Experts offered insights, talked business and recovery of the FMCG sector in the context of the crisis of our times- the coronavirus pandemic, in a freewheeling chat session on LinkedIn Live, about “Driving the FMCG Supply Chain amidst COVID-19 crisis”. The event was powered by PANDO Corp and conceptualised by Logistics Insider.
The pandemic brought the FMCG sector to its knees, as manpower shortage and shutting down of stores brought the traditional distribution mechanism to a grinding halt. Due to the deep impact of the pandemic on the consumer behaviour and preferences, companies had to swiftly respond with innovative strategies to maintain supply chains and ensure that consumers can access their products.
The discussion witnessed Mr Anil Kumar Mishra, who is the National Logistics Head at PLADIS Global and Mr Ashok Vasan, President and Chief Revenue Officer at Pando CORP come together in a candid manner in delivering practical solutions and addressing pertinent issues thronging the sector.
They talked about the Strategies used by SCM professionals to beat challenges posed by Lockdown, the role of Technology in supporting the FMCG supply chain networks during the lockdown crisis, the present tech trends in FMCG Supply Chain, Balancing supply and demand in the present volatile scenario, the Learning for the industry and much more.
While Mr Mishra started off the discussion by talking about the necessity of contingency plans, Mr Vasan spoke about the importance of managing costs across the omnichannel network.
Both the industry stalwarts addressed the importance of digitalisation, with Mr Mishra asserting how it is a need in every aspect.
Mr Vasan talked about it in the prospect of the enormity of paperwork that is otherwise needed and how digitalisation can help in that as well as in ensuring safety.
“If you run out of supplies, having connectivity to a broad net of transporters outside the system is necessary”, he stressed.
“Necessary is the mother of invention. This pandemic has given us a lot of things to learn from these issues and we are now going to adopt those platforms where we can get the advantage and pass it on to the others for enhanced visibility.”
~Mr Anil Kumar Mishra, National Logistics Head at PLADIS Global
While addressing the importance of Last mile delivery, Mr Vasan emphasised upon how the presence of a good digital platform can help alleviate unnecessary costs.
“While it is very expensive, you can see definitely have 7-10% cost savings made possible if you are using a proper digital platform.Route opimisation, load planning, drop offs-have to be taken into account”, he shared.
“The traditional model of each person sitting in an individual location making phone calls to transporters – that system has to stop. You have to bring everybody to a digital platform which will enable them to give signals to the transporters simultaneously, well ahead of time.”
~Mr Ashok Vasan, President and Chief Revenue Officer at Pando CORP
The experts also talked about management of costs, fluctuation of diesels, how to remain compliant in a situation where supply is short.
While talking about visibility with respect to e-bidding and the importance of digital platforms, Mr Vasan said that matching of supply and demand will have a tremendous impact on cost reduction.
Transportation Procurement was also addressed in the context of the FMCG industry, with Mr Vasan voicing how “In the FMCG space, transporation procurement is very critical”.
“Any procurement system is only as good as who you are procuring from(what is the network from which you are going to source)”
~ Mr Ashok Vasan, Pando Corp
While talking about how Pandor Corp as a platform has addressed vital issues plaguing the industry, he spoke about vendor discovery and asserted how necessary it was to choose a platform that provides intelligence & optimisation of figuring out what is the right contracts to use, and the need to know whom to source from, in addition to extracting the right rates and setting it up for overall cost reduction.
Mr Mishra talked about demand management and also how the days ahead will see technology driving the supply chain voraciously.
The session came to a close with a Q&A session where the speakers answered questions posed to them by the viewers.
