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New Delhi: As the retail industry has gone through several challenges in the past few years due to pandemic and global supply chain disruptions, the need for making changes in their business strategies have become prevalent, leaders earlier this month at ETRetail Supply Chain Summit 2023 shared about the usage of data across the supply chain, consumer demand change and evolving technology as a next step forward.
Moderating a panel at the event on a topic ‘Crafting new age supply chain strategies that delivers business value’, Anshuman Neil Basu, secretary general, association of supply chain professionals (ASCP-India) addressed supply chain as a responsible chain. He said the businesses need to be more customer focused and work on the consumer delight.
While speaking on the challenges in supply chain, Swaminathan Ramachandran, chief supply chain officer at ABFRL shared that longer lead time coupled with highly evolving demand is a value destroyer and results in less or no sale of stock keeping units (SKUs). It is one challenge that the apparel industry faces.
To overcome this issue, Ramachandran said that agility is one of the key dimensions to create value. And data forecasting is also important for efficient operations and reduce time taken to create assortments for the season.
Apart from this he emphasized that focusing on supply chain design is one of the main aspects to withhold the sudden shocks in demand that is called as resilience.
Further, sharing insights for business growth, K Radhakrishnan, co founder, Tata Starquik said, there are three things to focus upon including the focus on unit economics, finding the market fit and enhancing the user experience (UI/UX).
On a similar talk point, Sanjeev Khanna, COO, Patanjali Foods, the panel member, said that purpose, passion, and potential are the key things to focus that will help your business, supply chain to grow.
Expressing thoughts on the role of technology in supply chain Ramachandran said, the ability to analyze data has changed and thoughts behind data collection and storage has evolved.
He said design is the biggest challenge in apparel industry and these days Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) are helping identify the demand patterns for apparels which is a difficult task, if done manually.
Speaking on the goverment’s ecommerce initiative open network for digtial commerce (ONDC), Radhakrishnan said that it will help both sellers and buyers of even a small scale. It is breaking the hegemony of large companies and is democratizing power to the people to decide where to sell.
In the discussion ahead, sharing views on how the companies are reaching different regions including tier 2 and 3 cities across the country, Khanna said GST is a big changer and road infrastructure is helping to reach in these cities. Further, he said AI and BI tools are helping to create visibility and understanding of that market.
Talking about Patanjali’s business during pandemic, he said its operation was running the whole time. “As we were working on AI and have roots in emotional intelligence (EI), we were able to continue distribution across the country during pandemic. This is because it is in food category which is an essential commodity.”
He also stated that if you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business.
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