How to Select Right Technologies – second step | supply chain | technologies
How to Select Right Technologies
The second step in implementing a supply chain agenda is to select the right technologies for your supply chain. So let’s look at how you can create a technology road map that aligns with your supply chain strategy. I tend to think of supply chains in terms of people, processes and technologies. And one of the challenges when implementing supply chain management is to keep all of them aligned as you make changes.
As companies grow and improve their supply chain processes go from being ad hoc to standardized to mature. You can plan this journey using a tool called a capability maturity model. Once you have a plan for how your processes are going to mature, then you can decide which technologies you need to have in place for each step in the journey. This becomes your technology road map. Your road map helps to illustrate when and why you need to make technology investments in order to implement improvements to your supply chain.
In some cases implementing a technology too soon can lead to wasted costs and effort, because your processes aren’t mature enough to use the technology properly. But implementing a technology too late can stifle improvements and reduce the capabilities of your supply chain.
A common challenge when investing in supply chain technology is choosing between low-cost short-term solutions and more expensive long-term solutions. For example let’s say that you have a choice between a computer system that will only meet your needs for a year and a more expensive system that will meet your needs for five years.
Choosing the cheaper one-year system will look good in the short term, but it also means that you’ll need to spend more money to do another upgrade in the future. Selecting the right technologies for each of your supply chain process groups is an important part of implementing supply chain management.
A technology road map is a great way to plan the evolution of your information systems and to keep them aligned with your process maturity. Keeping your technology road map current can help you decide whether you have the right technologies in place to deliver the results you expect based on the maturity of your supply chain. And having the right technology is a critical enabler for the successful implementation of your supply chain management agenda.