(Courtesy: Ian A. McCord at flickr.com)
It isn’t long before we launch into a new year –- 2016. Every year about this time industries reflect on the past year and consider what’s coming up in the New Year. Many experts including those in the supply chain field make predictions and they have done so for 2016.
What do they foresee for the supply chain trade?
Analytics, Planning Tools, and Machine-Learning
Watch for the continuing popularity of supply chain tools that will make decision-making easier and faster. The tools will include better analytics and machine learning technologies that can replicate supply chain scenarios, predict results and make recommendations.
Transparency, Quality, and Sustainability
Price is no long the major criteria for consumers when deciding what to buy. Instead, the major concern is whether the products are safe and have high quality. This is a major trend in the food services trade. Retailers are moving away from low-cost items to healthier products. So safe handling of food will be a major priority in the coming year.
According to the Center for Disease Control, about one of six consumers in the United States get sick and as many as 3,000 die due to foodborne diseases each year. Proper food handling from farm through warehouse to the retail floor will help to make certain that recalls and sicknesses are minimized.
Corporate Credit Card Acceptance
In recent years consumers have seen revolutionary changes of the way they pay for their purchases with the advent of such payment services as ApplePay, Google Wallet, Venmo, and more and such a revolution is expected to take place in the structure of Business-to-Business (B2B) payment systems. Now that there is better security procedures and faster processing of payments more businesses will be looking for ways to speed up the payment process in B2B transactions.
The merger of Business and Consumer Applications
Up to now, there has been a segregation of software and technology between business and consumers. Look now for a convergence of apps and other technologies between the two. As a result, consumer and business technologies will become less distinguishable. For example, we have seen a proliferation of robots that are being used to help consumers perform specific tasks. You should expect to see the same get more involved in corporate enterprises.
Confronting the Talent Gap
Ways to recruit better talent into the supply chain trade will be more widely discussed. The idea is to attract people who have a better understanding of the newest innovations and technologies and can apply them to the needs of the trade.