The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has long been known to be a melting pot of different cultures. Due to such diversity, the country celebrates a number of holiday and festive events throughout the year, which typically drive higher consumer demands and stronger returns for retailers. Shoppers being able to make last-minute purchases in-store or online, and receiving shipments quickly, at their doorstep and at little to no cost, is no longer a modern-day luxury but an expectation. Brands must deliver.
That year was 2019 or what is now known as the pre-pandemic era. Although it’s only been a two-year timespan, it feels like a lifetime ago. And while the UAE quickly and seamlessly implemented a series of measures to curb the spread of the virus and help protect its citizens and residents; similar to the rest of the world, there was an impact on economic activities.
The retail sector was no exception. Those same shoppers who once expected a seamless shopping experience have conceded to short supplies and longer delays, causing a drastic shift in modern-day buying behaviours.
Many of today’s consumers (who previously had little or no knowledge on where or what the supply chain even was) are now in the throes of the current ‘supply chain crisis’ alongside an increasing number of major retailers and manufacturers who are dealing with issues like materials’ shortages and transportation disturbances to name a few. Collectively, everyone agrees that Covid-19 remains as the primary disruptor and exacerbating cause of these broken supply chains.
However, most suppliers globally will tell you that they were already facing economic volatility, infrastructure challenges and fractured logistics networks well before the pandemic. Not only are they dealing with exorbitant transport costs, they also are navigating complex and challenging environment resulting in containers that once took 30 days to make a trip around the world, now take over 60 days just to get to a regional port.
In response, businesses in UAE have been addressing the acute pressures of the pandemic and their supply chain networks by turbo-charging digital operations and technology investments on the front-end. While it’s important that retail and CPG companies continue to prioritise product innovation, flexibility, and speed-to-market – making significant rehauls to your customer-facing offerings and interfaces is a meaningless endeavour if gifts are delivered two months late, let alone two days.
Closing supply chain gaps
Every organisation that has a stake in consumer goods or retail services should remain laser-focused on how the supply chain is impacting their existing and new customers. The pandemic amplified the need for companies to seek the right tools that help them make faster and more informed decisions across their entire IT infrastructures.
As a company that has spent decades working with customers to digitise their global supply chains operations, here’s what we’ve learned to help our customers and their CIOs navigate and fix the gaps in their supply chains as we head into the new year:
Don’t pretend it’ll get better by itself. Even if your supply chains are up in order and you’re already implementing the right demand forecasting solutions, every CIO still needs to become a student of their supply chain and take notes. That means getting to know who your freight border and shipping representatives are, representing all agents and components of the supply chain. Clear communication, not just technology that helps you communicate better, is key to getting commercial teams and partners to prioritise and assess their supply chains and their products. And when it comes to communicating, be straight with your business leaders and in turn, that will help them better communicate and work with their customers.
In addition, take stock of your existing talent and resources and determine any potential gaps. Traditionally, the CIO oversees the technological needs and IT decisions for the organisation, but these functional siloes can slow down the digitalisation of the supply chain.
Gartner analysts predict that by 2025, more than half of today’s supply chain organisations will have a technology leadership role reporting directly to the chief supply chain officer. A dedicated technology executive sitting within the supply chain organisation is in a much better position to advance IT investments and create an optimal mix of emerging and maturing supply chain solutions that can address their changing business needs.
Assess your technology portfolio and build your product roadmap. To understand your desired future state, first assess your current state. Examine how robust networks, artificial intelligence (AI), and edge computing capabilities can help you understand exactly what the pain point in your environment is and how to immediately be able to connect with customers before they become former customers. These functions include accessing and scaling troves of unstructured on-premises data across a scattered network, then automating data processes through AI-driven critical risk models that can identify vulnerabilities and mitigate structural risks in real-time. Keep in mind that storing data across multiple IT estates and moving it between partners and third parties can leave companies more vulnerable to cyber security risks and data breaches. Assessing infrastructure solutions that support the ability to protect data even when it leaves your platform is crucial.
Identify, invest, and capitalise on the right digital strategy at the right time. For supply chain networks, this long-overdue infrastructure overhaul has been the source of bottlenecks that brought us to where we are today. Although shifts in consumer shopping behaviours have created volatile and unpredictable demand, we live in a “new normal” of global epidemics, natural disasters and infrastructure deterioration. Prioritise your needs. Just as your company can’t get everything it wants shipped today, you also can’t implement all the IT changes you need to make immediately either. Increasing operational efficiency is a matter of skills investment, as well as bringing in advanced technologies. For example, if you think new AI software can make your CRM systems more sensitive and responsive to changing customer demand, you’re right – but is your organisation ready to embrace this change and do you have the right skills to implement it? For many of the highest performing CIOs we’ve worked with over the years, they’ll tell us their biggest challenge is IT infrastructure management, and they’re correct. They often don’t have enough skills, security or resiliency to make the changes they believe are essential to compete in a tightly constrained market.
Next steps
Whether the world’s supply chain ‘normalises’ in a post-COVID economy, it may take far longer than most businesses or consumers desire. If your organisation is lagging, the time to accelerate your IT transformation journey and improve your logistics and supply chain management is now. Unfortunately, the road to recovery for the retail industry changes every day. To speed up the process, finding the right technology and infrastructure services partner is the answer to complex and compounding supply chain disruptors for many retailers today. The partnership between talent and technology will be fundamental to bridging these gaps because it performs many of the critical functions underpinning a truly robust, reliable, and connected supply chain in 2022.
