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The supply chain already needed a makeover before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Once the coronavirus became a worldwide issue, weaknesses in the supply chain were fully exposed. Thankfully, improvements have already been made.

Efforts to modernize the supply chain were just getting started when COVID-19 caused a pandemic, so the damage wasn't as bad as it could have been, according to SearchERP. The 2020 Digital Supply Chain Survey by Grant Thornton, the Manufacturing Leadership Council and the National Association of Manufacturers showed that around 75 percent of companies experienced some sort of issue due to supply chain disruption. However, 60 percent of those same companies said the damage was "minor."

To make sure things couldn't get worse the next time around, serious supply chain improvements have been made, including investments in digital technologies that will make it easier to monitor the supply chain and predicting future trends. In fact, IDC Manufacturing Insights is expecting 90 percent of all manufacturing supply chains to have invested in technology and "business process transformation" by the end of 2021. IDC Manufacturing Insights predicts that these changes could lead to improvements in productivity as high as 15 percent.

Other investments will probably be made, too. According to SearchERP, IDC also expected a third of manufacturers to invest in business-to-business collaborative network ecosystems and the industrial internet of thing (IIoT). These upgrades should make it easier to "support restoring of strategic supplies that align with new government policies aimed at bolstering domestic manufacturing," according to SearchERP.

To read the rest of what SearchERP had to say in its lengthy feature post, click here.