Logistics and Supply Chain Technology Report 2021

中国电信（欧洲）有限公司 C h i n a T e l e c o m ( E u r o p e ) L t d .

Businesses informed us that their operations were currently enabled by a number of cloud providers, ranging from public providers such as Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud (31%) to SAP, Oracle or other ERP on the cloud. The reliance upon Microsoft’s broad suite of word processing, presentation, spreadsheet and other office software in the form of 365 was still present, with 71% of our respondents citing it as the key technology being used in the cloud. Following this, almost half of all respondents were utilising Salesforce, Dynamics 365 and other Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technologies on the cloud (44%). A minority also informed us that they were using Google Workspace in the cloud (13%).

Where do you see the biggest benefits to cloud technologies within your operations?

50%

100%

Flexibility to scale

69%

Ease of collaboration

52%

Reduction in IT costs

39%

Automatic/remote system

38%

Data protection/security

22%

* Multiple answers allowed

As we have seen, the cloud provides numerous technical benefits to a historically fragmented industry. Amidst the myriad potential benefits outlined in this report, our respondents told us that the flexibility to scale and adapt operations was the primary benefit that they were anticipating from a move to the cloud (69%). Being able to coalesce supply, demand and inventory planning into one integrated platform reinforces the benefits of a cloud solution. One successful cloud-based pilot can easily be rolled out over other areas without the hang-ups of legacy on-premise infrastructure. One clear example of this benefit can be seen when modelling scenarios. To no small extent, the viability of on-premise modelling has diminished severely over the pandemic, with many discovering that the computational cost of extended scenario planning rendered local infrastructure a no-go. Being able to run these scenarios in the cloud, especially for larger businesses, presents a drastic improvement computing capacity and reduction in IT costs, a key benefit cited by 39% of businesses we queried.