Supply Chain Digital Transformation

Align strategy and build capability to accelerate digital supply chains

Digital Supply Chain:
Six Strategic Actions

Over the next 10 years, demand from machine customers will become increasingly relevant, generating more than 20% of revenue. The supply chain operating model must evolve to keep pace with the acceleration of machine ordering.

Download the digital supply chain guide for our latest survey findings:

  • CSCOs expect double-digit growth in demand from machine customers by 2030
  • Only 15% of supply chains are ready to respond to machine customer demand
  • More than 60% of supply chains are planning to design their machine response strategy over the next 3 years

Download Digital Supply Chain Guide

Prepare your supply chain for accelerating machine customer demand

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    Align For Supply Chain Digital Transformation

    Digital is a key priority for most supply chain leaders, but less than half have defined or plan to implement a supply chain digital transformation roadmap.

    Many supply chains have been too slow to react and are still developing the foundational physical capabilities required to compete today let alone develop, test, deploy and scale digital innovation effectively.

    Supply chain digital transformation is proven to drive growth, mitigate risk, and optimize costs, but requires strong alignment between business and supply chain strategy to succeed.

    Start leveraging supply chain digital technologies to increase business performance by building a digital transformation roadmap that addresses both short-term improvements and a strategic long-term vision.

    More than 50% of organizations have not yet actively started to build a roadmap for supply chain digital transformation.

    Plan For Supply Chain Digital Transformation

    Supply chain leaders struggle to develop the digital planning capabilities needed for supply chain digital transformation.

    Digital supply chain planning requires different capabilities versus traditional planning: technical skills including advanced analytics; business skills like cross-functional collaboration and data-driven decision making; and behaviors/traits such as adaptability and risk taking.

    Effective roadmaps for supply chain digital transformation consider redesigning the planning organization, centralizing the analytics team, and building supply chain talent for the future.

    Investing in supply chain digital transformation ensures your supply chain can harness and scale the technology and innovation that promise business growth, risk mitigation, and cost optimization benefits.

    Organizations with effective supply chain digital transformation roadmaps are +3x as likely to see their digital supply chains succeed.

    Supply chain digital transformation insights you
    can use

    Supply Chain Digital Transformation: Business Case on a Page

    Supply chain leaders can use this tool to structure an effective business case for large digital supply chain transformation.

    Top 8 Supply Chain Technology Trends

    Supply chain technology trends are impacting CSCO investments. Benchmark your investments against new data on the top emerging technologies for supply chain.

    From Automation to Autonomy: The Supply Chain 2035 Roadmap

    Download the Supply Chain 2035 Roadmap for expert guidance on aligning supply chain strategy to the phases of the supply chain hyperautomation journey.

    Questions about becoming a Gartner client?

    Gartner Supply Chain Digital Transformation
    Case Studies

    Gartner showed us how to look at the digital frontier and find out from data what stage companies are at in adapting supply chain trends.

    Director, Supply Chain Design

    Transportation and Logistics Industry
    $22M reduction in inventory via Gartner supply chain digital transformation support.
    Case Study

    Aligning Supply Chain Technology with Business Processes

    Learn how Gartner enabled supply chain digital transformation by identifying opportunities to improve alignment between supply chain technology and business processes.

    Experience Supply Chain conferences

    Join your peers for the unveiling of the latest insights at Gartner conferences.

    The Gartner Supply Chain Podcast

    The Gartner Supply Chain Podcast explores the latest ideas and innovations for driving sustainable supply chain success. Join your hosts Thomas O’Connor and Caroline Chumakov as they uncover strategic insights and tactical tips in conversation with global supply chain experts.

    Listen Now

    Gartner Supply Chain Top 25 for 2022

    See the 18th annual ranking to learn the standard for supply chain excellence.

    See the Top 25 List

    Business Case For Supply Chain Digital Transformation

    CEOs are working hard to hunt revenue growth while resetting or rebuilding their businesses for a new reality. Digital investment, including supply chain digital transformation, can help them return to growth quickly and effectively. Introducing new digital products – including e-commerce and digitally enabled products (subscription-based, pay as you go) – has the highest returns of digital transformation tactics they have tried. Future markets will belong to digitally enhanced versions of today’s products, or complete digital substitutes.

    Supply chain leaders will have to accelerate supply chain digital transformation, thoroughly revisiting their supply chain operating model to support new digital business models and digital products. 

    Over the last couple of years, CEOs have placed greater focus than ever on financial matters, including profitability, cost management, efficiency, and productivity. Many expected an economic slowdown in 2020, even before COVID-19 arrived. This priority is likely to gain more attention as companies recover from the harsh effects of the COVID-19 crisis.

    Supply chain is often the go-to function where CEOs turn to optimize their company’s costs. Supply chain leaders should be prepared with ideas for how supply chain digital transformation can optimize their supply chains while protecting the supply chain from linear cost cutting.

    The majority of supply chain leaders are pointing to three technology opportunities to optimize supply chain costs:

    • Robotic process automation (RPA) to automate repetitive supply chain processes such as order management or supply contract management
    • Advanced analytics to improve and automate supply chain decision making across several areas of the supply chain
    • Collaborative/smart robots to further automate operations across factories, warehouses, and distribution centers

    Business agility has been a priority for many organizations over the last couple of years. However, many talked about it and few have made progress. Those that did make progress fared much better during the COVID-19 crisis. For all others, the crisis unveiled supply chain capability gaps that supply chain leaders are now urged to cover. 

    Agility brings speed, responsiveness, adaptability, and resilience in supply networks and operations—all more important now than ever. Supply chain leaders can leverage supply chain digital transformation to build agile supply chains that sense and respond to unanticipated changes in demand or supply, quickly and reliably, without sacrificing cost or quality. Emerging digital innovations like AI, advanced analytics, big data/data lakes, and the Internet of Things support a more transparent, automated, intelligent, and orchestrated end-to-end supply chain.

    Gartner experts enable supply chain digital transformation

    We provide supply chain digital transformation support, helping 2,500+ supply chain leader clients improve decision making.