In recent years, supply chain disruptions have become the new normal. To help businesses recover and thrive, enterprises must be adaptive, resilient and scale their business quickly in the face of unforeseen supply chain challenges and risks.
One solution to help achieve this is the use of digital platforms. Digital platforms are a combination of technologies on a cohesive underlying architecture to enable a company’s strategic and technological needs. These platforms are transforming the game, representing a new way of thinking about business processes and connecting ecosystem players.
Enterprises should look for a modular, integrative, and extensible technology platform, such as LEA Reply™, a modular digital platform for supply chain that includes pre-built solutions, such as the award-winning LEA Reply™ WMS. It also provides a library of business-ready services and accelerators to quickly add or create new solutions as business needs and technologies change.
Digital platforms can unlock new business opportunities from disruptions by providing resilience, flexibility, personalization, automation, smart working models, and supply chain visibility. For example, disruptions such as the Covid-19 pandemic have created both challenges and opportunities for companies. Digital platforms allow a step-wise approach to implement new processes without adding additional systems and complexity, allowing companies to adapt to changing conditions. Traditional one-size-fits-all technologies fail to support customer expectations. To leverage an omnichannel model, retailers need to build an ecosystem of partners and suppliers, enabled by an agile supply chain digital platform.
Digital platforms also enable companies to integrate innovative technologies and help them achieve their digital roadmap objectives. For example, Logistics Reply partnered with a tech scale-up in the retail sector, specialized in automated micro-fulfilment to achieve same-day delivery in city centers, to enable a whole new end-to-end solution for warehouse automation.
Overall, digital platforms can help businesses transform their challenges into opportunities and remain competitive in a volatile and increasingly complex market.