by Maria Jesús Saénz, Elena Revilla, and Inma Borrella
For Harvard Business Review
Image: HBR Staff/Nick Veasey/Science Photo Library/AF-studio/Getty Images
Summary.
Digital technologies are allowing companies to share supply chain information and assets in new ways. For example, it is making it possible for companies to share warehouse space and trucking capacity. But these new opportunities will require managers responsible for developing supply chain relationships to facilitate collaboration, experimentation, and trust across organizational boundaries.
The digital transformation of businesses is creating new products, processes, and services. But to provide these new offerings, companies must share information and assets with each other in ways that were previously off-limits. For example, digitized services may require competitors to share physical assets such as warehouse space.
This, in turn, means that companies will need to change the way they forge and manage relationships with other entities in the supply chain to facilitate new types of alliances and agreements. It will require managers responsible for developing supply chain relationships, such as account managers or supply managers, to adopt a boundary-spanning mindset in order to facilitate collaboration, experimentation, and trust across organizational boundaries.