During the past two years, the home improvement sector experienced an uptick in sales as customers tackled do-it-yourself (DIY) projects to improve the functionality or aesthetics of their homes—and kill time. This elevated level of activity has reshaped the landscape of the paint market.

Events of the past year have upended the procurement industry, illustrating the fragility of a complex international supply chain and forcing a sea change in the industry. However, according to the 2021 Supply Chain Insights Global Survey from IHS Markit, supply chain professionals often lack the tools, data and platforms needed to diversify their supply chains and optimize their processes.

A global Gartner, Inc. survey found that 87% of respondents plan investments in supply chain resiliency within the next two years. The survey, conducted from September 2020 through November 2020, showed that even more supply chain professionals (89%) want to invest in agility (see Figure 1).

New research by the World Economic Forum and BCG shows that it’s possible to decarbonize major global supply chains with readily available technologies at low end-to-end costs. The commitment to tackling climate change is accelerating in all sectors of society, with net-zero pledges from companies, cities, and states doubling in the past year.

Nontraditional competitors – especially digital giants, such as Amazon and Alibaba, as well as startups – are reshaping industries through disruptive innovation, the ability to uncover and address unknown customer needs and very agile supply chains.,

Sweeping market changes have made it clear that supply chains, long managed to be cost-effective and reliable, must also now be resilient and sustainable. Making this resilience a reality requires executives to have visibility into how materials and goods enter and move through the chain, as well as tracing inputs and outputs all the way to the hands of the customer.

“Supply chain leaders spend a lot of time working to understand and improve their internal operational metrics, but it’s important to introduce customer experience metrics into the supply chain scorecard,” said Beth Coppinger, senior analyst with Gartner.

Worldwide blockchain revenues fell 35% between 2018 and 2020. Global tech market advisory firm ABI Research calculated the potential loss to hit US$2.8 billion. The 2018 crypto winter wiped 80% of the total aggregate market cap, and since then, more than 2,000 cryptocurrencies have collapsed.

The coronavirus pandemic has put chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) under pressure to adapt and prepare their networks for an uncertain future, according to Gartner, Inc. Supply chain leaders must adapt their strategies, investment and leadership style to ensure long-term efficient growth.

Supply chains are in the middle of an evolution that will change completely how chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) organize and operate their organizations. “CSCOs are tasked to design a supply chain organization that fits into this new era,” said Mike Burkett, vice president analyst with Gartner. “While in the past, a good supply chain was efficient and powerful, it must now be agile and fast.”

Single connections between customer and supplier are often not resilient enough in crisis situations, so supply chain leaders must counter by adding more partners and building an ecosystem. Every ecosystem looks different, as some organizations turn to academia and start-ups to fill capability gaps, others involving end users and consumers in new forms of value exchange.

The global aviation blockchain market is expected to grow from $420 million in 2019 to $2.12979 billion by 2027, at a CAGR of 22.5% during the forecast period 2020-2027 according to a new study conducted by Fior Markets.

Organizations that are unable to see the exact disposition of every item in their supply chain will be unable to compete effectively in an increasingly real-time world driven by today’s ecommerce market. So says Mahesh Veerina, CEO of Cloudleaf, a Silicon Valley-based company that is using digital technologies -- including internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) -- in the cloud to transform supply chains.