Supply Chain Discussion: Where Digital Collaboration is Falling Short

A number of companies have embarked on their digital collaboration journey, but most have been unable to develop it to its full potential, says Ville Parkkinen, director of product marketing at OpenText.

“We need to share more information and more different types of information. That obviously puts a lot of pressure on organizations to evolve their current solutions, because a lot of them at the moment are used to essentially transactional information exchange. That needs to become more collaborative, and new solutions are essentially needed for that. So it’s a challenge that many companies face at the moment.”

As he says, and Nucleus knows, most organizations do some things very well, “but there are some areas where they might not have touched their integration platform for 20 years because it's kind of been working there. So we have these pockets of excellence, and we have pockets that are behind in the collaboration.” No supplier is the best at all parts of the supply chain.

There’s a need to exchange more information in the supply chain, but people are struggling with how to make use of the information they already have. And as he states, and in Nucleus' experience, starting by investing in technology might not be the best path with a digital transformation initiative. The technology component isn’t easy, but it’s the easiest part of the journey. Having expertise, which brings the people and processes along is the much more challenging part.

“It's the people and processes and how you actually operationalize that technology and really leverage that for value. That's kind of where the challenges are.”

To collaborate efficiently with suppliers often means overcoming the obstacles posed by older, often highly complex systems that are in place — “legacy baggage,” as Parkkinen calls them. And that is what Nucleus prides itself in being able to do. Because we are not bound by the same legacy baggage that customers are, or have a fleet of trucks that need to be utilized, we are able to quickly adapt parts or all of our customer's supply chains to improve service and save our customers money.

Source: (Supplychainbrain)