Introduction
Global supply chains are going through drastic changes, with the advent of new technological advancements, changing market conditions and increasing customer demands. The future of supply chain is uncertain as modern supply chains are now under increasing pressure to deliver exceptional customer experiences. The shift from a traditional revenue-focused model to a customer-centric supply chain is transforming how businesses operate.
The post-pandemic era announced the beginning of a hyper-connected world. Now, suppliers and manufacturers must deal with increasing customer expectations, rising demand for faster product delivery, and navigating unpredictable challenges – whether they be geopolitical, economic or climate conditions. Businesses need to focus on how they can harness the full potential of data and derive actionable insights that will help businesses personalize products, make strategic decisions regarding supply chain management and stay on top of customer demands. The future of supply chain is customer centric. Are you ready for it?
The Evolution of Supply Chain – Welcome to Supply Chain 4.0
Supply Chain 4.0— powered by advanced technologies like AI, IoT, machine learning models, and more, is helping businesses optimize their operations, enhancing customer service that serve the customer at every point of the journey and most importantly, improving supply chain operations.
What is Supply Chain 4.0?
Supply Chain 4.0 represents the fourth industrial revolution in supply chain management, characterized by the integration of digital technologies like AI, IoT, and more. Supply chain 4.0 focuses on:
Impact of Digitalization
The impact of digitalization in the supply chain can be seen by the rapid adoption of IoT, machine learning models, and AI to automate and digitize processes from sourcing to delivery. According to Gartner, “Ninety-five percent of supply chains must quickly react to change, but only 7% can execute decisions in real time”. Businesses need to take decisions in real-time, otherwise real-time execution will be delayed. “As such, it is expected that digital supply chain investment in real-time decision execution will increase 5x by 2028.”
Connected Ecosystems
Businesses are taking proactive measures to eliminate data silos. For efficient supply chain management, manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, and customers need to operate on shared platforms with a unified view of customer data. With a connected ecosystem supported by IoT, AI, data and CRM, businesses can maintain an agile and flexible supply chain even under unforeseen circumstances.
Moving Towards Sustainability
Implementing sustainable practices in supply chain are not just “good PR” anymore—it is a necessary requirement of conscious consumers and regulatory bodies. Efficient routing, eco-friendly packaging, and reducing carbon footprint are now key components of modern supply chains.
Becoming Customer-Centric
Businesses need to make their supply chain customer centric. The success of a supply chain depends on how efficiently the products are delivered to customers. One of the main agenda of supply chain 4.0 is to leverage data and AI and transform the future of supply chain. With data and AI, businesses can get real-time customer insights and can adapt the delivery, personalization, and customer service—all of which build long-term loyalty and create strong brand advocates.
What Does a Customer-Centric Supply Chain Look Like?
Building a customer-centric supply chain means businesses are focusing on how they can elevate customer experience, understand the demands and expectations of customers and then tailor their operations, which improves their supply chain management. Rather than focusing solely on incurring a high revenue, putting efforts on creating satisfying experience for the customer throughout the entire journey will help businesses reduce customer churn and increase loyalty.
How to Make Your Supply Chain Customer-Centric?
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Accurate, Real-Time Demand Forecasting
According to a survey conducted by Salesforce, “Over 8 in 10 manufacturers admit inaccessible data, legacy tools, and cloistered teams impede their forecasting process.”
Forecasting is crucial for creating better supply chain management. It plays a crucial role in helping manufacturers determine the effectiveness of their supply chain. To get better at forecasting, manufacturers need to leverage customer data, historical data and other factors like weather conditions, search trends, and customer reviews. With these suites of resources at hand, businesses can forecast demand with accuracy. This minimizes inventory waste and ensures the right products are available when needed.
Flexible Order Fulfillment
Customers don’t just want fast delivery—they also want businesses to deliver products according to their convenience. Whether it’s same-day shipping, or in-store pickups, businesses need to adopt flexible order fulfillment processes.
360-Degree Inventory Visibility
Customers expect real-time information across all platforms – such as in-store or online stores. A customer may browse on mobile, purchase on desktop, and pick up in-store. An integrated view of products ensures manufacturers can provide seamless service to customers, irrespective of whichever medium they choose to engage with their business.
Personalize Interactions at Scale
With the help of AI, data and CRM platforms, manufacturers can tailor messages, recommendations, and offers based on purchasing history, browsing behavior, and preferences.
Provide End-to-End Transparency
From manufacturing delays to real-time delivery tracking, customers want to know exactly what’s happening with their order. Transparency builds trust—even when disruptions occur. Be very clear with the message that you are sending to your customer – it can be a key reason to make or break their trust in your business.
Role of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platform in Supply Chain
CRM platform is one of the main factors behind such massive transformations in the future of supply chain. How? Let’s find out!
Leveraging CRM helps manufacturers bridge the gap between the business and customers. Fragmented and inconsistent data cannot help manufacturers get a full overview of the supply chain as well as their customers. As business leaders are continuously trying to enhance their operations and customer service by implementing advanced technologies, it is very rare that they know how to leverage both technologies and data to make their supply chain agile and flexible. This is where CRM comes into play. It helps businesses integrate their operations data with AI and other tools to create a full view of customer profiles and supply chain.
Facilitates Data Synchronization
In a CRM platform, manufacturers can unite data from diverse sources to gain a comprehensive understanding of customer demands, trends and expectations. By unifying present data with historical data, businesses can understand customer preferences. This helps them make better delivery decisions and maintain optimal inventory in all warehouse locations.
Enables Accurate Demand Forecasting
CRM helps businesses understand patterns in customer behavior, seasonal trends, product preferences, reorder cycles—enabling better planning and reducing inventory wastage.
Facilitates Proactive Service and Communication
Manufacturers can access data-driven insights on the CRM platform. These insights help logistics teams alert customers of delays, offer alternative delivery options, and help your customer service teams upsell relevant items in real time.
Enables Seamless Cross-Functional Collaboration
By integrating supply chain with CRM platform, manufacturers can break down silos, enabling stakeholders and employees throughout the organization gain easy access to critical information in less time.
Common Challenges Faced by Supply Chain Leaders
Stepping into the future of the supply chain is not enough. Businesses leaders need to overcome these additional hurdles to create better supply chains:
Compromised Visibility of Supply Chains
Gaining a 360-degree view of the supply chain is crucial. However, due to data silos, incomplete technical knowledge and expertise, and market disruptions, supply chain leaders are unable to understand how they can make strategies that protect their supply chains from potential disruptions. Business leaders also need strategic partnerships to thrive in this competitive market. Having an incomplete view of competitor performance also hinders the ability of CXOs to make strategic partnerships.
Low Return on Investment (ROI) on Gen AI Implementation
Businesses are observing that despite significant investments made in Gen AI, the returns are not desirable. According to Gartner report, 72% of supply chain organizations have deployed Gen AI. To get better returns, increasing or decreasing investment in Gen AI will not be enough. CXOs need to train their employees who will handle the implementation of Gen AI in business operations. Investing in Gen AI is not enough – shift your focus to the human workforce and empower them to harness the full potential of AI and AI-powered tools.
Huge Operational Costs
According to EY, 70% of operating costs are typically tied to supply chains. To be resilient and remain competitive in the dynamic market, supply chain leaders need to cut costs and make financial decisions that do not have any negative effect on the supply chain and customer service. Manufacturers and supply chain leaders can leverage AI and automation to cut costs in areas like designing operating models, human workforce that spend majority of time in administrative tasks and better allocation of resources. AI can automate major areas of the supply chain management, empowering employees to think of innovative ways to enhance customer service and provide more time to upskill themselves. The future of the supply chain depends on the human workforce, as much as it depends on digitalization.
How Salesforce Solves Supply Chain Challenges and Create Customer-Centric Supply Chain
Salesforce – the leading CRM platform, offers unique solutions to supply chain challenges. By leveraging Salesforce, manufacturers and suppliers can integrate supply chain operations with its advanced customer relationship management (CRM) platform, helping businesses pivot from reactive to proactive customer service. As the future of supply chain depends on how businesses are optimizing experience for their customers, Salesforce CRM enables suppliers to ship products with ease.
Enhances Supply Chain Visibility with CRM Platform
One of the most common challenges faced by supply chain leaders is fragmented data. As data from disparate sources get stored in silos, it hinders the ability of manufacturers to make strategic decisions. Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud bridges this gap by integrating back-end supply chain and ERP systems with the front-end CRM platform. This provides a 360-degree view of customers, inventory, logistics, and contracts—all in one place.
With real-time data and AI-powered analytics, leaders gain actionable insights to:
- Identify potential disruptions before they impact operations
- Foster strategic partnerships with a better understanding of competitors and market analysis
- Improve collaboration across business units like Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP), manufacturing, and logistics.
Drives Higher ROI with Agentforce
While many supply chain organizations have adopted Gen AI, few are seeing higher returns. Salesforce’s Agentforce enables manufacturers and suppliers to:
- Optimize inventory planning and personalize customer interactions
- Automate repetitive, manual tasks to free up employee time for strategic work
- Enable employees to upskill and harness data-driven insights effectively, increasing employee productivity.
Reduces Operational Costs without Compromising Service
Salesforce Agentforce and Manufacturing Cloud helps organizations streamline operations through intelligent automation and data-driven resource allocation. AI Agents and Manufacturing Cloud help businesses:
- Optimize workforce deployment, reducing idle time by up to 50%
- Increase Customer Satisfaction by 20%
- Enhance employee productivity by 20%
- Improve partner collaboration.
Creates a Customer-Centric Supply Chain
Traditionally, supply chains used to focus solely on generating high revenue. However, Salesforce reimagines the future of supply chain and makes it customer-centric. By integrating customer insights with operational data, Salesforce enables businesses to anticipate customer needs, personalize service, and create strategies that will help them build lasting loyalty.
With Salesforce, supply chain leaders can:
- Predict customer demands more accurately and align production accordingly
- Identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities across digital and in-store channels
- Increase customer satisfaction and ensure consistent experiences across all touchpoints.
Conclusion
The future of supply chain largely depends on technological advancements, leveraging the right CRM platform and taking the right measures to engage with customers effectively. Investing in Gen AI and other AI-powered tools is not enough. Businesses need to spend enough time and resources on employees to train them and make them efficient in handling these advanced AI-powered tools.
With the introduction of IoT and AI, there has been an overwhelming volume of data. This has created data silos, which hinders the ability of suppliers to gain a comprehensive view of not only their operations but also customer demands.
Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud and Agentforce empowers supply chain leaders to solve key challenges by unifying data, enhancing visibility, and enabling human + AI collaboration. The result? A future-ready, customer-centric supply chain that drives efficiency, innovation, and loyalty.
