Positive Impact of a Supply Chain Digital Transformation

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I started my career in Data Science after my master’s degree graduation taking my first step towards the career journey in digital. Within 1.6 years of career exposure, I joined Schneider Electric in 2018 and that was the moment I started learning how digital transformation is revolutionizing every aspect of an organization including the business processes, cultural approach, and more.

I also realized that digital transformation is not only about digital technologies but also about people and processes. Through these learnings and exposure, I started implementing these approaches in my daily work to enhance the standards, focusing on new digital capabilities leading to be more efficient and adaptable to achieve the goals. In my position, it plays a vital role in inducing the agility mindset and innovative culture within myself.

Empowerment through digital skills development

Some of the initiatives including activities that I am managing are pivoted to digitally enabled to ensure maximum value to the customers and to be more end-to-end digital in the supply chain. As technologies evolve, I see developing new digital skills and competencies are essential. So, I started upskilling my digital knowledge which are specific, in-demand through eLearning’s, Live Webinars available on MyLearningLink (Schneider’s digital learning platform), YouTube and other online platforms. I also had the opportunities to exchange knowledge sharing with colleagues from different Global Supply Chain functions and domains via a skills network.

These continuous learning and development have helped me to become an expert in certain methods and tools thereby becoming digitally self-sustainable.

Enhancing the Digital Workflow

As a PMO team member, since my work scope includes internal communication, I use different channels to streamline the communication effectively and in a concise manner to the Global Supply Chain Project Management community members.

As we know that communication and collaboration are the key success factors for Projects/programs and to be a successful team, I look for opportunities to explore the new digital tools and finding effective ways to increase the collaboration among the global team and regional teams. Few of our existing process has been customized to our needs with the help of current technologies and thus making the information more accessible across the organization.

Being a global team member in Global Supply Chain Logistics and Planning PMO, connecting with a cross-regional and cross-functional team has never been a hassle. I also tend to optimize the usage of tools to complement our workflow in order to make it simplified and in an integrated way.  I like to provide tips and tricks to my team members about the tools and get called a “Digital Wizard”.

Increasing our customer satisfaction with Data

Interpretation of complex information to understand the customer behaviors and expectations can be achieved by utilization of digital technologies. The ability to analyze the high volume of data and providing insights using the digital way of working produced better results and helped to improve the strategies and processes. Consequently, paving the way for high internal customer satisfaction within a short span of time. Some of the key outcomes include,

• Providing greater visibility through a digital approach of supply chain
• The usage of interactive and real-time digital reports has made the decision-making process easier
• Better engagement
• Getting instant feedback from customers

Optimizing efficiency and agility

For me, as a global team member, the remote work was not new, and I observed that it has become much easier these days with tools. Some of our standard working methodologies are amended to incorporate these digital technologies so as to achieve efficiency with less effort and create value to our customers, ultimately encouraging me to come up with new ideas to experiment in my day to day work which aligns with one of the Schneider Core values #DaretoDisrupt. I have come up with solutions for few manual tasks and implemented the same in my team to reduce time consumption.

From this year (2021) onwards, our team has implemented an agile approach to some of our activities, and to be more focused, we have started using some of the digital tools that facilitate meetings, retrospectives, task allocation, etc. The agile way of working is seen as one of the influencing components for enabling digital transformation.

Happy being a part of it, the journey through Global Supply Chain Digital transformation is helping me in achieving the goals effectively and capable of building myself to be competitive.

Be a part of our future in digital transformation! Search for opportunities and join Schneider Electric! www.se.com/careers

About the author

Dhivya NARAYANASAMY is a Program Coordinator and Analyst for Global Supply Chain Logistics and Planning, Program Management Office (PMO). From a Data Science background in her previous experiences, she is now working in the areas of Project and Program Management. Her specialty is in Analytics, Project management tools, methods, and training and she is passionate about learning the emerging technologies and keep herself updated about current trends. Dhivya is currently based in Singapore and likes trekking and blogging.