The ability to quickly react to industry and business changes is fast becoming one of the key differentiators between technology suppliers in the supply chain and logistics industries, scenario planning authority Clem Sunter said at a VSc Solutions conference, held in Sandton, in October last year.

“Over the past year we’ve seen an increase in the need for scalable technologies that can be implemented in a short timeframe and still co-exist with current systems and processes,” he adds.

Sunter also discussed the current and future state of South Africa, and the challenges facing the supply chain and logistics industries, pointing out that constant changes in industry and business necessitate continuous adaption of approaches and strategies in line with micro and macro environment requirements.

He noted that businesses should also strive to work with suppliers that are able to support the speed of necessary changes, and understand the requirement for interconnection between supply chain management systems.

“Technology providers need to work closely 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 VSc Solutions CEO Morné Janse van Rensburg, adding that 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. 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,” added Janse van Rensburg.

Supply chain management systems that support business in 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 prebuilt integrators, software that can plug into existing standard operating procedures, self registration and activation, international interconnects and so much more.

“At VSc Solutions, we’ve experienced that logistics and supply chain management are information technology (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,” concluded Janse van Rensburg.