How is your business handling the given COVID-19 crisis we are in today? SAP Resiliency Factors may be critical.

Here is an interesting report by Oxford Economics and SAP. 

It says: “Nearly one-third of midsize manufacturing businesses cited the inability to adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace (30%) and lack of coordination between departments (31%) as among the top challenges contributing to meeting their organizations’ strategic priorities.”

These stats are certainly interesting given the COVID-19 crisis we are in today, but that doesn’t mean that resiliency factors have nothing to do with it.

When the lockdown was announced across nations, we saw panic buying almost everywhere. This disrupted the supply chain completely, resulting in a deadlock for midsized manufacturers. 

“Manufacturers ability to deliver products to the needy has reached a breaking point in the on-going crisis,” says Richard Howells, VP of SAP, in one of his blogs published recently on Digitalist Magazine.

So, what do manufacturers do now? 

I think that it is high time businesses brought last-mile visibility across the supply chain right from the inventory management by leveraging latest technologies. 

I liked the example Richard quoted in his blog: “Take, for example, a business with 300 cases of hand sanitizer that need to be allocated across 20 different locations. To ensure the most critical areas receive the right quantities in time, businesses require supply-chain operations that are transparent enough to move forward with a customer-centric, productive, and sustainable strategy.”

3 Critical Lessons

In another related blog published by Judy Cubiss, Global Marketing Lead for Industrial Machinery and Components and Automotive at SAP, said that some midsized companies are shifting gear quickly, adding “Their secret comes down to the combination of three critical lessons: end-to-end visibility, fast-paced and responsive pivoting, and empathetic leadership.”

COVID-19 has certainly tested us on resiliency, and found it wanting, and that’s why SAP resiliency factors are a thing of the now.

However, the pandemic unquestionably taught us tough lessons about the supply chain. No one has the answers to when there will be a complete rebound from the pandemic. As long as it exists, we need to find ways to be resilient in future. That’s the new mantra. 

I would certainly like to believe that the end of pandemic is nigh. But we should look at protecting our business from any other such pandemic onslaughts in the future. It takes technology, time and effort to brace up.

Let me know what you think. 

By: Venkat Nanduri