then ignored, the supply chain is again making news and having work in the supply chain for many years, there is more than a passing interest from John Q. Public on Supply chain matters. The speaker went on to talk about a financial newspaper with wide distribution. The paper, the speaker continued, published a mere handful of supply chain articles each month while in recent months, that handful had exploded to several articles every day. The articles, looking more critically now, are well beyond a single new outlet and appear to have a wide array of supply chain perspectives. Reflections of the articles range in impact from the DOW to the NASDAQ and from Retail to CPG and from staples to emerging technologies and in the virtual world these articles are boundless, including this one, which brings us to the following observation.

Stress Testing the Supply Chain

The string of supply chain disruption following the pandemic has resulted in the biggest stress test for supply chain leaders the world over, retail executives in North America anticipate issues to last beyond 2022. What appeared at first to be temporary has now turned into a series of long-lasting setbacks, some perhaps resulting in a permanent state of disruption in some industries. Considering the nearly two years since the onset, when and how these disruptions will end remain a matter of conjecture. The answers are not to be found, not in anyone’s tea leaves, not yet.

The Future of Supply Chain

In order to future-proof, supply chain leaders are facing factors of change that have not been previously considered or discussed, solutions from worker migration to flexible labor practices and the movement of sourcing to new sourcing centers in emerging markets or those which can be more closely controlled or deliver an environmentally neutral position. The solution is in resolving multiple issues in the supply chain as it did way back when plastic hangers seemingly changed to black overnight.

The Solution Approach

Renewing the approach to transparency and visibility across the supply chain is critical in light of the uncertain future in this period of the Great Disruption, now clearly extended, with no end in sight. Increased transparency can better prepare stakeholders to deal with changing regulatory, environmental or compliance requirements while solving supply chain dilemmas. Visibility, through better partner communication, is becoming increasingly important to supply chain leaders that I spoke with at the conference. The importance of end-to-end communication with suppliers and partners across the trading network from their perspective cannot be overstated. Through the right technology, organizations can ensure that the appropriate information is collected, stored, and disseminated, and when partners are onboarded quickly to meet these unexpected scenarios, the results are a positive impact on business and on other concerns.

Supply Chain Advantage

The PartnerLinQ advantage is its hybrid cloud architecture and easy partner onboarding, PartnerLinQ delivers a smarter B2B/B2C Integration platform with automated End-to-End Workflows and includes business rules for omnichannel integration.

PartnerLinQ’s unique approach to supply chain can help your organization communicate with your partners rapidly, ensuring end-to-end digital connectivity across all functional areas and through a centralized visibility platform.

PartnerLinQ zeroes in on issues, tracks them, and provides detailed analysis of all of your partners, including all of their inbound and outbound transactions and can generate alerts for specific partner events, delivering the insight your users need to address supply chain issues immediately.

Scan2EDI converts your manual process into electronic transactions using robotic process automation, optical character recognition, document management software, business process outsourcing, and artificial intelligence. Scan2EDI offers application integration advantages including PartnerLinQ’s ERP Integration Framework.

Instant Ocean Visibility provides container status at your fingertips. Integrated, automated, and reliable, your port – your container, Instant Ocean Visibility removes human intervention from container tracking, eliminates endless web searches, eliminates phone calls & email and eliminates voice messages and call backs.

Take control of your supply chain in the present and forge a new one for the future with PartnerLinQ. Talk with our experts to learn more.

By Kevin Balentine, PartnerLinQ

Building a New Resilient Supply Chain

The global marketplace today can perhaps be described as volatile. Prices are on the rise, shortages are popping up unexpectedly and in unexpected places.  Many major retail grocers are expecting center store sales to increases, an indication of things to come.

While supply chains have become more extensive and interconnected, they have also shown unprecedented instability in the face of disruption. In the wake of COVID-19, the fragile stability of lean supply chains found difficulty in recovering quickly in the face of disruption.  What has emerged is a succession of supply side ripples across multiple industries. The ripples collide until at last they reach the end of the line and, similar to the domino effect, as one chain ends another begins in sequence.  Many of the assumptions upon which the lean manufacturing model was created, were undone by market and environment variables that emerged during the onset of the COVID disruption.

Organizations are beginning to accept a pretense of recovery amid a truly formidable challenge of accelerated customer demand and labor shortages, and while research indicates that retail sales can grow by as much as 10.5% to 13.5% to generate more than USD 4.4 trillion in this year, there are concerns. Having undergone unprecedented and unwelcome change throughout the past year, suppliers require stability and flexibility to tackle the surging demand. Resisting instability forms the key priority for retail suppliers, which brings focus to resilience.

21% That’s the number of respondents in a recent Gartner survey who affirmed that they have a resilient network at present. Giving context to the figure, resilience implies elevated visibility, persistent velocity in moving product from source to destination while avoiding supply chain constraints. In this current moment of volatility in the market, it is imperative for retail suppliers and retail enterprises to increase their supply chain resilience.

Becoming more resilient is no longer a luxury for supply chain leaders. The long-standing tradition of lean manufacturing and its entrenched philosophy will be the challenge to overcome. Supply chains need to be efficient as well as resilient, and practices such as redundant supply chain operations, alternative factories, and ample safety stock need to be developed in parallel with productivity and performance improvements.  Supply chains also need to maintain compliance substituting lesser performing partners for those more suited following the COVID disruption. The widespread disruptions affected supply chain monitoring and audit and while enforcement may have been relaxed, performance improvements can only be brought about by effective monitoring and accounting. In order to holistically build a resilient supply chain network, retail suppliers need specific data elements to be incorporated into their supply chain and a robust solution methodology which combines five important elements is key.

Connectivity

A surefire approach to building supply chain resilience in retail is ensuring anytime, anyone, anywhere communication, systems need to be ‘access anywhere’ supportive of SSO (Single Sign on) and active directory. Manual partner-to-partner communication requires a lot of paperwork and must be reduced in light of staffing shortages.  Manual communication methodologies lead to errors and errors mean more human intervention. Automatic and secure document flows compatible with multiple enterprise level system and capable of a variety of data interchange formats and in real time delivers resilience.

Flexibility

A significant aspect of resilience is ironing out friction within the network. A resilient supply chain must be flexible and able to fix critical issues with the least amount of effort.  ‘Fix-on-the-fly’ functionality reducing human interaction increases flexibility. An efficient business rule manager is key to incorporate such flexibility. Reusable business rules ensure seamless partner onboarding and transaction integration.  Reusable sets of business rules allow for the conservation of scarce technical resources and ease of use.  The addition of reusable rules to rule sets to overcome existing issues, and proactive alerting based on business rules means time to make a correction where and when necessary. Change, through a business rules engine can be automated and in real time. Audit functions mean changes can be rolled out, and rolled back if that become necessary.

Adaptability

Perhaps the greatest lesson that the past year has taught suppliers in retail has been the importance of adaptation. The transition to digital and the prominence of ecommerce platforms has been well documented in the retail industry. An omnichannel strategy covers all potential channels for distribution and sales. An omnichannel strategy makes sense amid market disruptions such as we’ve seen this past year and a half.  An omnichannel strategy means demand can be met with convenience and speed. While a stand-alone omnichannel strategy as a solution is one way to meet demand, leveraging a common process workflow to bring transactions in or out of the enterprise the same way every time means an increased ability to create multiple trading relationships and do so quickly. By eliminating the need for additional support or maintenance, a common process workflow takes partner on boarding to a new level while increasing the utility of business rules reduces the dependencies on map and mapping activities. Combining centralized B2B communication with such a workflow results in a highly independent system in which transactions and business processes are handled automatically, accounting for connection changes, partner onboarding, acquisitions, mergers and complete enterprise migration without adding disruption.

Accountability

With much of the COVID disruption behind, and planning and change ahead, compliance has never been more important for retail suppliers.  A flexible and effective event notification processor to stay on top of supply chain events and issues in real time becomes a valuable tool. Such rules-based processing must be backed by comprehensive audits, reports, and analytics.  Such tools must be visible across the internal supply chain operation. Transaction transportation, transformation and integration tools must include analytics to ensure consistent business operations, keeping disparate teams in touch with the latest goings-on in the supply chain domain.

The Way Forward

Accepting resilience is just the first step. The path includes overcoming challenges like supply chain and labor shortages and success in resilience is achieved by combining five key elements:

• Centralized communication across multiple methods, formats, and platforms
• Flexible business rules, business rules management, and alerting.
• An adaptive common processing workflow that simplifies onboarding and processing
• Visibility, accountability, and adaptability
• Easy access to these key elements and in one place.

A resilient path will quickly deliver an elevated level of performance, particularly important as the retail industry begins to leave the COVID disruption behind and starts to engage with the new normal.

While the number and complexity of supply chain initiatives seem to grow season after season, a few remain on the top of such initiatives.  A combined study of supply chain leaders completed by Bain & Company and Microsoft identified digital agility and resilience as top priorities in their choice of supply chain software. The study also indicated that many supply chain senior executives, who once viewed their supply chain as a “cost center,” now see them as a “strategic capability.”

What the study appears to indicate are a number of strategic areas for future-proof investment, the ability to generate granular data sets to enable in-depth visibility and provide actionable insights, and of course, an omnichannel strategy that ensures consistent customer experiences across websites, mobile apps, social media accounts, and brick-and-mortar stores.

Intelligent Technologies to Drive Smart Supply Chains

Granular data, in-depth visibility, and actionable insights naturally come together conversationally when we begin to reconstruct business strategies, post COVID-19. Solutions that store transactional details provide granular data sets, which then provide much needed visibility that generates insights across partners, customers, and channels.

When an omnichannel strategy exists, the combined insight provided by solutions that store transactional details allows for advanced customer segmentation, empowering companies to build more detailed, customized experiences based on the needs of the partner, customer, or channel populations and experiences. No wonder then that the most successful brands are looking to harness intelligent technologies to adapt to fast-evolving consumer demands and market challenges.

While some may believe a lack of resources or investment opportunities are inhibiting the next steps, supply chain leaders have begun to realize they need to proactively seek resources or opportunities, anticipate supply-side change, and be somewhat agile themselves in order to make decisions that increase sales avenues and address customer needs.

Why Customer Insight?

The market is full of options and today’s customers have an abundance of choices, many of which are just a few clicks away. Working from home has greatly reduced travel times to and from work. It follows that the general population can spend more time on experiences that engage them personally and, according to a recent survey, 75% of millennials value experiences over things.

Experience, or more specifically, a positive experience, is derived from the utility offered and a utility that offers easy access to goods and services is more preferable to price. The outcome of this level of business-critical thinking suggests that it has become imperative that brands begin to understand evolving customer desires and delivery experiences that delight, which brings us back to strategic areas for future-proof investment.

Combining strategy and future-proof investment together ensures that the customer is at the center of supply chain planning. Only those organizations that have an in-depth connection with their customers can monitor their behavior, analyze trends, and select the right channel to maximize customer reach and engagement. Sellers must ensure that products and services are available to their targeted buyers and on all channels.

Businesses with an omnichannel presence enjoy 90% higher customer retention over those that do not. Adding availability and convenience by way of an omnichannel strategy ensures consumers can switch between devices and screens to complete a task. Creating digital for targeted buyers on all channels, generating granular data sets to enable in-depth visibility, and providing actionable insights brings it all together.

Integrated Platforms for Data-Driven Supply Chain Transformation 

Cross-channel insight is not likely to be found across multiple integrations or within a
“black box” infrastructure that is several decades old. Modern organizations need modern integrated platforms that work with smart solutions and intelligent interfaces. Many modern organizations are now enhancing their processes with intelligent autonomous systems powered by digital innovations like the Internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) to design a truly customer-centric supply chain.

Modern integrated platforms are AI/ML-enabled, can gather data from touchpoints across channels and partners, and deploy advanced data analytics that help analyze the information to find inefficiencies and potential ways of improvement. Such data-driven approaches help supply chain leaders forecast demand, get real-time updates across the network, and track product movement from factories to the shopping floor.

How AI Enables Channel Discovery and Optimized Delivery

Using the business needs and supply chain challenges described in this paper, we have identified five ways to introduce IoT, AI, and ML into supply chain initiatives to help companies select the most optimized integration channel and ensure uninterrupted delivery to maximize revenue generation:

1. Streamline partner onboarding: AI can automate and streamline the complex processes associated with managing channel partners, particularly if there are a lot of trading partners, a number of repeatable processes, or a large number of paper-based documents. AI helps identify repeatable processes based on a partner’s system configuration and data formats to speed up the partner onboarding process and ensure faster channel deployment.
    
2. Use business insights to pick the right channel: Manufacturers use a range of channels to sell products and, as those channels increase in number and in complexity, manufacturers need data to maximize the revenue produced through each channel. Solutions, which store transactional details and provide granular data sets, can be leveraged to deliver visibility. Visibility generates insights across partners, customers, and channels, and contributes to better decisions. Solutions that leverage real-time data from the live environment, and then use AI and advanced analytics, can help pick the right channels in which to invest. At this point, we can probably agree that better decisions lead to better outcomes.
    
3. Customize customer journeys: The world’s most recognizable and successful brands harness intelligent technologies to adapt to fast-evolving consumer demands, market conditions, and market challenges. IoT, AI, ML, big data, and easy-to-use analytics can be used to create in-depth customer profiles based on external data such as demographic models and purchasing behavior. Solutions that store transactional details allow for advanced customer segmentation, empowering companies to build more detailed, customized experiences based on the needs of the partner, customer, or channel population, where delivering a consistent brand experience facilitates customer engagement at the right moment and in the right channel.
    
4. Empower channel partners: Maximizing channel revenue also depends on how effectively supply chain partners like dealers, retailers, and distributors can attract new customers and deliver products via a compelling customer experience. A supply chain platform that provides seamless and timely integration with intelligent technologies will provide partners better tools along with the ability to deliver at the customer touchpoint.  Selecting smart solutions with intelligent interfaces empowers channel partners.
    
5. Measure performance: Leveraging access to data across channels and partners, modern organizations can effectively measure not only partner performance but their own performance in terms of sales, reach, engagement, and the depths of those engagements. Translate those processes into the selection of a new partner. Compare a partner who can process orders and invoices against a partner who can process orders and invoices, contracts, and chargebacks, and also maintain inventories; it’s a new game and works very similarly in the freight and logistics space just as well. For instance, say, you have two transportation service and logistics providers (TSLs) pitted against each other. While the first one can process shipments and invoices, the other can process shipments and invoices plus offer warehouse services such as the ability to pick, pack, and ship automatically, based on your need to supplement your business where and when needed. Selecting solutions with built-in reporting empowers your business by delivering the capacity to measure and display your own performance.
    

Toward an Automated Channel Discovery Process 

Market research has shown that digital tools can automate 80-90% of supply chain planning, and digital technologies such as AI can reduce inventory by up to 75%. In order to achieve a fully AI-powered supply chain, they will need a holistic view of all operations including application integration, along with an understanding of their business goals.

Smart solutions with intelligent interfaces deliver granular data and AI-powered platforms close the gap between channel performance and desired business outcomes. An optimized solution, one without human intervention, produces a self-driving supply chain. Such a supply chain reduces delays, costs, and losses in revenue, and delivers precision to a well-defined channel strategy.

About PartnerLinQ: Enterprise Connectivity at the Speed of Business

PartnerLinQ is an innovative, process-centric, easy-to-use integration platform that enables API-led, cloud-native integrations. It easily handles both standard and proprietary file-based formats, including custom integrations. The solution is well suited for retail, e-commerce, wholesale, transportation, 3PL, as well as distribution, digital, and analog partner extensible platform. It helps your team achieve operational efficiency and gain real-time visibility.

PartnerLinQ was designed and developed by a team with more than 25 years of deep integration experience.  The PartnerLinQ team has been providing industry-focused leadership in technology and consulting and in the development of innovative solutions that drive global supply chain transformation from the factory floor to the consumer’s doorstep. PartnerLinQ integrates natively with Microsoft Dynamics 365, while also providing robust support for more than 70 ERP systems and ecommerce platforms. PartnerLinQ is a completely integrated solution that consigns big VAN and iPaaS solutions to the past. PartnerLinQ is a modern platform with the technology of tomorrow, providing enterprise connectivity at the speed of business today.

Reimagining the Consumer Electronics Supply Chain: The Three Key Challenges for 2021

Disrupted Supplies

In March 2020, McKinsey forecast[1] electronics companies could face serious reductions in inventory due to epidemic-induced factory shutdowns. This was a clear signal to electronics suppliers that the diversification strategies initially developed during the predicted US-China trade war were quickly becoming a recommended path.

But while companies scrambled to onboard suppliers, the move could not mitigate the disruption. 53% of electronics industry leaders were anticipating delays or cancellations in new product launches by May 2021, with 91% of the shortage attributed to challenges in supply chain management [2].

Frenzied Demand

The need for semiconductor chips has continued to surge with the advent of newer automotive technologies such as electric vehicles, collision avoidance and automatic braking systems, real-time navigation, night vision, and lane-change warning systems. There’s no predictable relief in demand for these and other advanced technologies involving artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles.

The Semiconductor Industry Association has projected global chip sales to grow 8.4% in 2021 – a massive 5.1% hike in a $433 billion industry. With much of the world’s workforce having migrated to home offices and home-based leisure activities, computers, tablets, and gaming consoles are in high demand and chip production is struggling to keep up. A year after McKinsey’s original forecast, the world’s biggest chipmakers like AMD and Qualcomm continue to announce new shortages.

And the impact is not limited to consumer electronics or sub-systems. GM extended its automobile production cuts in the US, Canada, and Mexico; other automotive giants like Ford, Honda, and Fiat/Chrysler have also warned investors about slowdowns in new vehicle production due to chip shortages.

So has begun a cycle of delayed customer value and intense competition among vendors and a new race to market supply chain capabilities which hold the key to delivering increased value in the supply chain.

Challenges in Supply Chain Management

This widespread shortage in semiconductor chips has underlined the critical role of their supply chain in today’s economy. While optimized supply chains in the electronics industry had helped temper the explosion of IT and digital services in the past two decades, several unexpected factors have since emerged with the potential to disrupt the optimized global model.

There are three key challenges –challenges of immediate concern and which the consumer electronics supply chain needs to address in order to deliver the right product, in the right quantity, at the right price, place, and time.

Geographical Concentration

The world’s largest chip makers continue to largely depend on manufacturing centers in China. While some supply chains had begun to migrate towards other manufacturing centers, such as those in Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, these migrations occurred very close to the beginning of the pandemic.

Since then, China, who recovered rapidly from its pandemic-induced slowdown, continues to dominate US electronics imports, while the other centers have been slower to respond. They also have the disadvantage of being newer players in the market, which means less depth in terms of production inventories, staff, and other resources. 

Such geographical concentration of manufacturing activity carries an inherent risk, which was laid bare first during the US-China trade (tariff) war and then by the global pandemic. Given China’s existing supply and production infrastructures, most of the larger manufacturing entities have decided to stay put. A recent PwC survey said as much, stating that most companies are planning a ‘China +1 strategy’ once the pandemic subsides. This strategy involves relying on China as the primary source, while looking to one other country as a strategic manufacturing alternative.

US companies are similarly keen to nearshore operations to countries like Mexico; however, all of these plans have been complicated by uncertain economic and trade climates.

Product Lifecycle and Complexity

Advances in technology and rapidly changing customer behavior have also had an impact on the life of the average electronic product, leading to challenges in supply chain management. Companies have to carry larger inventories or depend on faster inventory turns; this increases overall inventory costs and significantly impacts the bottom line in the event of a short lifecycle product or worse, a product failure.

Electronics companies push for newer and more complex product variants to remain competitive. Having outsourced part or all of their manufacturing process to specialized centers, they remain vulnerable.

Integrity of Supply

Vulnerabilities increase as product components move through multiple facilities and geographies and the chance of counterfeits increases. A lack of supply chain visibility makes components and raw materials increasingly difficult to trace. While companies spread out the manufacturing of parts and assemblies across regions to reduce the risk, vulnerabilities continue to appear.

‘Nearshoring’ and localized manufacturing have the potential to enhance traceability of parts and assemblies. But consumer electronics supply chains also need solutions with increased visibility capabilities to strike a balance and mitigate multiple risks simultaneously.

Working Towards a More Distributed Supply Chain

Over the last few decades, consumer electronics companies have leveraged their global supply chains for cost advantages and specialized manufacturing expertise. But factors such as tariffs, the fallout from the pandemic, and a perceived failure of just-in-time logistics have renewed the push for regionalization.

Industry leaders must be proactive to ensure a more distributed and more collaborative future. Consumer electronics supply chains need digital solutions that facilitate easy entry into new markets and with new suppliers, centrally optimize their supply chains, and provide an end-to-end visibility from point of order to delivery.

Integrated Systems for Enhanced Collaboration

Investing in enterprise IT and supply chain solutions to optimize individual business processes shows promise. But these investments often lead to multiple solutions, ranging from spreadsheets to portals to demand and supply chain planning tools, many of which are loosely integrated at the enterprise level.

As a result, supply chain partners continue to operate on multiple systems and platforms, creating an even larger integration challenge. Network architectures with limited flexibility cannot accommodate multi‐party, multi‐tier supply chain structures that exist between customers, manufacturers, and trading partners.

A modern supply chain in the electronics industry needs access to real‐time supply and demand transactions. It needs a flexible platform that allows each company in the supply chain to implement its own processes – one that makes sense to their culture and way of doing business. More specifically, the platform should drive visibility, planning, communication, analysis, and execution in perfect orchestration across unlimited numbers of trading partners.

Such a platform will allow trading partners to execute activities in their own home-based systems and communicate along the supply chain as required for order to cash, freight, and trans-ocean transactions. This makes an agile and scalable cloud‐based architecture all the more critical. An easy-to-deploy supply chain solution can help organizations build their capabilities in stages. This ensures immediate and incremental value at each stage, paving the way for self-funded deployment and reserving capital for events yet to unfold.

About PartnerLinQ: Enterprise Connectivity at the Speed of Business

PartnerLinQ is an innovative, process-centric, easy-to-use EDI solution that enables API-led, cloud native integrations. With a simplified B2B communication engine that includes EDI, AS2, SFTP and real-time APIs, PartnerLinQ is a fully integrated platform and easily handles both standard and proprietary file-based formats, including custom integrations. The solution is well suited for retail, e-commerce, wholesale, transportation, 3PL, as well as distribution, digital, and analog partner extensible platform and helps your team achieve operational efficiency and gain real-time visibility.

PartnerLinQ is designed by a team with more than 25 years of experience in providing industry-focused leadership in technology and consulting and in the development of innovative solutions that drive global supply chain transformation from the factory floor to the consumer’s doorstep. Hosted on Microsoft Azure, the PartnerLinQ platform integrates natively with Microsoft Dynamics 365, while also providing robust support for integration with other ERP systems as well as e-commerce platforms.

 

[1] Knut Alicke, Xavier Azcue, Edward Barriball. (Mar 2020). McKinsey. Supply-chain recovery in coronavirus times

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/supply-chain-recovery-in-coronavirus-times-plan-for-now-and-the-future

[2] Supplyframe. (May 2020). Supplyframe Electronics Sourcing Report.

https://supplyframe.com/press-releases/supplyframe-electronics-sourcing-report-highlights-innovation-imperative-amid-covid-19/

The PartnerLinQ Advantage: 5 Key Value Adds for Food and Beverage Supply Chain Optimization

Foodservice on the Rebound?

Consumer interest had increasingly tilted towards experiences like travel, movies, and entertainment over the last decade. So being homebound over a year and a half has naturally created a void in people’s lives, with a craving for activities that create memories and provide entertainment. This was reflected by an immediate increase in restaurant transactions when municipalities tentatively eased restrictions for on-premises dining in 2020. And following a widespread rollout of vaccines in the US, consumers are becoming more confident about eating out. The first signs of a shift in spend pattern are already evident. The US Census Bureau’s Advance Monthly Sales for Food Services1 show a surge in April sales for food services and bars, with dollar sales up 15% from a pre-pandemic 2019 and a whopping 116.8% over last year. As per a NielsenIQ survey2, 62% of Americans miss eating out at restaurants the most and 28% of households are planning more trips to restaurants and bars than they did in 2020.

Reimagining Customer Experiences

Foodservice outlets are also innovating in terms of customer experiences and product offerings as their buyers still prefer contactless, hands-off transactions. Quick-service giants like McDonald’s and Burger King are redesigning premises3 with smaller dining rooms, more pick-up options, and a distancing of store operations from guests. Some like Maggiano’s are presenting a whole line of pre-cooked meals for consumers to take home and eat later. As restaurants desperately try to recapture lost sales, they are boosting up their catalog of digitally-delivered meals to ease household cooking burdens and provide in-home restaurant experiences. New methods of delivery like on-demand food trucks and in-garage grocery delivery services are picking up, while brands like Albertsons, Domino’s, and Kroger are experimenting with sophisticated technological alternatives like robots, drones, and driverless delivery services.

Food and Beverage Supply Chain Optimization: A Continuous Process

But the F&B industry also needs to continue looking for ways that optimize supply chain and partner networks in order to meet quickly evolving market demands. Many food makers and distributors are facing impediments like labor shortages, supply constraints, and high freight costs, which make it difficult to deliver all their products on time. Retailers had overlooked such deviations for months during the pandemic. But they are less willing to accommodate now as companies strive to get back to business-as-usual amid a reopening economy. Big buyers like Walmart are imposing chargebacks on suppliers for late deliveries or incomplete orders, while Kroger has launched a new ‘supplier discovery program’ to add new, diverse, and more reliable suppliers for farm produce, bakery, meat, seafood, and dairy.

On one hand, friction between food retailers and their suppliers adds costs across the food value chain. On the other, end-consumers are struggling to come to terms with job losses or other financial hardships brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Buyers are growing increasingly more price sensitive; IRI data4 indicates that a 10% increase in the price for edible products could reduce sales volume by as much as 17%.

The PartnerLinQ Advantage

To fully utilize a period of increased demand, PartnerLinQ provides food service organizations a number of distinct advantages to extract maximum value out of their supply chains.

Easy Partner Onboarding

F&B companies need to rapidly onboard new sales channels and supplier partners to take advantage of opportunities as and when they emerge.  PartnerLinQ supports EDI communication as well as direct B2B transfers to and from non-EDI organizations. It also supports a wide range of common data interchange standards to ensure reliable and secure communication across partner networks. With its EDI-optimized business rule engine and extensive preconfigured business rule library, PartnerLinQ increases the flexibility to connect with partners on their own terms and makes it possible to respond faster to partner-driven changes.

Automated End-to-End Workflows

PartnerLinQ’s infinite job scheduler allows organizations to configure, schedule, and execute multiple transactions simultaneously, including features like a bulk transfer of business-critical data to trading partners without any human intervention and without interfering with other business processes. Removing hands-on processing means that F&B organizations can ensure fewer errors and improved customer relationships, leading to improved delivery of goods and services and reduced customer turnover. A streamlined and automated communication process enhances compliance and helps avoid fines due to SLA breaches, payment delays, and performance gaps. PartnerLinQ’s built in auditing functionality gives F&B organizations the information to combat chargebacks and provide proof of delivery to end customers.

Smarter B2B Integration

PartnerLinQ integrates natively with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and can be integrated with other ERP systems at the same time without the need for additional licensing or subscriptions. It also provides robust support for EDI integration with dozens of ERP systems and ecommerce platforms. This allows foodservice businesses to shift seamlessly between EDI ERP and API-based integrations and with corporate parent companies or wholly owned subsidiaries at the same time, making support and maintenance more efficient, more attractive, and less vulnerable. F&B organizations can enjoy seamless connections with all network partners and a variety of internal systems while deploying multiple supply chain solutions within a single platform.

Hybrid Cloud Architecture

The food supply chain software ensures a simple and robust cloud deployment that minimizes infrastructure costs and enhances analytical reporting powered by Azure’s serverless, scalable, event-processing engine. A hybrid cloud architecture provides the most agile, flexible, and frictionless way to exchange B2B data, enabling further F&B supply chain optimization and empowering foodservice companies to take on the complexities of a multi-enterprise, multi-application integration process. In addition, they can now enjoy real-time visibility to garner insight and control across the entire value chain.

Omnichannel Integration

PartnerLinQ’s multi-channel integration capabilities allow it to combine perfectly with a Headless Commerce architecture, which separates the front- and back-end of an ecommerce solution to enable faster and more flexible customer experiences. It is also aligned with a unique CSP program and a layer of API integrations, delivering tailored experiences unique to customer preferences.

Gearing Up for the Next Normal with PartnerLinQ

In addition to a digitally-empowered F&B supply chain optimization, PartnerLinQ helps foodservice companies increase throughput, establish and enhance supplier relationships, keep track of deliveries and stay on schedule, while reducing chargeback risk and taking on new market opportunities and additional channels in the new normal. PartnerLinQ’s food supply chain solution also helps manufacturers keep traceability in house, remain in line with customer preferences, and increase connectivity across channels – both traditional and e-commerce.

Endnotes:

1. https://www.census.gov/retail/marts/www/marts_current.pdf
2. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2020/understanding-consumer-sentiment-can-help-companies-adjust-as-the-u-s-begins-to-re-open/
3. https://www.bakingbusiness.com/articles/53819-foodservice-adapts-new-concepts-as-it-recovers
4. https://www.iriworldwide.com/en-us/insights/publications/cpg-pricing-promotion-revenue-growth-during-inflation

Four Steps for CPG Supply Chain Network Optimization

Businesses and individuals will struggle to associate the words ‘high-point’ with 2020; amazing as it sounds, that has been the case for the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry as a whole. In fact, the CPG sector grew 19% in 2020 according to NC Solutions – a firm that has been providing research-based insights for more than 10 years to help brands target the right segments on the basis of in-store purchase behaviors, optimize in-flight campaigns, and measure the outcomes.

The upward trend on its own, and in comparison to the years prior to 2019, has not been predictable or uniform. While some companies enjoyed an unprecedented surge in demand, others suffered drastic sales declines.  There were rapidly deployed workforces and simultaneous lay-offs due to lockdowns.

Despite all this turmoil, the CPG industry overall is definitely in a much better place to take on an uncertain future when compared to other sectors in this brave new world.

Changing Priorities in Changing Times

The momentum of CPG companies has historically comprised gradual shifts in priorities as business changes are observed and accounted for. Incoming waves of wax and wane in the early days of 2020 caused concern for most companies who wanted to ensure the health and safety of customers and employees. Safeguarding cash balances and optimizing supply chains came later in the year; later still were efforts to build new supplier networks, optimize existing networks, and make them all more resilient.

Now, with western economies largely emerging from the crisis, attention has again turned, towards return to business and recovery. Business leaders across the CPG sector are starting to see some measure of an economic rebound; this is also the moment when they are beginning to consider long-term strategic moves as the future unfolds and looks much different than what they had envisioned last year at this time.

Cost and Availability: The Key to Customer Retention

Most consumers will need some time to recover and return to more normal levels of spending. Consumer demand for toilet tissue, cleaning products, bottled water, and personal protective equipment (PPE) has just about returned to a normal level.  McKinsey projects that 40% of US buyers are now more mindful of where they spend their money, while 31% are choosing less expensive products.

Consumer spending is also predicted to continue to focus more on essentials, groceries, household supplies, and less likely to focus on PPE like masks and gloves.  Consumers are also being mindful about their spending with regard to savings – the personal savings rate in the US amounted to 13.7% at the end of 2020, compared to 11% in 1960.

Many consumers, failing to find their favorite products on store shelves in 2020, changed to new brands that were more readily available. Driven largely by value and availability, more than 60% of global consumers tried a different brand or shopped at a different retail outlet. Trends like online ordering and delivery and remote working were all accelerated, leading to the digitalization of some business processes – changes that were previously projected to take place over decades happened in days.

So success for an omnichannel brand also depends on the right value proposition for CPG products and efficient supply chain planning towards supply chain network optimization. How much can the product command in terms of price and at what cost? What CPG supply chain management initiatives can ensure that the product is available where and when the consumer wants it and what variables are likely to impact that state?

As new consumer behaviours begin to emerge in all areas of everyday life, CPG companies need to use this transition period between the crisis and the new normal to rethink their consumer-decision journey and enhance and improve supply chain efficiency.

The Four Stages of Supply Chain Network Optimization

In a price-conscious CPG market, supply chain managers are desperate to optimize costs and increase supply chain throughput. The increasing number and complexity of sales channels demand end-to-end supply chain visibility as products travel from manufacturing centers to the end-customer; such transparency at the speed of business requires a digital supply chain.

As businesses embark on digital transformation initiatives to improve supply chain efficiency, they will need the right supply chain software to navigate the 4 stages in order to maximize network value.

Stage 1: Connect

End-to-end connectivity across the partner network inevitably concentrates large amounts of information across multiple connections. Facilitating collaboration with other channel partners by forging stronger relationships through efficient and coordinated actions increases end-to-end connectivity. This, in turn, results in increased activity leading to a concentration of information.

While grocers remain important and strategic trading partners, CPG companies will need to connect across various channels, including e-marketplaces and their own web presence. For smaller brands, it becomes a question of finding the channel that best fits their existing or extended distribution model.

Stage 2: Anticipate

Traditional supply chain planning can fail to accurately predict sudden rises or falls in demand as these forecasts are based on historical data. Integration with ‘big data’ systems helps develop a more holistic approach and supports an agile demand plan. CPG manufacturers need to quickly become experts in big data analytics, insight generation, and ROI tracking of investments, particularly for e-marketplaces.

Stage 3: Strategize

Based on the demand forecast, companies would need to respond quickly and efficiently to address production and inventory capacity throughout the supply chain. Factory, logistics partners, and warehouses will have to be coordinated and synchronized to serve multiple goals and partner networks would need to operate in near real time.

All this might require jettisoning legacy services and investing in smarter supply chain software that are designed for faster, point to point communication and at a lower cost.

Stage 4: Control

When a CPG supplier is in a position to manage its demand, production, and inventory, it has more control over its costs, product pricing, and placement. It can take a varied price approach depending on the demands and requirements of a particular buyer. According to Forbes research, the best CPG performers reallocate 2-3% resources per year removing unproductive costs and channelling funds to priority initiatives.

Supply Chain Software to Take on the Next Normal

The lessons learned over the past 14 months  present retail and CPG companies with a tremendous opportunity for improvement of supply chain operations. They can now reinvent themselves for the new normal with more speed, new innovation, and increased agility.

These companies can learn from their own experiences and from each other as they get ready to take on a less predictable future. The right digital investments can help long-term supply chain planning while observing and reacting to consumer behavior and the business environment.

PartnerLinQ by Visionet: Enterprise Connectivity at the Speed of Business

PartnerLinQ is the result of Visionet’s decades-long industry expertise and technology leadership. Hosted on Microsoft Azure, PartnerLinQ is an innovative, process-centric, easy-to-use EDI solution that enables API-led, cloud native integrations. With a simplified B2B communication engine that includes EDI, AS2, SFTP, and real-time APIs, PartnerLinQ is a fully integrated platform and easily handles both standard and proprietary file-based formats including custom integrations. PartnerLinQ is well suited for retail, e-commerce, wholesale, transportation, 3PL, as well as distribution, digital and analog partner ecosystems – helping your team achieve operational efficiency and gain real-time supply chain visibility.

The PartnerLinQ team at Visionet has more than 25 years of experience in providing industry-focused leadership in technology, consulting, and in the development of innovative solutions that drive global supply chain transformation from the factory floor to the consumer’s doorstep.

Visionet’s technology practice includes leveraging Azure to build, test, deploy, and manage large-scale enterprise solutions for its clients. So when Visionet set out to build PartnerLinQ, it made perfect sense to build, test, deploy, and manage the PartnerLinQ integration platform from within Azure.