The summit ran on 6Connex’s platform, a virtual event platform and was sponsored by Accenture and AWS. While virtual- 6Connex did a great job of designing the summit like a real conference. There were “meeting rooms” where peers could network with each other; the auditorium where the speeches occurred, and a resource center with downloadable content. Content included documents, customer videos, and papers. There were experts on hand to answer questions revolving around the supply chain industry or how to use the platform.
The summit kicked off with Infor’s Head of the Americas and GM, Rod Johnson who spoke about how to build an intelligent and responsive supply chain. “In many ways supply chains are completely timeless,” Johnson stated. He goes on to say that the issues that plague the industry today are the same concerns that they faced decades ago. Johnson explained, “the issue is they are getting harder and harder to solve.” He named globalization, expectations, and time to full fill orders as some of these problems. In order to solve these problems Johnson concluded, “we need to take a fundamentally different approach if we are going to tackle these core problems.”
In his presentation, Johnson cited that 75% of supply chain executives do not have an agile operating model Without an agile operation model – it holds up the entire supply chain process. His argument is that to succeed in the supply chain industry a supply chain must be on a network with end-to-end visibility. After he spoke, Heidi Benko, Infor’s VP of Solutions Strategy, took the stage to agree with what Johnson had said and add her own insight. “If you want an intelligent supply chain and a supply chain that delivers better to your customer it has to be networked. And then it has to have an end-to-end digitalization of all supply chain processes.” She ended her presentation by stating, “You can’t make a decision without having the data.”
Other speakers at the summit included; Adam Hutchinson, Managing Director at Accenture, CEO of BlueWorld Supply Chain Consulting, Jake Barr; and William Aldridge, President of Allport Cargo Services. Topics included how to improve working capital while driving sustainable business growth, optimizing performance, and increasing operational efficiency.
Infor, a global software company that specializes in cloud products hopes to expand on these ideas at their (real life) conference, Inforum taking place September 14-16th in Las Vegas, NV.
If you missed any of the content from Infor’s Virtual Supply Chain Summit – you can still gain access by registering on their website. The content is still available on-demand to read, watch, and download.
