For the ninth consecutive year, SCDigest has partnered with the researchers at Gartner to take a deep look at supply chain practice and technology, surveying SCDigest readers to form the basis for what has become arguably the supply chain industry's most important and influential research projects.
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 "Since the vast majority of respondents in previous years stated clearly that the role of technology in SCM is now strategic and a notable source of competitive advantage, this increases the importance of a study like this that delves deeply into these issues," Klappich says.
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"A few years ago we noticed that there appeared to be a cultural shift in SCM users' view of technology," said Gartner vice president Dwight Klappich, who is leading the research effort again along with Chad Eschinger. "Originally when we started the study we focused more on broad goals, priorities and business challenges, but as we saw this cultural shift manifest we have since adapted the study to focus more on the role technology plays in supply chain, how supply chain organization leverage technology for competitive advantage, and their changing views on how best to exploit technology in their SCM organizations."
Klappich says that in an effort to delve deeper into these issues, this year's survey includes some simple stratification questions in such areas as supply chain maturity, technology adoption profile, and supply chain performance, in addition to acquiring traditional data points such as industry sector and size of the organization, to use in cross tabbing the other data.
"This allows us to do things like look at technology adoption by maturity level, where we find more mature organizations also being most likely to be early adopters of new technology," Klappich noted. "We also delve into technology investment plans and strategies, looking at things like plans by application type or preference for mega-suite versus best of breed vendors or adoption of cloud and other emerging technologies."
While there are other studies that dig into the business conditions of supply chain organizations, the Gartner -SCDigest study continues to take the most comprehensive look at the role of technology in SCM, Klappich adds.
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"Since the vast majority of respondents in previous years stated clearly that the role of technology in SCM is now strategic and a notable source of competitive advantage, this increases the importance of a study like this that delves deeply into these issues," Klappich says.
(Supply Chain Trends and Issues Article - Continued Below)
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