Companies can differentiate themselves from the competition in the coming years by providing an excellent customer experience, and six in 10 supply chain professionals believe that customer experience will win over price in the next five years. Real-time insight into inventories and shipments should contribute to this.
This is according to research by software company BluJay Solutions, conducted among 438 supply chain professionals. The results show that shippers (manufacturers, retailers and distributors) innovate on technology primarily to reduce costs. 33 per cent of shippers cited this as the main reason, followed by improving the customer experience (26 per cent) and competitive advantage over other companies (19 per cent).
Focus investments
BluJay asked supply chain professionals about their current investments, with business intelligence (BI) coming first with 22 per cent of the vote, followed by visibility/control tower (20.5 per cent) and transportation (16.4 per cent).
Investment in customer experience
Which supply chain capabilities are going to contribute to an improved customer experience? Real-time visibility into orders, inventory and shipments, say respondents (27.9 per cent). In second place: on-time delivery (20 per cent), followed by proactive notifications (19.3 per cent). Interestingly, BI scores low on this question. "From a customer perspective, the value is less clear compared to insight into shipping status or the ability to return purchases quickly and easily," state the researchers.
Barriers to innovation
Respondents also named the three biggest barriers to supply chain innovation. The most common: silo systems or processes that cannot communicate with each other (21 per cent), existing IT systems that are outdated (18 per cent) and a lack of senior management support for funding.
