INTHEBLACK July/August 2023 - Magazine - Page 36
F E AT U R E
Wall Street Journal
Can robots fix inflation, supply chain and labour issues? Singapore thinks so
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Importantly, Nicol says the business did
not try to transform every part of its supply
chain. That would have been overwhelmingly
difficult, distracting and expensive.
Instead, Accolade Wines focused on one
part of its supply chain. The decision to do
this came only after a specific business need
was identified – to have greater control over
product quality.
“Do you want to do it in bite-sized chunks,
or do you want to digest the elephant whole?
It is much better to do it step by step.
“The systems that support your supply
chain are fundamental. Supply chain is
about making sure you get product to
customers. Anything that interrupts that is
painful, so do things gradually, and always
start with the end in mind,” Nicol says.
TECHNOLOGY AS A MEANS TO AN END
Brad Hilder FCPA, COO of transportation
company SRT Logistics, says that businesses
need to start at the end. A business must know
where it wants to go before starting
its supply chain transformation journey.
36 INTHEBLACK July/August 2023
“Each business should look at what it
needs and the specific challenges it faces,”
Hilder says. “If it approaches the process
of bringing tech into its supply chains by
first understanding the outcome it wants to
achieve, it will drive better business decisions.”
As technology and data analytics are
proving to have a powerful influence on
performance, reliability and transparency
of modern supply chains, such transformation
is no longer optional, Hilder says.
What is required is for businesses to
recognise the investment as the performance
enhancer that it is, rather than seeing it simply
as an extra cost.
“Technology is becoming much cheaper.
Access to technology, particularly in terms
of ‘software as a service’, means you do not
need to invest in hardware, in servers, and
so on,” Hilder says.
“Yet a lot of smaller businesses are afraid of
this process because profit margins are tight,
and they see technology as an additional cost.
They are not seeing that it unlocks additional
benefits and makes excellent business sense.