The Status of Digitalisation in Procurement and Supply Chain Management – Improvement and Disruption
Digitalisation is changing procurement and supply chain management. It comes in three stages: cost reduction, value creation and business model transformation. Companies understand that digitalisation is important, but they perform poor and don’t exactly know what to do. Due to perceived risks, implementation comes slower than possible. When a first mover advantage is not existent, this is not a huge problem. When it exists, it can risk the whole company.
Digitalisation is changing the way businesses and their procurement, supply chain and operations operate. Sometimes it has a dramatic and disruptive impact. But oftentimes its impact is not as fast and dramatic as many people fear it could be.
Change driven by technology is nothing new. It all started with fires, beacons, smoke signals, drums and horns. For people, society and business, communication was always important. Around 3.500 B.C. writing was discovered; the Phoenician established the Alphabet around 800 B.C.; in 105 A.D. Tsai Lun invented paper; in 1440 Gutenberg developed the printing press; in 1830 the electronic telegraph was invented and started to rule the business world. In 1876 Bell patented the telephone. The next age of communication started in 1951 when computers were first sold commercially. In 1969 the first form of the Internet was created. 1973 the first Cellular Phone, 1974 brought the first Fax to market, 1981 saw the first Laptop, 1982 the (SMTP) email, 1990 the World Wide Web. Email has for a long time been the most important way of electronic communication, especially for business use.
