Moving Ahead of the Pack: New Data on the Role of ERP in Next-Generation Supply Chains

In its new global supply chain report, Next-generation supply chains: Efficient, fast and tailored, PwC reveals that 45 percent of leading companies identify their supply chains as strategic assets. These firms have supply chains that are efficient, fast, and tailored - a model that lets companies serve their customers reliably in turbulent market conditions and that differentiates between the needs of different sets of customers, according to PwC.

The PwC report drills down on the following six key findings:  companies that acknowledge supply chain as a strategic asset achieve 70 percent higher performance; leaders focus on best-in-class delivery, cost, and flexibility to meet increasingly demanding customer requirements; these organizations tailor their supply chains to the needs of different customer segments; leaders outsource production and delivery but retain global control of core strategic functions; firms in mature and emerging markets invest more heavily in differentiating supply chain capabilities; and interest in next generation technologies and sustainable supply chains is growing. 

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Brad Householder, principal at PwC, says the study also revealed that over 50 percent of the companies are implementing new tools for better process automation and transparency. Nearly two-thirds of the companies see automation of the supply chain as a vital focus in 2015. Enterprise Resource Planning systems like Microsoft Dynamics ERP play an important role in that supply chain automation.

"ERP is the essential foundation for transactional automation and for the flow of data needed to power the ...