Be the master of your disaster

You can’t always get what you want - and maybe we can’t even get what we need. There are no cars because there are no chips. Christmas shopping is in danger because containers are not getting from port A to port B fast enough. There are not enough container ships. Manufacturers can't get raw materials fast enough to fulfill the demand).

The supply chain would have trouble supplying a chain these days. The last two years have brought to a forefront how much the world is interconnected. We see how events in one country or even in one company can have far-reaching consequences.

As the world is adjusting and trying to bring the situation under control, smart business people are asking: “How do we minimize the negative effects? How do we prepare better for future disruptions? And how can we take advantage of this situation?” As the film, The Big Short showed us, there’s money to be made even in (or especially in) the worst of times.

For many years we’ve been hearing the catchphrases Big Data, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Why haven’t any of these breakout technologies helped us solve the supply chain management problem? (Because it’s really hard.)

Instead, innovators in these tech segments seem to justify their value by working on technologies like chat bots, which are polluting every website, offering you useless advice and helping you order even more stuff that won’t arrive on time. (Why do they focus on these things? Because it is easier and more fun.)

Over the years working with technology and implementing solutions for a large variety of organizations, I’ve observed that many companies adopt technology only after a major event. A simple example - only after a company experiences a catastrophic failure and loss of data, is it willing to invest in a proper backup solution. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen all too often.

In my role as a CTO, I am always on the lookout for technologies which can help in solving business problems and provide competitive advantages. Since weaknesses in the supply chain are affecting almost all of us, it would be good to understand how everything is connected. How can we better calculate the impact on our operations? How can we better react to these disruptions?

For this, I would like to bring to your attention Graph Databases. Unlike your 'traditional' Relational Database it doesn’t just store data but also shows the relationship between data.

Supply Chain Management Example

You can suddenly see how the operation of every company can be modeled. What's even more important to observe, is how you can assess the impact of every department on the success of your strategy. You can instantly see how critical your connections are to and from the outside world. Armed with this knowledge, you might build a resilient company able to withstand similar kinds of disruptions for years to come.

I don’t write this to suggest that here is the magic wand that any company might pick up right now to solve this global crisis - which will work itself out, eventually.

My intention is to show a broader recurrent pattern: whether it’s supply chain disruption, a data loss or some other major problem, it is up to the senior leadership of companies to prepare for such eventualities. In order for revenue and profit to keep coming, companies should devote time to understanding the risks and better prepare for what may come. Those kinds of companies will still be with us in 2022 (even if their products might not be in their customers’ hands by Christmas). Technology will help the survivors do that. And that’s the recurrent pattern.