Supply chain leaders cite the need to reduce costs, improve the customer experience and expedite delivery times as their top-three challenges, yet fewer than half are leveraging their supply chain data to inform their strategy and 14% aren’t using supply chain data at all to make decisions.
That’s according to survey findings in a new report, ‘Data-Driven Decisions: Why Many Supply Chains Are Falling Behind’, by supply chain visibility provider, FourKites.
FourKites partnered with international research data and analytics group YouGov to poll 250 UK and 250 US supply chain leaders across every industry to understand how they’re digitising their supply chains and mitigating risk. 61% of UK respondents recognise the importance of connecting disparate supply chain data, compared to 82% of US respondents. 30% of UK respondents plan to invest in technology to de-risk their supply chain over the next six to 12 months, compared to 54% of respondents in the US.
Supply chain leaders are struggling to extract the information they need to make the data-driven decisions that will help them meet their strategic objectives. Specifically, 62% of UK respondents say their supply chain digitisation is sub-par, whereas only 34% of American respondents said the same.
“Two-thirds of responding companies are using supply chain data only for simple, day-to-day tasks — many have yet to realise the opportunity to look at their supply chain end-to-end to make informed, strategic decisions,” said FourKites Chief Strategy Officer Fabrizio Brasca. “At the root of this issue is the ongoing struggle to fully digitise the supply chain and have a single source of data. For instance, with a real-time view of inventory levels across facilities, supply chain leaders can proactively mitigate the risk of stockouts and prevent orders from being cut, leading to a better end-customer experience.”
Key findings from FourKites’ report include:
- 35% of UK respondents are using supply chain data to make strategic decisions, while 19% say that supply chain data isn’t being used at all to make any type of decision
- More than half of UK respondents (62%) rate themselves as “not great” or “struggling” at digitising their supply chain (compared to 34% of US respondents)
- 43% of all respondents struggle to integrate internal systems and have a single source of truth
- 30% of UK respondents are looking to invest in technology in the next six to 12 months, which is lower than the percentage of US respondents (54%). Investments are even more pronounced among enterprise companies, where 70% of US and UK leaders plan to increase their tech investment.
- Nearly 52% of all companies surveyed are diversifying their supplier/provider base in their efforts to de-risk their supply chains
The complete survey findings have been published in FourKites’ report, Data-Driven Decisions: Why Many Supply Chains Are Falling Behind along with expert perspective on the imperative to unify disparate systems into a single platform that helps leaders make rapid, data-driven decisions based on real-time information.
Having pioneered the real-time supply chain visibility category in 2014, FourKites helps companies eliminate silos across systems, stakeholders, modes and geographies, from transportation to the yard, order management and beyond. The platform houses the largest supply chain data set in a cloud-native, multi-tenant SaaS application that enables secure data sharing between most of the Fortune 500 and their supply chain ecosystems. In addition, new innovations like Fin AI (FourKites Intelligence Network) and My Workspace are supercharging customers’ decision-making capabilities by leveraging all of the data in the FourKites platform and third-party data sources to provide answers to supply chain questions faster than ever.
