Omni Supply Chain

The retail omni market requires an omni supply chain in order to support the demands and the velocity of change that is being driven by the omni market and the collaborative partners across the market.  I think one of the most challenging aspects of the omni supply chain is the interaction required between the retail omni market participants. This means that the omni supply chain must also develop and continue to enhance a social collaborative aspect and integration into the omni supply chain in order to ensure they fully participate in the omni market and also in the collaborative aspect of the omni market.  The omni supply chain must be robust and yet flexible in order to continue to meet the demands and actually help to drive the demands across the retail omni market and this requires an open and collaborative viewpoint in order to both support the demands and even provide guidance to the retail omni marketplace.

Let’s face it, over the last few years there has really been a renaissance of features and function in the supply chain along the path to developing the omni supply chain.  In fact I think that he omni supply chain has developed a set of capabilities that allows and supports the efficient integration of the Internet of Things technology to support the end to end transparency that is necessary to support the changing demands for the omni marketplace.  These capabilities combine and compliment the retail omni channel capabilities to provide and opportunity for end to end transparency and interaction with participants to deliver on the demands. The supply chain has continuously focused on transparency, connectivity and collaboration across the entire supply chain and these capabilities complement and enhance the capabilities of the retail omni channel.

The retail omni market will need to focus on the integration to these supply chain capabilities in order to build out the omni market capabilities and meet future demands.  These demands include fluid and transparent product visibility and delivery across all channels and will also require visibility and even the ability to take action to direct an redirect future deliveries across channels to efficiently meet consumer demands.  As the market becomes more fluid the supply chain must also become more fluid and flexible to meet the demands.

A critical factor to the future success of both the omni supply chain and the omni retail market is the support and embrace of collaborative practices across and between all participating partners.  This collaboration and interaction will allow the participants to react to any change in the environment and also support fluid reactions across all channels and participants to changes in demands and abilities along the way.  The fluid interaction and collaboration will allow the participants to quickly react to changes in circumstances and then utilize network capabilities to react and adjust to quickly meet the demands.

The great benefit to this collaboration and extension of networks is the increased flexibility to reach to changes in shopping and purchasing requirements.  What we are seeing in the market is an increase in imaginative reactions to consumer demands along with new shopping and purchasing capabilities to meet the demands as they materialize.  The goal of the omni market along with the omni supply chain must be to increase transparency and collaboration to reduce reaction times and also increase the choices for reactions.