Question 1.How do you see Supply Chain Visibility evolving post pandemic and also with focus on ESG?
Purpose does not come at the expense of profitability but, in many cases, drives outperformance. Rupert Younger
The pandemic highlighted the importance for supply chains to have end-to-end visibility, agility, resilience, and placed fresh demands for risk management towards improving forecasting (Alicke, Barriball, and Trautwein 2020). Post-pandemic, digitization is ubiquitous but alone is insufficient for sustaining competitive advantage in a VUCA environment. As supply chains become increasingly complex, companies become more reliant upon data analysis to gain control over processes. Decisions around accurate data analysis competencies are what will likely yield competitive advantage (Schrage 2020). End-to-end supply chain visibility is expected to evolve to being the platform for innovative decision making, end-to-end and cross-tier collaboration with suppliers and customers towards monitoring and tracking risk, fostering stronger supplier relationships and exceeding customer expectations (Patel 2021). Post-pandemic, supply chain visibility will evolve to play a key role in sustaining competitive advantage as increasingly supply chains will be subject to stress test simulations to test resilience and improve agility (Simchi-Levi and Simchi-Levi 2020).
Amid the pandemic, the top 50 global companies increased their total market capitalisation by $4.5T and by 2021 their combined worth was equivalent to 28% of the global GDP. More powerful than most governments, these top global companies global supply chains have global impact upon environmental, societal and sustainability (Dai and Tang 2022). Along with global recognition of the interconnectedness of human health to the environment, there has been an increase in preference for sustainability and an acceleration of ESG investments (Drenik 2020). Thus, post-pandemic, companies are forced to now scrutinise and improve their roles in and purposes towards society as investors and customers alike are now inclined to measure inter alia carbon footprint, human rights violations, and ethical sourcing standards across the supply chain. ESG now creates value and in concert with supply chain visibility is positioned to dictate the pace of competition since companies increasingly compete along supply chains (Rice and Hoppe 2001) and are more frequently called to account for their social responsibility (Haupter 2020). Increasingly companies employ Supply Chain ESG Compliance Strategies (Sardanelli et al. 2022) (Banker 2022).
