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Today's consumers are attracted to brands that align with their personal values. Nearly 50% of U.S. consumers now say that they are willing to change their purchasing habits to reduce impact on the environment. The shift to being "eco-friendly" isn't just a trend; the relationship between consumer values and brand purpose will continue to strengthen in the future

Digital evolution has fundamentally changed our world. Consumer demand and market dynamics now change rapidly, as customers have grown to expect speed, personalization and connectivity. This evolution has put supply chain management in the limelight, as an efficient and agile supply chain is a major competitive advantage in today's market. Throughout 2023 we expect the following items to be of top priority for supply chain executives:

There’s a whole new generation of manufacturers shaking up supply chains and traditional retail. We’re talking about direct-to-consumer businesses that manufacture, promote, sell, and ship their products themselves, eliminating middlemen. In the US alone, sales from D2C are expected to reach $175 billion by 2023.

Making supply chains smarter with AI has become necessary. Enterprises hope to lower costs and risks, increase efficiency, and stabilize supply channels to withstand any scenario. Supply chains globally are broken and are in dire need of repair. The decreased workforce, a shortage of proper skills and constant disruptions have become a seemingly permanent situation even after the pandemic has normalized. These emerging gaps are already being taken over by intelligent technologies like AI, with algorithms and bots working alongside humans on factory floors as well as assisting across all stages along the supply chain. One market survey shows that 25% supply chain professionals worldwide plan to invest in AI over the next three years.

With massive demands and fierce competition challenging supply chains worldwide, the use of AI and machine learning in supply chain management is integral to solving key issues and improving global performance. In a market where businesses are striving to excel, AI-enhanced tools can be utilized to identify potential vulnerabilities and help drive transformational changes such as enhancing end-to-end visibility and supply chain forecasting, increase cost-saving, and overall risk mitigation, to name a few benefits.

Guess, a leading apparel brand sources material from several hundred suppliers worldwide, though it does not own factories itself. When manufacturing units shut down during the pandemic, Guess was unable to figure out if their contractors could source alternatives for raw material and send finished products. And this is just one example of the importance of supply chain visibility. Even in evolved organizations, vital supplier information is locked away in spreadsheets and presentations, making it super hard to make sense of the data even if supply chain managers can access it.

Supply chains are a critical part of any business. Be it a retail store, a warehouse or raw material for production, everything depends on complex supply chains comprised of a network of moving parts. Managing these different components is a difficult and ever evolving task. Unforeseen disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic make life hard for supply chain managers who had to adapt and alter their supply chains almost overnight with no time to think about long-term consequences on supply chain performance, thus creating a messy tangle of suppliers, customers, deliveries, and distribution centers.

If retailer’s thought 2020’s supply chain woes during the pandemic were over: they’re mistaken. According to industry experts and analysts, the 2021 holiday season has just begun and suppliers and retailers are already facing delayed shipments and stratospheric freight prices.

Having experienced the aftershocks of COVID-19, organizations have already sought to invest in intelligent technologies to make their supply chains more autonomous and predictive. Businesses today realize the importance of building capabilities that let their supply chains sense and adapt to changes or disruptions quickly, to achieve supply chain resilience. Supply chains are becoming increasingly agile and flexible, as organizations recognize that they must be.

The demands of the modern supply chain are massive in the digital age and only with projections of a steady increase. With product development being more accessible with shorter lifecycles, geographical flexibility and faster delivery are the base requirements for any successful supply chain. The disruption of online retail and the data insights gained made the digitization of supply chains the next logical step. In fact, reports (McKinsey, 2017) show that companies can potentially improve annual growth with supply chain digitization by as much as 3.2%.

Few emerging technologies have created as much hype as blockchain, which has the potential to revolutionize the world of digital transactions. According to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Blockchain Survey, “53 percent of respondents say that blockchain technology has become a critical priority for their organizations in 2019 – a 10-point increase over last year”. As the use of blockchain continues to expand, it is important for businesses to understand the cost and barriers of implementation versus the value that the technology can provide.

Managing a complex supply chain network is a challenging endeavor that requires extensive communication and collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. The construction and maintenance of an efficient supply chain network requires considerable effort, time, money, expertise, industry connections, the development and implementation of technology – these are all inputs that are required to position your supply chain for advancement.