Company Announcement - Wisdom from Clem Sunter, world-renowned authority on scenario planning, was in no short supply at the recent VSc Solutions conference held in Sandton. While discussing the current and future state of South Africa, Mr Sunter also highlighted challenges facing the supply chain and logistics industries. According to Mr Sunter, changes in industry and business happen so quickly that businesses have to continually adapt their approach and strategy in line with micro and macro environment requirements. Businesses should also strive to work with suppliers that are able to support the speed of necessary changes, and understand the requirement for interconnectedness between systems.

“Agility is fast becoming one of the key differentiators between technology suppliers in the supply chain and logistics industries,” says Morné Janse van Rensburg, CEO of VSc Solutions, supply chain technology and consulting experts. “Over the past year we’ve seen an increase in the need for scalable technologies that can be implemented in a very short timeframe and can co-exist with current systems and processes.” “Technology providers need to work closely together with development partners and teams to base products and services on feedback received from clients that have already adopted an evolutionary way of thinking for their own businesses,” explains Janse van Rensburg. “The days of developing solutions in an environment separated from client needs are over.”

To mitigate the risks held by scenarios currently predicted the focus of supply chain management systems can no longer be on merely connecting the dots, but rather on collecting the dots, as the physical location of data will soon be irrelevant in determining which supply chain management technology to use. Systems that are virtual and scalable allow for the rapid changes the supply chain and logistics industries will face in the near future.

“Smaller technology providers have earned a large chunk of market share by being able to provide comprehensive turnkey systems,” says Janse van Rensburg. “Smaller providers can easily offer similar benefits and risk mitigation features included by large conglomerates in standard service offerings by building partnerships to achieve economies of scale.” Supply chain management systems that will support business in both current and future growth tend to be customer focused to the point of taking the lead from the customer, rather than fixating on making the customer play according to set system rules.

“Through partnering with global software providers such as Descartes and LA Software we’ve been able to bring solutions to the South African market that include the benefits of pre-built integrators, software that can plug into existing standard operating procedures, self registration and activation, international interconnects and so much more,” explains Janse van Rensburg.

“At VSc Solutions we’ve experienced that logistics and supply chain management are IT restrained in many instances. It is therefore imperative that solution providers offer products that can work with both IT-heavy sites or IT-sparse sites, where hardware can connect with any hardware, and software can connect with any software, even those products that are competitors of the chosen solution provider.”