How customer experience is driving supply chain innovation

It wasn't long ago that companies like Kodak, Polaroid, BlackBerry, and Blockbuster were leaders in their respective industries. Flash forward to today, and those companies, like many others, have experienced significant disruptions that have severely affected their business or shuttered their operations completely.

In a recent issue of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals" (CSCMP's) Hot Topics publication, the author—software company BluJay Solutions—explores the link between supply chain management innovation, customer experience, technology adoption, and company performance.

To find out how organizations were approaching supply chain innovation, BluJay Solutions commissioned a study and survey titled "Competing on Customer Experience: The Driving Force Behind Supply Chain Innovation" with research firm Adelante SCM². The study reached out to manufacturers, retailers, logistics service providers, and various supply chain companies throughout the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. The results found that for "most supply chain organizations, delivering an enhanced customer experience (CX) is a key performance metric."

The report also found:

• The biggest barrier to supply chain innovation was outdated information technology and siloed systems.
• The technologies that are currently delivering the most value are mobile devices and apps, followed by control towers, warehouse automation, and robots. Survey respondents, however, ranked blockchain, drones, and driverless trucks near the bottom of the list of technologies expected to deliver the most innovation to supply chains in the next five years.
• The most common misconception about supply chain innovation was that it had to becompletely new or disruptive. Companies do not need to revamp every system and process in their supply chain to be truly innovative.

CSCMP Hot Topics is free to CSCMP members. Not a member? You can purchase a copy of by visiting cscmp.org, click on the "develop" tab, and under the "research" heading select Hot Topics.