While the task and responsibility for managing the data supply chain is primarily the responsibility of information technology professionals, the concepts and tools we use every day directly apply to the data supply chain as well as the physical supply chain.  

Achieving supply chain visibility isn't a matter of spending years to acquire a fixed view of suppliers, says Jack Dobson, commercial account lead with Palantir. It's about managing relationships that are in constant flux.

To improve collaboration and responsiveness, enterprises need what one might call “end-to-endless” visibility — advanced analytics that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

With multiple layers of suppliers, artificial intelligence and big data can help companies get clean and useful information, says Jim Hayden, chief data scientist at Everstream Analytics.

While for some companies the concept of digital twins may be new, others in the manufacturing space have been using them for years now, proving not just their effectiveness, but also their ability to drive innovation in an increasingly competitive economy.

E.D. Etnyre & Co., the venerable manufacturer of heavy equipment for road maintenance and preservation, looks for a way to share data from multiple legacy systems across the organization.

Hank Ackerman, principal at Argano, advises how to make supply chain planning transformations successful.

Decision intelligence is becoming key to the ability of companies to deal with an unprecedented volume of data that's necessary to making supply chain decisions today, says Fred Laluyaux, president and chief executive officer of Aera Technology.