In a similar way to what happened when we discuss analytics, it might not be obvious where to start with the digital transformation of the supply chain. The tasks can be overwhelming, for that reason, one approach that I think can be extremely useful is to think of that challenge in two ways. First, you can make a list of all those cutting edge technologies that are available today, and rank them based on how disruptive you think this can be to your business. You want to study how disruptive the technology can be for your business over the next five years. One study show that for example, more than 60% of supply chain professionals thinks that, robotics and automation will carry potential to disrupt or create a competitive advantage for their companies in the near future. Sensors and automatic identification, is up there as a potential disruptor with almost 60% of the supply chain professional, thinking that this is the technology that is going to disrupt or create a competitive advantage. It is not surprised that predictive and prescriptive analytics is up there in the top three. The list of potential technologies that you can use and implementing your company is very long, and this is why a systematic approach is essential. Artificial Intelligence, Internet of things, Cloud Computing, 3D printing, all are part of the assortment of technologies that supply chain managers and their teams involved in the supply chain disruption need to consider. But again, it is important to think which one of these have the potential to disrupt or create a competitive advantage in the near future. Next, you need to make a list of those technologies that your company is adopting today or is planning to adopt In one or 2 years. In other words, adoptions that will happen in the near future. You can then map those out and see where are the gaps, ideally, you want to see the different technologies lying on the diagonal of the map where the technologies with high potential to disrupt are going to be implemented soon or are already up and running. You need to give priorities to those technologies that have the biggest potential to create a competitive advantage or disrupt your industry. You don't want to fall behind on those because that can be a fatal mistake. At the same time, there are other technologies that while you might consider the investment, they are clearly not going to drive you out of business because these are not in the disruption path. In that sense, there are certain things like inventory and network optimization tools, that many supply chain managers see as a good investment. Companies are making investments on this today, but the potential to disrupt is relatively small. However, when we look at robotics and automation, most managers see that as a tool with very high impact, but the investment today is still very low. It is also true that in the same way we saw with analytic tools, several of these technologies built on top of each other. In the case of analytics, we might see that prescriptive analytics can be extremely disruptive to your company, but you cannot get there without a solid understanding of the predictive tools. The exercise of mapping out technologies, what you plan to use in the short term and the technologies that you and your team recognized, can drive the disruption in the industry will give you a natural ranking of areas where you need to invest time, money and effort. This mapping will also provide you with a path to plan and start navigating the digital transformation of your supply chain today. We arrived now to the end of the course, I hope you enjoy these modules as much as I did when preparing and recording it. The changes in the retail digital supply chain are extremely exciting. Today, a digital disruption has arrived to every single part of the supply chain, from the design and manufacturing to logistics and warehousing. As we saw the coordination and rationalization of the different flows (products, payments, and information) in the supply network is essential to the retailer today. You should leave this course seeing how this flows today are not happening in a linear fashion, and how the supply chain has evolved to become a sophisticated network. I hope that the framework and discussions we had in the course will help you move to action, and think of the best ways you and your company can navigate these exciting times. Thank you very much, and stay in touch.
