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1. What are these technology gaps?

Bursts of innovation in the supply chain enabled companies to streamline routine processes, improve system capabilities and boost analytics. These gains were often followed by a lull, and that is why technology gaps occurred.

Advances in supply chain technology have been welcome and valuable, but they have not been transformative. True digital innovation has taken time and it is only more recently that we have seen the results accrue and come together to create transformative new solutions. These are enabling companies to make far greater improvements to the supply chain.

2. Where in the supply chain do they exist?

In our experience, far too many South African SMBs continue to be unable to fully leverage the benefits of digital supply chain management because of inadequate access to the internet and digital infrastructure, particularly in rural areas; lack of funding; limited access to effective solutions; or a lack of internal technological expertise. Limited government support for digital innovation and a lack of investment in research and development further exacerbate the technology gap.

Without sufficient visibility across the extended supply network, companies are unable to see their risks. They don鈥檛 have the systems to understand the status of their inventory, to project stock shortage of direct materials and optimise production, or to project stock shortages of finished goods to optimise customer allocation. They also lack the logistics flexibility they need networks to ensure the profitable movement of goods.

Right now, supply chain leaders would be wise to quickly change how they do things if they want to overcome the challenges that arise from lack of visibility, collaboration, and coordination. The need for more automation and information is an opportunity for manufacturers.

3. How are they impacting the implementation of a truly digital supply chain?

By adopting digital tech and accelerating the automation of business processes, companies can gain a vital edge in a tough market. The pandemic showed how many businesses are vulnerable to global shocks through their supply chain relationships. It exposed weaknesses like long lead times, lack of visibility that leads to a higher risk of disruption, and the dangers of lack of diversification that comes from excessive reliance on one location or supplier. Technologies such as 麻豆原创 Business One are available to improve visibility across the end-to-end supply chain and support greater supply chain agility and resilience. By adopting digital tech and accelerating the automation of business processes, companies can gain a vital edge in a tough market.

Digital supply networks like these are being built and designed to anticipate disruptions and reconfigure themselves appropriately to lessen the impact of events. They will enable the digital supply networks of the future, regardless of industry sector.

4. Can these gaps be filled (and by what technology)?

Seidor Africa, which represents 麻豆原创 Business One in South Africa, can enable companies to build a more productive and data-led business.

The technology closes the identified gaps in three key ways:

• Businesses gain access to the real-time, reliable information they require to align components such as stock levels (in-stock and on order) with customer orders (current & back-order) and accurate delivery schedules.
• Businesses move from a reactive, back-capture methodology to continuous manufacturing processes where material consumption, stage updates and quality control data is entered real-time on the production floor to aid accurate stock management, replenishment, and efficient order fulfilment. Continuous manufacturing and electronic tracking are also key to identify any potential inefficiencies in certain production lines or phases of production.
• Providing sales reps with the ability to view pricing, stock availability and place orders in real time from their mobile phone or tablet while in the field or with a customer, through 麻豆原创 B1 Mobile Sales application integrated to 麻豆原创 Business One. Having these orders added to the manufacturing and subsequent delivery cycle automatically, provides an invaluable advantage for businesses in the supply chain industry.

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In the highly competitive retail sector, where consumers place a premium on convenience in their shopping experiences, the pervasiveness of technology has influenced a shift in customer expectations.

To remain relevant in a rapidly changing market, retailers must be agile and adaptable.

础听聽on how the pandemic has affected retail consumer sentiment in South Africa found that the 鈥淐OVID-19 crisis has fast-tracked the urgency for digital transformation in retail, highlighting the need to operate and serve customers differently鈥�.

According to the same report, while digital transformation has been important to all sectors, retailers in particular need to find new ways to serve customers in order to remain relevant and competitive.

By leveraging technology, retailers can develop dynamic capabilities that are critical to gaining long-term competitive advantage.

For retailers to differentiate themselves, respond to changing customer needs, and prioritise innovation and agility across the entire value chain, digital transformation must be integrated into business strategy.

, since COVID, Sainsbury Supermarkets in the UK reported that their in-store shopping app accounted for up to 50% of purchases in some stores and 37% of total sales across all of their stores in Q2 2020/21.

Customers can use this app to scan their purchases with their smartphones, skipping the queues and paying instantly at smart check-out points.

According to the same report, Tesco, UK鈥檚 largest retailer, plans to open check-out-free stores, where customers will be able to scan items as they shop and be automatically charged for their purchase when they leave the store, eliminating the need for check-out points completely.

Finally, with innovations such as in-store facial recognition payments, Alibaba鈥檚 Freshippo stores in China have taken check-out-free shopping to new heights.

Freshippo describes its future vision as never transitioning from physical to digital, but rather seamlessly integrating online and offline, a concept they call 鈥減hygital鈥� retail experience.

How can digital transformation help African retailers achieve long-term sustainable success? Four key focus areas in particular bear investigation, namely:

Focus Area 1: Customer Centricity

Putting the customer first requires retailers to comprehensively understand the customer buying journey, their perceptions and expectations.

Understanding these factors intimately is critical to ensuring a positive customer experience (CX), which can be a significant differentiator in difficult times, such as those caused by the pandemic.

It is important that retailers view customer centricity as a long-term strategic imperative that enables them to better react to changing customer sentiment and demands.

For example, technology enables retailers to tailor their offerings to customer preferences with enhanced precision.

The ability to leverage technology to continuously collect information that enables retailers to understand customer needs as well as measure customer sentiment is paramount.

For example, a聽聽into the retail sector found that pricing and affordability became major drivers of negative sentiment during the early stages of the lockdowns. Therefore technology plays a critical role in enabling retailers to effectively manage CX, through tailoring their offerings, promotions and loyalty programs to customer needs.

Focus Area 2: Go-to-Market Channels

础听聽found that the use of mobile technologies will influence future customer needs, especially, as customers are increasingly using mobile devices to research their potential purchases.

For example, before making a high-value purchase, consumers could use their mobile phone to research details such as specifications or attributes, as well as compare different offerings from different retailers.

This means many consumers make their purchasing decision before leaving the house, and only go to a physical store to pay and pick up their predetermined purchase.

Retailers that have poor websites that are not mobile friendly could lose a significant portion of their customer base and their potential purchases as a result. It is therefore crucial that part of the retailer鈥檚 strategy addresses mobile as a critical go-to-market channel.

Focus Areas 3: Digital Supply Chain

Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about environmental degradation, animal rights and other matters of sustainability.

As a result, in addition to pricing and stock availability, consumers want to know where and how the products they consume and use are sourced, produced, and manufactured.

These rapidly changing consumer trends further complicate an already complex retail supply chain and category management landscape. The use of intelligent technologies could hold the key to simplifying supply chain management.

Real-time software applications for procurement, sales and operations planning, logistics, and inventory management are no longer considered a luxury.

Recent disruptions in South African supply chains due to protest action, for example, highlighted the importance of having an intelligent and integrated supply chain management system, as retailers scrambled to keep their stores open across the country after damage to some of their distribution centres.

Focus Area 4: Emerging Business Models

As the adoption of mobile devices, primarily smartphones and tablets, as well as access to the internet continue to accelerate in Africa, new retail technologies are expected to influence how retailers sell and how consumers purchase goods.

Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality are poised to shape the retail landscape of the future.

The traditional brick-and-mortar business model will continue to exist in the retail sector; however, as online sales increase, retailers must seriously consider alternative channels or routes to market that use technology as an enabler.

For example, prior to the COVID lockdowns, most customers were satisfied with a next-day delivery service; however, with the implementation of the lockdowns, food retailers that could effect same-day delivery (or in some cases even within 60 minutes) were able to differentiate themselves and capture the lion鈥檚 share of the burgeoning online market. Today, despite the easing of lockdown restrictions, online grocery shopping continues to grow in popularity.

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According to the report: 鈥溌槎乖�’s mission is to enable the company’s customers to achieve competitive advantage and advance in planning maturity in the world of the modern digital supply chain, a world of highly variable demand and complex supply networks. This is achieved by providing a seamless, user-friendly planning platform (麻豆原创 Integrated Business Planning) to enable low-latency planning and re-planning across supply chain functions.鈥�

麻豆原创 Integrated Business Planning helps customers optimize their businesses for productivity, and recent updates include the infusion of machine learning throughout the solution. This enables real-time, continuous, event-driven and automated planning, and close interoperability with finance, execution and business networks.

鈥溌槎乖� Integrated Business Planning helped us improve forecast valuation process speed and frequency including the decrease in manual workload and increase in valuation accuracy. It鈥檚 bridging the gap between supply and financial communities,鈥� said R茅my Cointreau Group Applications Manager Julien Lecacheur.

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About IDC MarketScape
IDC MarketScape vendor assessment model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor鈥檚 position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors.

*鈥淚DC MarketScape: Worldwide Overall Supply Chain Planning 2019 Vendor Assessment,鈥� doc #US45863417, January 2020
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 麻豆原创 are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 麻豆原创 undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect 麻豆原创’s future financial results are discussed more fully in 麻豆原创’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including 麻豆原创’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
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鈥溌槎乖� is committed to a dramatically cleaner ocean by 2030,鈥� Klein said. 鈥淲e can achieve this commitment by working together with customers, NGOs, governments, and partners, and by providing them with the tools, insights, and solutions to eliminate waste and maximize resource productivity. Many of our customers have made commitments to a cleaner planet, and so have we. We will support them in achieving their ambitious goals, and together we will achieve a plastic-free ocean over the next 10 years.鈥�

The health of the world鈥檚 oceans is at the top of the agenda in Davos, and Klein was part of a panel session with other business leaders and nongovernmental organization (NGO) representatives at the event.

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The crisis is very real: 8 million metric tons of waste enters the ocean every year and the amount is increasing an accelerating pace. Recently published research indicates the levels of plastics in the ocean may be a than previously thought. Plastic material slowly degrades into micro-plastics that harm the ecosystem and enter the ocean food chain. On average, people around the world are swallowing a total of five grams — about as much as a credit card — of harmful plastic material every week. That鈥檚 the equivalent of a half a pound yearly, ingested from many sources, including tap water and everyday foods such as sugar, salt, pasta, shellfish, rice, milk, and bread.

We know that the well-being of the economy, the environment, and the people on our planet are inextricably linked. It is understood that there can be no economic growth or development if business does not play a key role in operating profitably within planetary boundaries. A fundamental shift is needed in how we produce, use, dispose, and re-use materials in our economies. The current system is largely linear, meaning resources are used in production, made into products, and then are disposed of in the form of waste.

To sustain this 鈥渢ake, make, waste鈥� lifestyle,聽 1.8 planets worth of resources are needed; the current model is clearly unsustainable. An emerging circular economy aims to change that. Despite all the efforts in responsible packaging design, recycling programs, and re-use business models, we are only about nine percent circular, according to the Circularity Gap report.

麻豆原创: Uniquely Positioned for Impact

With consumers shifting their preferences to sustainable products, investors and employees clamoring for action, and regulators pushing new legislation, there is enormous momentum for businesses to drive responsible growth. And with 77 percent of the world鈥檚 transactions touching 麻豆原创 systems and more than 430,000 companies using 麻豆原创 software, the company is uniquely positioned to make a huge difference by helping customers redesign global value networks toward more circular business models and processes.

麻豆原创 has been leading programs and partnerships to drive sustainable change around the world. 麻豆原创 created the and partnered with Google on the challenge to foster revenue generating ideas that support circular use cases. The company also recently joined the Ellen MacArthur Foundation鈥檚 Circular Economy 100 (CE100) Network, a collaborative network of business, innovators, cities and governments, universities, and thought leaders all working together to accelerate adoption of circular economy practices and processes that maximize the use of resources.

麻豆原创 is part of a growing movement of policymakers, NGOs, social groups, and leading companies coming together to work on solutions such as avoiding single-use plastics, better managing and recycling plastic waste streams, and creating a circular plastics economy.

Many of the world鈥檚 leading brands are both part of the challenge and leading the way forward. For example, companies in the consumer packaged goods industry have started rethinking packaging and opting for more recyclable and sustainable alternatives.

Aside from the benefits gained from preserving the natural environment, there is a massive economic upside for business to move fast. It is the plastics industry could consume 20 percent of total global oil production. Since most plastic is used only once, 95 percent of its economic value — currently up to $120 billion annually — is lost.

, for example, has committed to a world without waste by making all packaging 100 percent recyclable by 2025. to eliminate non-recyclable plastic within five years. role model in responsible production by managing every stage of a product鈥檚 life cycle — from sourcing raw materials to manufacturing and distributing products — in order to reduce environmental impact.

麻豆原创 is already working with these customers and many others to help them manage the complex task of recycling many different types of plastics.

Impact Across the Value Chain

The 麻豆原创 vision for a plastic-free ocean calls on these customers and other global heavyweights to accelerate progress on their commitments. It also calls on companies of all sizes and industries to seek ways 麻豆原创 technology can help them in key areas, including responsible production, waste insights, secondary marketplaces, and consumer experiences.

麻豆原创 has a number of solutions and platforms, including the portfolio, that enable manufacturers to design, produce, and distribute products using more sustainable materials and responsible, transparent processes. The Plastics Cloud, for example, is a platform that enables the UK Plastics Pact to tackle the scourge of plastic waste through a unique collaboration between business, government, and citizens across the entire plastics value chain in the UK.

A US$400 billion market, the waste management industry is poised to be disrupted and rapidly expand through the effective use of data. Michael Groves is founder and CEO of , the Scottish smart-waste company that won the Circular Economy 2030 challenge this year. He explains that the waste value chain is very complex and opaque, with many private and public sector players and a significant informal sector around the world. Realizing that money follows data, Groves developed a solution that uses analytics and machine learning to follow trash as it travels. Clear data and insights will be fundamental to spurring investments in new infrastructure and innovation in the sector.

With useful data available about what waste is where and in what quality and quantity, companies can then procure this waste much more effectively and bring the materials back into their production processes. The expansion of these secondary materials marketplaces is another area where procurement platforms like can help companies become more circular and sustainable.

麻豆原创鈥檚 intelligent enterprise strategy focuses on connecting enterprise operational data (O-data) with the experience data (X-data) from their consumers. The company鈥檚 recent acquisition of experience management firm Qualtrics offers an entirely new level of support for companies to understand their consumer feelings, emotions, and desires about products, brands, and the impact they are making. Innovations across 麻豆原创 offer customers ways to inform, educate, and engage with consumers about products and processes, including apps that help consumers better understand how to recycle products and blockchain traceability and information platforms.

鈥淢any of our global customers are looking for solutions across their value chains and across their global markets to drive real positive change for their consumers, their business, and for the planet,鈥� Klein said. 鈥淭hrough our technology and innovation, 麻豆原创 can help companies unlock US$4.5 trillion in economic growth by creating sustainable business models and processes.鈥�

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