Having dealt with any number of supply chain threats in recent years, supply chain managers need technology solutions that will help them identify which challenges are in their future, says Pawan Joshi, executive vice president for products and strategy at e2open.

The key to dealing with supply chain disruptions is to know precisely whom you’re relying on, then empower them to help you make the right decisions when challenges occur, Joshi says.

In the past, supply chains were broken up into different functions. “I think the time is now to bring it all back together, to think about the business of supply chain as one continuous process, and be able to think about participants in that process in one continuous holistic way and be able to optimize that.”

In a globalized environment where product lifecycles are short, “You have to think about partners that are helping you make stuff, helping you sell stuff and helping you move stuff in one holistic process,” Joshi says.

Fifty years ago, you couldn’t plan, procure, sell, fulfill and transport in one process, he says. “My contention is that the technology constraint has gone away with cloud computing. It's gone away with the ubiquitous nature of cell phones. So how do we now unlock the process constraints? Technology can help solve it. And that's the holistic thinking that I strongly believe needs to happen. It starts off with connectivity.”

Joshi believes the word “holistic” encompasses more than many realize. “It’s holistic across the end-to-end supply chain; with data, decisions and execution, and with planning and execution. It's being able to look at things more completely because the technology's there. I think now we’ve got to think about unlocking the constrained processes that were developed 50, 60 years ago,” he says.