Natalia Andreyeva, vice president of market strategy for North America with 4flow, talks about the gaps that occur between supply chain ambition and execution.

The biggest challenge that supply chains are facing today is the need for resilience in the face of constant market volatility, Andreyeva says. Multiple disruptions are seriously impacting supply chain operations and margins, cascading from planning to execution.

Andreyeva defines resilience as “the ability to bounce back after a shock or disruption has happened.” The faster a business can do that, the more resilient it is. More than a question of preventing disruptions, she says, it’s a matter of reducing the time for resolution of any problems that might arise.

Over the last several years, she says, companies have been investing heavily in changes to the digital ecosystem. What’s essential now is that they rethink their foundation — the base upon which all systems and data reside. Data governance needs to take precedence, so that organizations can remove functional silos and fragmentation, and drive decisions faster.

With this foundation in place, they can begin to apply artificial intelligence to supply chain operations. Andreyeva cautions, however, that execution “has to be driven by actual business problems, not the technology.” In approach the task, it’s important to start with small, tactical issues before tackling the larger ones. In the end, the ability to proactively respond to any manner of disruption can save a company millions of dollars in logistics cost.

The big conceptual gap that many businesses face today is between ambition — the belief that “we can achieve an autonomous supply chain relatively quickly” — and execution. Too many companies aren’t realizing real business results, as they continue to employ spreadsheets and manual processes in their analyses and responses to disruption.