FIVE MINS WITH ...
KARIM SHARIFF
KARIM SHARIFF , PARTNER AT BAIN & COMPANY MIDDLE EAST , DISCUSSES THE IMPORTANCE OF END-TO-END TRANSPARENCY IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN , THE BEST PRACTICES TO ACHIEVE TRANSPARENCY AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL ADOPTIONS TO GET YOU THERE .
Q . HOW IMPORTANT IS END- TO-END SUPPLY CHAIN TRANSPARENCY FOR THE INDUSTRY ?
» Transparency , resilience and sustainability of the supply chain are priorities that can ’ t be ignored . The pandemic highlighted the obvious dangers to any business with a supply chain that cannot operate in a crisis . But resilience also comes with huge benefits for companies that are able to continue serving their customers and to meet their increasingly changeable demands . Similarly , companies that lack sustainability and transparency can find their products penalized by regulators and scorned by customers , while companies that can point to sustainable practices and products are rewarded .
Q . WHAT IS THE BEST STRATEGY FOR ORGANISATIONS TO ACHIEVE END TO END SUPPLY CHAIN TRANSPARENCY ?
» To achieve transparency , companies are adopting so-called “ control towers ,” with an ultimate goal of creating resilient , self-healing supply chains and seamless collaboration among the players along the chain . Technical sophistication ranges widely today : Some control towers provide real-time data across the full supply chain and can predict suboptimal events or disruptions . Many focus on limited portions of the supply chain , with batched data and less ability to predict . None yet have the deep transparency that industry-wide data standards and sharing would make possible . But we predict that day is
18 April 2021