Everyone’s talking about the future of supply chain. Specifically, what it’s going to be. And we’ve been getting all kinds of answers: mobile, social, cloud, big data, real-time, predictive—the list goes on and on.
And on.
But even with all those answers, we’re still asking the same question. Why? Because five+ answers to one question…isn’t really an answer.
What we do know about the future of supply chain, is that it should include all the things listed above. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that having the latest (and greatest) technologies can still amount to nothing—or at least, nothing useful. So the better question is: What do all these technologies need to be in order to define the future of supply chain?
The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) provides a clue. This information systems theory models how users come to accept and use a technology. A key component shows how perceived value is just as important as perceived ease of use.
Applying this to the real world, let’s take a look at the companies that have paved the way for their respective industries: Saleseforce, Box, and Workday—to name a few. What do they all have in common?
Simplicity.
Workday’s simple, easy to use design.
Consider an example you carry around in your pocket: your smartphone. Remember what they were like in 2006?Still not on board?
The Palm Treo was regarded as one of the best (if not the best) smartphones on the market. It had Internet, Bluetooth, a keyboard, touchscreen—all the technological bells and whistles. But at the end of the day, it was clunky and hard to use. Do you remember what it was like browsing the web on a Treo? It wasn’t really browsing the web. And that touchscreen? You needed a stylus. Ugh.
Then in 2007, Apple gave us the iPhone:
Suddenly, all that technology actually became useful. Why? Because it was simple to understand and easy to harness.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
-Steve Jobs
What Jobs and Apple understood, was that it’s ultimately the people who use the technology. It should empower, not constrain. As a result of their efforts, smartphone adoption rates jumped significantly after the introduction of the iPhone in 2007:
And it’s with this same fundamental approach the future of supply chain will be defined—at the intersection of technology and the humanities.
In other words, the future of supply chain is simple.
Contributed by Elementum, A Keynote Sponsor to the conference
