How Fast-Growth Technologies Have Changed Supply Chains, Distribution

The rise of new, fast-growth technologies like big data analytics and cloud has changed the way in which businesses see supply chains and make purchase and pricing decisions.

According to Prat Moghe, founder of big-data-as-a-service vendor Cazena – which was named by CRN as one of the 10 coolest big data startups in December -- these new technologies enable businesses to see the big picture of supply and distribution. In the past, these processes and information were often siloed, particularly at the enterprise level.

’With the advent of cloud, one thing we are seeing is it helps break these silos. So if you look at a manufacturing company, or end-to-end [services] like a supply chain to where things are sold, you now have the ability to take data from all these sources and bring them in together. Which is very hard to do in a typical enterprise,’ Moghe said.

Forrester Research principal analyst Mike Gualtieri said that once business leaders can see that big picture from much vaster amounts of data, they can make more informed decisions.

However, they may be missing the boat by failing to explore the full capabilities of machine learning, which leads to faster analysis on an even broader scale of data.

’The more data you have, certainly, the better you can do at making predictions --whatever predictions you want to make. But many [companies] don’t use machine learning,’ he said.