There we go.
Okay, so welcome everybody to this webinar.
And I will first start off by saying thank you to the panelists as well as everybody joining on what is a holiday in many countries across the world.
I think for those of us that are supply chain enthusiasts, I suppose we could talk ad nauseum about these topics.
But extra thanks for everybody that’s enthusiastic enough to talk about this topic on a day off, if it is a day off, at your company or in your country.
So our topic today is keys to a successful supply chain software implementation.
And at Suuchi Inc.
We do quite a few of these and I’m so excited about this one.
You know, the quality of the panel each time.
It just is a joy for me to co-host these with some of the best in the game.
But this topic particularly, I love that we’ve come together with three different perspectives, each of which are equally impactful to influence a discussion on this topic.
So we’ve got Jose Luis Teixeira from Jeronimo Martins, who represents the customer perspective, always the most important voice.
We’ve got Miguel Espanol from Kaizen.
Role of Thought Leadership
And what supply chain software implementation is successful without high quality thought leadership?
So you represent all the highest quality thought leadership that Kaizen brings.
And then we’ve got Ketan, chief product officer at Suuchi Inc
I’m founder and CEO of Suuchi Inc.
And the GRID is our supply chain software platform.
So we represent the system side.
And so I love the three different perspectives we have.
So we’re going to start off by letting Jose and then Miguel introduce themselves really quick.
Anything, Jose, you want to share about your career and why you’re enthusiastic to talk about this topic, and then we’ll go to Miguel.
Very good.
So I’m Jose Teixeira.
I work now as the head of the supply chain in the retail company here in Poland.
I’m also taking care of the logistics operations and it’s for Poland and Slovakia.
I’ve been around in England and Portugal doing different roles, also consultancy roles on supply chain expertise.
But I’ve been running operations in commercial and I’ve been also a general manager for a small company.
And now I’m back to supply chain and specifically supply chain in retail, which is a very dynamic environment that I like the most.
And that’s basically what I’ve been here to represent.
Thank you again for joining us, Miguel, I’ll pass it to you.
Hello, everyone.
Good morning, afternoon, good night, wherever you are.
So, my name is Miguel Hespanhol.
I have a background in industrial engineering.
And most of my professional life was around the consultancy work to which Kaizen Institute represents.
So I’ve worked in several kinds of industries, several regions of the globe, Americas to Europe to the Pacific.
So covering, I would say most of the globe now, but really sushi, as you were saying, I specialize and I’m really enthusiastic about the supply chain optimization parts which I’ve been leading in Kaisernsia for the past years.
And thank you again for inviting us to collaborate.
Absolutely.
You know, we couldn’t be more thrilled to have the two of you on this panel.
And it’s, it’s going to be a real treat for those live in, as well as those that watch the video after.
So, Ketan, you and I can go fast, but I’ll pass it to you to quickly introduce your role at Succhi Inc.
Hello everyone.
I’m Ketan, head of product and solutions here at Succhi Inc.
So from a role perspective, primarily focusing on the roadmap for our software so we can cater to a wider audience and solve for key complex challenges that organizations face when it comes to supply chain operations management.
With that, Succhi, I’m going to pass it to you.
Yep, we host this webinar and it is an absolute privilege to join forces and talks with folks like the ones on the panel.
The GRID is a multi product supply chain software platform.
We exist as a system of record or play with systems of record to provide connective tissue, democratize access, reduce errors and consistencies, and provide a modern, intelligent, intuitive bed of data and analytics for our customers.
And we work with a lot of folks like Jose on the customer side, but also with high quality leadership to guide implementation, like folks on Kaizen side.
So with that, why don’t we go straight into a discussion and we’ll keep it conversational.
Let me start with Jose.
I’ll pose this question to you and then move to Miguel.
Importance of Implementations and Process Alignment
In your experience, you’ve probably seen directly, indirectly, a lot of implementations of supply chain product data digitization.
ERP.
What is the role of high quality thought leadership in business road mapping as it comes to supply chain software implementations?
And why is that important?
So I’ll pass that to you.
You know, the implementation of changes in softwares and companies is one of the biggest challenges I’ve been seeing so far in my experience.
It’s about the experience and the best in class processes and approaches to problems that we have that we on the customer side, we need to be also very keen and open to receive this kind of approach.
And you know, these thought leaders and with their experience.
I think the insights and the knowledge and the guidance on what are the things that should be done is clearly very fundamental to deal with the complexities of the new systems that are appearing as well.
Systems are becoming more and more complex as, as well to deal with the complexity that we have.
So we sometimes also need some external help to understand if what we are thinking internally is clearly the road to go.
And so this thought leadership is quite important to keep us on the right track, to choose well, to implement well, and to be able to cope with the risks and the challenges that come up in front of us.
Yep, 100%.
And Miguel, you’re the one delivering that, that high quality thought leadership.
So I’m very curious to hear your perspective on it.
And if I were to put you on the spot, if somebody’s implementing a software, why should they?
Why do they need to bring in somebody like a kaizen?
And what difference does that make?
So I guess the same question, but your perspective is going to be important.
Yes.
Thank you.
And maybe I’ll begin to some of the words that Suzel Wiesel just introduced into the table.
So he was mentioning.
And then from my side fully, that was all about the challenges ahead.
Let’s call it the problems or challenges, but in the end, you have a challenge that you want to overcome, but then you have already processes set in within your organization which, and that’s very good that you find that you can improve them.
It’s part of the job to identify those kind of improvements.
But then it comes to the point in which you make decisions to which software are reacting to which software.
I think that’s the very tricky and most important part is to understand that the software is key and will be your template, will rule through it.
But in the end, the right process is the one that will really make friends.
And that’s, I think Sochi is where we need to really partner together to understand that the software alone, slash the process alone cannot rule without each one of the other.
So it’s important to understand first what process do we have and what’s the process we’d like to have in the future, thinking one year or three or five years ahead.
But then that will really play the important part when, when choosing the right software.
And that’s, and that’s a little what, what this kind of external help, as Roselle was saying, comes into play because it’s, it helps companies to understand what are the right steps, what kind of processes we should have, and then it comes.
So I really believe that this is a very good partnership and it makes total sense to buy them together and to move it together to the future.
Yeah, go ahead, Jose.
I just wanted to add on top of that that I used to say many times that we do not know, sometimes what we don’t know, and there is always a need for somebody to come over because they already have some experience of other developments and implementations where we can fast track and avoid some risks, as I was saying, and even some of the questions that can arise, it’s easier to address them and to have some comfort and security that you’re doing the right approach and the right way the process is.
Yeah, no, no, I think you guys made some very valid points.
And Ketan, you and I are in the trenches 24/7 but I’d still love to get, we don’t often get a chance to step back and ask ourselves these questions.
So you’ve run now for the company so many implementations where there is a formal process of benchmarking where we implement alongside that, and then there’s also been instances where we implement in the absence of that.
So what do you see is the primary difference between the two and really putting you on the spot?
Has that added layer of benchmarking really helped us deliver our software and implement it better?
Absolutely.
I think when we add a layer of benchmarking, we are also able to lessons learned from prior implementations across different environments, which I think is very important because as an organization, when you’re trying to adapt and implement a given software, your business goals and objectives are really centric around the given key challenges that you want to solve for.
But I think in order to have a holistic top down view, just to get a better understanding of how the implementation is going to impact the overall business objectives is really important as you look at software implementations.
And I think as you include benchmarking, the other key factor is how do you mitigate the risk events that you’re going to encounter as part of implementation?
Because usually when we look go into any kind of implementation environment, there are a lot of risks that could, that an organization could encounter, be it in terms of just the change management that an implementation is going to bring in.
How do you align with the strategic and business goals?
Most importantly is the software that is being implemented, will that be scalable five or six years down the road when the business objectives might just change because of emerging trends in the industry?
So I think including the benchmarking and the best practices is always a value add because you’re not only able to deliver the value in the current state, but you’re also able to take care of any kind of future scalability that an organization would intend to didn’t have an edge against as they scale and grow.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
And again, I love the fact that we have three very different perspectives from three entities that need to come together to make things successful.
So seguing to our next question, and Miguel, I’ll start with you here.
I suppose the other side of the question comes automatically when I ask, when you’ve based off your real world experience implementing across different customer environments, what would you say are the top two or three things that people do wrong that you wouldn’t want to see repeated if you had to give advice to our audience right so far as implementing and optimizing supply chains?
Focus on Transformation
Well that’s a very interesting question because definitely we should learn about past and we’ve all had past experience and based on what can I share with the audience on this, is that the first topic would be definitely that whatever transformation you want to have and if you go complex, as complex as to a supply chain, information you need and it’s absolute, must have a strong sponsorship and leadership.
If it’s not important for your organization, if the right sponsor is not in play, then maybe it’s not the time yet, the right moment to do transformation.
So you should really make sure that complex transformation throughout your supply chain is right to sponsor from top to bottom of the organization.
I would advise that as the first one, if I had to choose a second one a little bit more tailored even to the supply chain environment, I would say that supply chains are a very wide set of nodes, let’s call it like that.
And whatever you try to do, a transformation all of the nodes at one time, and you need to really make sure that right awareness and the right understanding of what’s the impact of your transformation.
While all of the other nodes of the supply chain, because be really great to do in your note, may impact negatively even on the other notes of your supply chains.
And again, it’s perfectly fine to be plus minus five, but the outcome of the end to end supply chain needs to be.
That’s really important to understand and to have that kind of wide vision around transformation you’re trying to make.
So don’t think just local, you need to think it’s really important.
Yeah, I think great point.
Benchmarking, Common Mistakes, and Objective Consulting
Sponsorship is so important because you could, you know, whether it’s the, the consulting thought leader or the supply chain software side, we know that without a strong Jose on the other side there isn’t anything we can do without sponsorship and backing.
And of course, understanding what you want out of the initiative in terms of the transformation impact and phasing it in a way you want to see it, I think.
Great points.
I’ll provide a little bit of perspective here.
And then, Jose, I’ll pass it to you.
I mean, obviously, we could talk so much and talk endlessly about these things, but I’d say specific if we had to narrow it down to our topic and the benefit of that combination of having consulting thought leadership alongside software.
I’d say one thing, one mistake we see companies make is, in this environment, cost is everything.
Our companies are trying to save the dollar as they should be.
Margins are the most important thing.
So sometimes if you compromise on bringing in an outside consulting entity, it might save costs, but I think it causes long term impact.
So there is, in my opinion, a failure to bring an objective outside entity as a consulting arm.
Or put another way, there’s a lot of benefit in bringing someone in outside that’s objective, because in the absence of somebody outside, you’re either having the company provide that road mapping or just the software provider, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But having somebody objective can truly allow the opportunity to benchmark the right way and talk to the different stakeholders and really understand what the views are and provide an objective analysis of the workflows that need to be implemented, but also what the different stakeholders want to see in terms of transformation.
So there’s a lot of value in an objective voice to be able to cut out all of the biases, but also what the impact ought to be.
I’d say the second impact, the second thing we often see is when it comes to implementing a software, a lot of folks want to make their workflow adapt, transferred exactly to the software front end, and that can involve a lot of customization, a lot of costs, and drive transformation time to value down.
So that’s, again, where I think somebody like Kaizen comes in, is you’re also setting expectations on, hey, it’s great to take what you’re doing now and transform it 100% onto the software, but the software has been built based off certain best practices, and maybe there’s a middle ground where there is a custom layer, but we also adapt to the way it’s been built to save on costs and time to value.
So I think that’s another perspective.
It’s always good to have an independent, objective party come in and provide that to the customer versus a software provider doing that.
Josie, I’d love to.
I’d love to hear your perspective on this again as a customer.
No, I will try to give something on top of what has been said because I agree with everything that you said.
And I would just say that clearly at the end of the day, we need to be successful.
And to be successful, this needs to be a triangle of win win win where everybody’s contributing for that success.
And I think the change management, because many times the software is bringing, is clearly a new way of working that can be a completely transformation versus what we were used to do.
And this change management across the company, on all departments is one of the most important and key factors for this success at the end.
Because even if at the end the team that is implementing the software is capable of putting it to work, if the remaining departments are not engaged, aware and they are not adapting also indirectly to the new way of the system to work, then you will not be totally successful at the end of the day.
So I think that tough leadership, and when I mean leadership, I mean the internal leadership for the change management, not only for the teams that are performing the change, but also for all the ones that are the stakeholders of that team, is for me one of the most important things that we need to take care of.
And even with the thought leadership, they will not be engaged totally on the culture of the company.
So sometimes they don’t read all the signs.
So I would say the first one very, very important is the leadership in the change management that needs to be done to prepare the company for this new way of work, which normally we end up by having to implement with new systems in place.
And the second thing that is a little bit sometimes related to this is that sometimes the companies, they tend to try to find the third way of doing the things.
And what I mean, the third way maybe for you to understand better, is what I call also the over customization.
I mean, you come with a software, you know how we work or we try to tell how we work, then you’re telling us how your functionalities work, how’s your system?
But then everybody would like to do something a little bit different and we end up by many times to try to, I call it the over customization of the software with developments and add ons and add ons.
That at the end of the day makes this really, really complicated to implement because not us as a client are totally aware of what’s going to be for you is also something new because sometimes you’re changing the software and the way the functionalities are working and at the end of the day, this is going to be a new thing.
It’s quite complicated thing.
So I tend to say that sometimes it’s better for us to really engage ourselves to understand what are the current processes the company has.
And this needs to be clear for the partners that will help us to implement, as it is very important for us to be very open to listen to the benchmark and the best practices that our partners are bringing to the table.
And then we would think, what is it really that we need to be different?
What really we believe we have is an added value, like the functionalities or processes on the new software are not present, that we really want to implement them.
So this is the second thing I would say to be very, very important on any implementation of the software.
Yeah, I love it.
I love everything you said.
And it’s really so important to us because you added layers to the utility of, you know, change management, obviously, and, but making sure that we don’t boil the ocean and over customize because it might seem the right thing, but it could become a rabbit hole.
And in many ways, I think that point, that specific point almost needs all these three entities to come together in a successful way, because the absence of alignment from any one of these three entities, the customer, the software provider, or the thought leader that’s benchmarking, can make that a failed effort.
When you’re, when you’re trying to not over customize or the other way, when the three align, be the right balance on the level.
I mean, everybody’s going to need a level of customization, but what’s the balance, right?
So, I mean, I think that’s your point on benchmarking is a great segue to the next question.
And I’ll, and I’ll actually request that you go, you give us your perspective first.
Measuring Success and Long-Term Commitment
And so in your experience, Jose, you’ve done a bunch of implementations and measuring the success is both qualitative and quantitative.
But I’m sure in your role, it’s very important for you to be able to internally socialize and convey to your fellow leaders.
This is how I’ve been, I envision measuring the success.
And look, here’s how actually this has been successful.
So how have you done that?
What benchmarks or what factors on a qualitative and quantitative level have you used when socializing the success of these implementations?
You know, I think, first of all, we need to define for the ones leaders that want to implement the new software.
What is it really the measure that we want to put on the table as being the most important one.
But I also have to say by personal experience that many times you need to find new measures because you need to manage the other stakeholders and other areas of the company so that they feel as well the success.
Because as you know, in many times in every implementation, we start by having difficulties and we start by having perceptions.
So again, I need to link this to the change management.
And the way that we measure success is that we need to feed in from the start with this change management.
Also, what is it that is going to be expected?
Many times there is a tendency for somebody to say that everything is going to be fantastic, fantastic service levels, the cost is going to reduce, the efficiency of productivity is going to be much bigger.
And if then you don’t show that you have that really from the first days, you need to manage perception in a very difficult way.
So what I try to do is clearly, as I said, you know, the KPI’s are the traditional ones.
Everybody’s talking about cost of margin.
Everybody wants to see the improvements on the service levels.
We want to forecast better the future.
We can put a lot of them on the table.
You need to choose one, one that the company will perceive as being the most important part that is going to help us.
Is it going to help us to put the sales or the costs or the service level?
And then you need to create the perception that this is going to be a road and we shouldn’t be very, you know, very.
We don’t want to show that this is going to be fantastic from day one.
We need to show that this is going to be a road and that improvement, no matter what is the scale, is what we need to start delivering.
And I think that with this we can step by step celebrate the success because it’s very normal that it’s not from day one that you will have the KPI’s that you have put it on the table.
It will take time, but every time you increase a little bit or you decrease costs a little bit, you should put it on the table to reinforce that we are doing the right process.
This is normal.
And of course that’s how I try to measure the success because I’m still having software that we implemented five years ago and I’m still having success fortunately.
And that’s the best way to do it.
Yeah, I’m going to record a lot of things you said, by the way, I love it, just to paraphrase and couldn’t agree with you more, but I don’t think you can repeat that line enough times that whatever the KPI’s they build over time and if anything they build exponentially over time.
So phasing it, setting that expectation is important and that’s something nobody as a consultant or software provider can’t do.
It has to be a leader on the inside.
And of course celebrating the success and the ROI is important and that incremental success, many people want that boom on day one.
But celebrating the incremental success I think is very important.
So I’m going to re quote you on that one and steal that.
But Miguel, I’ll pass it to you.
Any additional perspective to add that any particular KPI’s are talking about KPI’s that you recommend to your clients and customers when it comes to measurement.
Such a great insight from Zelda.
It’s really important.
And now I’m going to stretch this out regarding the change management, the transformation you want to do within a company because as Rozelle was saying well we know the KPI’s we’re going to talk about the investment, the cost to service.
So we all triangle more or less around that figure that does not change that much.
But what’s really important is to understand that really go through a very successful transformation.
We don’t think that as a sprint we think that like a marathon, a long term commitment that we are doing and that’s the important part because when we have the focus, when we have the resources, when we have that kind of all of companies attention the boost effect exists and maybe even results on the table.
Okay?
But if you’re really aiming for the long run you are aiming more.
Okay.
You know the results will come but you need to make sure that the KPI’s are showing that you are checking the way your teams are working on your shop floor and that’s really important.
It’s not only about the reported numbers that there are is the perception that whatever the transformation you are doing the sense of the transformation is really being deployed to everyone.
Okay.
And again we know because there are some, some transformations within software in which we put great softwares but in the end the adherence of the people is not that high.
They still will use that old excel file or the old parallel thing because they’ve been doing that for other years.
And that relates back to Jose’s comment around the change management term.
So the really successful ones are the ones that stick.
The value comes 510 years ahead when we are keep the same level at the same time.
Okay.
And just to stress and to finalize the boost effects may be tempting.
In the sense of the short term results.
And there is a lot of pressure of normal business to achieve that.
But it might from successful transformations and inspiring leaders tend to look this into the long run.
And that’s okay to take time if we are taking the right direction.
And the dollar sign will come in the end, we are all talking dollar sign, but that will come.
And I think that’s one of the most insightful, important things in my perspective too.
Yeah, 100%.
You solidified what, what Jose said.
It’s ultimately long game, long term gratification, but it’s about embedding that view within the organization.
Ketan, what’s, what’s your perspective again, coming at it from the software implementation side?
Yeah, I think from an implementation side, one of the key things, as Jose and Miguel mentioned.
Right.
It’s really important to work with your software implementation team and define those key metrics.
Right.
The onset of the project, one of the key things as organizations evaluate different softwares they should be looking at is how a given software would aid in tracking of those baseline metrics, so over a period of time, just so that you could continuously improve and iterate.
So most of the cases when we go into customer implementations, we sit down with the sponsorship team and define the metrics.
Those could be around any area, cost savings, inventory, order fulfillment, lead time management.
But most important, it is as part of implementation having a clear definition of processes that would help us track and monitor these metrics over a course of time.
As you rightly said, it’s a slow process, it’s a journey.
But the important thing here is to make sure that a software can support tracking of those metrics so that eventually, as the system evolves, as the usability increases, the metrics are really a function of adoption and usability, and we’ll see the improvement in the metrics over a period of time.
Yeah, well said.
We want to be able to make sure that we align on KPI’s that can actually be measured and that’s a function of adoption.
Without adoption, there’s no incremental improvement.
So we, when you have a good time, time flies.
I can’t believe we already are 30 plus minutes in.
So I’m going to ask question, which is a combination of a couple of different questions that came in from the audience.
So I’ll club it into one master question and we might not have time for more than one, but this is an interesting one.
And Miguel, I’ll start with you.
When you look at supply chain initiatives across all your clients, how does the future differ from what you’ve done in the past so far.
Future Supply Chain Initiatives and Talent Acquisition
Is buzzwords in the market today?
AI, automation, robotics, some of these are trends, some of these are permanent patterns that will change the way we implement.
How has this changed supply chain optimization initiatives?
And where do you see the future going in terms of these buzzwords or others?
How have they impacted your advice to your customers?
Sushi definitely, they are beginning to transform into more than buzzwords, but they are beginning to appear in real life.
And again, as I was saying, the shop floor.
So the way that I’m seeing companies evolve is that as of today, they are really touching, feeling a little.
Companies are eager to test, to do a small experiments.
So they want to do an experiment on AI, on predictive maintenance, to their equipments, to the robotics.
So there are interests, and the companies are eager to experiment and see what’s the value that this kind of tools are bringing.
So definitely the way I see they are, they are still better and to take a better understanding, how will the future look like?
But anyhow, what I see as a common pattern through the mall is that tools will evolve in the future.
And that’s, and that, and that is, well, that’s, that’s true, and will remain true as we.
As far as you know.
But, but I definitely believe that the ultimate thing is to thought process.
So again, the foundations and the values that you want to have when addressing a robotics problem, it’s the same one as we do not have the robotics there.
Robotics is just a very good upgrade to which you can leverage to get even bigger things, but you should not undermine all of the foundational concepts that you have.
And that’s, and that’s really, really powerful to this kind of, and I’ll call it the new things appearing completely different from the past, because in my opinion and perspective of efficiency, of productivity, of services, of waste within our operations, and that’s only very, very good layers which we can add and add and add, but do not look as into this, into the future as being alone, new thing coming and appearing, but something which is a nice upgrade when done in the correct way.
And that’s the only thing that I’m seeing companies doing, and I agree, in the sense of they’re experimenting to see what’s the value that this kind of new tools can bring.
And I think that’s where Kaizen comes in, is your ability to be able to drive thought leadership on.
How do you think about these concepts and put them into real world applications in a stepwise way?
Because I know that a lot of customers know that they don’t want to be left behind.
But what’s missing is taking that concept, but applying it in a way in that environment in a stepwise fashion.
So I can imagine a lot of utility to bringing someone like you folks on to help guide that process of implementing these concepts.
If you allow me.
Just, just give a small example.
So let’s take a warehouse operation which we want to streamline and look into the future.
So there will be option one which would be the robot to a very, very good or automated way, taking out a manual operation, but substitute it for robot which will take, I don’t know if 100 meters distance of your material flow, that will be an option.
And maybe you are into the future, but maybe to make that kind of distance whatsoever.
So if you don’t need it, just take them out and put your efforts on robotization or automation in other things.
So that’s a little, what I’m looking to is that the foundations and that paradigm thinking that you should always have and questioning thinking should remain for the future.
And then definitely we should take, because they’re here to help and they will be here to help in the future.
Yeah, no, for sure.
That was a great example of how do you guide a customer through the execution process and also thinking about it in terms of future scalability?
I’ll move to you next.
We often talk about this.
A lot of these concepts sound like rocket science, but they don’t need to be.
That’s where we come in.
Is taking an incremental, almost really simple approach to applying these concepts into, into a way to implement it through the grid or any software the customer may use.
So what’s your perspective when you think about AI, robotics, automation or integrating things that we may not organically collect on the grid?
How do we help the customer capture the future in a way that’s simple?
Yeah, I think I would agree with Miguel to a point that these are no more the buzzwords.
We are seeing applications of AI and ML part of the business operations for companies.
Given how agile the business environment, there’s a concept that, there’s a predefined notion that everyone wants to be operating at a higher efficiency and they want to do more with less.
When we talk about doing more with less, what organizations are looking for in a software is the fact that the software should be nimble enough right from the onset.
The system should be able to provide real time information, there should be accessibility of information.
On top of that, what people are looking for also productivity kind of feature sets that help them take an action against any insight that they’re seeing in the system.
So I think if you think about applications of AI and robotics, machine learning in terms of software development, I believe the key is to make sure that the valuable insights are available to the right people at right point in time.
And most importantly, the software solution should be able to fuel the growth of the business from a top down perspective.
The goal is just not to solve for challenges in one given domain.
But how does that implementation translating to overall business objectives, and how the overall time to action is reduced through intuitive user interface?
I think these are some of the key things that the decision makers are looking for when they think about a software implementation.
And I think on our end, Suchi, and I think on our end, what we’re looking to do is take some of technologies and embed the processes that help translate into overall business objectives.
Yeah, no, great points from you and Miguel.
And to me, ultimately, what excites me about the future is how can we take a concept and really dumb it down?
And what I mean by that is, it’s just piggybacking on what you said, embedding it in or integrating it in a simple way.
Because to me, whether it’s robotics or automation or AI, it’s all about data.
And so if you could take all these massive amounts of data across different systems and structure it in a way and connect it all, then store it, and the amount of intelligence for different user groups and roles, the outcome is amazing.
So all great points.
And Jose, obviously the best of the last, I’ll pass it to you again as the customer voice.
So when you think about the future, both from the perspective of the company, the different companies on the Jerone, Mo Martens and otherwise, if you were to look at your current systems or future systems you invest in, what are these future aspects, which are now current aspects that you want to bring in?
How have you brought that in?
What are these patterns that you’re thinking of that the audience should know about if they could get a read into your mind?
I think that it’s clear for us, working in areas like supply chain, that we cannot continue to do what we used to do before.
There’s a word that I always say that we want more and we want to do more with less, which is something very difficult sometimes, but we want all the time more efficiency.
We want to be more resilient to these disruptions that we are talking about here.
We want to be more competitive, and we need to adapt to the environment.
And technology is here already, and technology is getting the business case at a better position as well, which was also some barrier in the beginning.
But before telling you really what are the next things that are coming, I need to put here on the table for me, what is a very important aspect that we cannot not look at it almost from the beginning, which is human resources.
Many times with all of these things that we are talking about, we need to bring the right talent, the right people to the company so that then we are ready to embrace the new technology.
Because sometimes some of these technologies, they are very disruptive.
And to go from a traditional, normal warehouse, even if it’s already very sophisticated, with all the technologies that we have with voice speaking and with some systems driving our operations in DC’s, if you jump to an automated warehouse, this is already a factory, this is already completely different way of operating that sometimes it takes a long time for you to bring the people that we have on board to be able to achieve the certain level that we need to manage such an operation.
So human resources is clearly one of the things that is my concern, to be able to identify, to be able to define a role for these people, to be able to cope with the future challenges that we have have, and we have many things that we already see as the today’s not future, but today’s possibility.
Everything related with AI and even machine learning, we already use them, we already optimize things with machine learning.
We already use AI to do some forecasting because it’s helping us, it’s helping us to do more with less, as I say.
And at the same time, we are bringing this to help us also to enter into this new future of technology and to build the teams that we need to put in place.
And of course, the lack of resources that in many countries we sometimes face, it’s driving us to do more automation, and automation is already here for many, many years.
So it’s not something that we, it’s no longer a buzzword, it’s really something that we can implement.
Digital Twins and Risk Mitigation
And one of the big things that I think that it’s very, very important nowadays and can help us to cope with the risks of change and transformation is something that I call the digital twins.
We are embracing this way of analyzing our operations and simulating what could be the next change that we want to do as something that we think it’s clearly a good technology to help us to cope with the changes, minimizing the risks that we have to make the operational and physical changes in this complex part of the road.
And at the end of the day in companies like we, because supply chain competes between themselves, not necessarily companies in the same supply chain.
This is a buzzword from many, many years that I’ve worked for the beginning.
It’s really something that I believe also that we need to do, because to do more with less, we need to cooperate and we need to extend on the supply chain all of this analytics and information that we have.
Alignment and Synchronization in the Supply Chain
So if our partner suppliers, they can see what is it that we are selling in our POS, this is the best way to align and synchronize the supply chain.
We don’t need to have very complicated flows of information.
We can just give access for the same information and everybody can point to the same position.
So all of these things I think and hear systems play a very important role nowadays.
They are very important.
But human resources, right talents, with the right competences and skills, they are becoming also very, very, very important.
Yeah, no, thank you for summarizing that across what we just said and great points.
You know, Miguel, Keitan and Jose, I think you made a couple of key points, which is people and quality people will never go out of fashion.
They require.
Right.
No matter what you talk about so far as all these other items and concepts.
And I think the other thing you spoke about was, look, I mean, whether you talk about AI or robotics or automation or digital twins, they’re all a means to the end.
And the means to the end being you’re competing with your own supply chain and ultimately you got to do more with less.
Right?
So, and, you know, that’s our motto, right?
As we all come together, whether we’re software providers, quality thought experts, or the customer, we’re all in this together to drive more optimized supply chains, value our people and do more with less.
So I think on that note, thank you so much.
This was incredibly fun for me, and that’s, that’s how I know it’ll be valuable for the audience.
What a great collection of people.
You guys are amazing.
And this is, for me, the thrill of what we do is talking to other visionaries and people that are on the ground, implementing and going through challenges, because it’s not for the faint of heart.
Changing supply chains is not for the faint of heart, no matter which side of it you come at it from.
So thank you again.
We’ll stop recording.
Jose, Miguel, we appreciate you joining this panel and have a great rest of your Friday and weekend.
Thank you very much.
Have a great day.
