Supply Chain: Ivalua study measures the impact of the pandemic on digitalization

Ivalua is a provider of cloud-based expense management solutions. The company assists companies in the management of different categories of expenses, suppliers with the objective of increasing profitability while reducing risks and improving productivity. To analyze the possible impact of the pandemic on the digital transformation of companies, Ivalua has launched a study and reveals that the crisis has accelerated their digital transformation. Ivalua entrusted this study to Infopro Digital, which interviewed 207 decision-makers in the industry. The latter indicate that predictive maintenance (43%), artificial intelligence (39%), process automation (37%) and integrated supply chain (27%) are the technologies needed for the company of tomorrow. To date, 43% of respondents have implemented process automation, ahead of e-commerce solutions (35%) and the digitalisation of purchasing processes (33%). The pandemic has highlighted the risks and the need for digital tools to prevent them, particularly in supply, which explains the success of predictive maintenance (the solution most envisaged by 39% of decision-makers). AI and the supply chain, while recognized as necessary, are lagging behind. The health crisis has therefore had a real impact on the digitalization of companies in the industry, since 70% of decision-makers say that the digital transformation of their company has been accelerated. However, there are differences according to the size of the company, the larger it is, the more it is equipped with digital tools (28%) versus (19%) Even if the improvement in the digital equipment of companies is real, there are several obstacles:

• Organizational difficulties for 66% in implementing these changes.
• Problems of trust on the part of staff regarding data.
• Difficulties related to data for 40% of companies, especially for its collection and exploitation, and mainly within large companies which have a lot of data to process.
• Lack of financial means, especially for VSEs/SMEs.
• Difficulty in justifying the return on investment.

The increase in digitalization for the management of the company's supply chain has increased since the health crisis according to a third of those questioned. However, the result does not seem to be what was expected, since very few of the managers questioned said they were satisfied with the digital tools they have. This is particularly the case for production and planning tools (40%), supplier management (36%), internal/external collaboration (34%), data analysis (34%) and Business Intelligence Reporting (26%). This study reveals a lack and need for digital tools to manage procurement issues in the companies concerned. The low supply of suppliers was revealed by the report, especially for smaller companies. This is a major problem for the procurement process according to 38% of respondents. There is also a lack of business agility, cited by 34%, caused by insufficient internal skills or resources. Some mentioned the relocation of their company's activities, the lack of management tools for purchasing, logistics, etc. For others, there are problems with the relationship between the purchasing department and the supply chain department or with suppliers. This pandemic could therefore have boosted and continue to boost the digitalization of the supply chain of companies. Translated from Supply Chain : Une étude Ivalua permet de mesurer l'impact de la pandémie sur la digitalisation