Bain & Company's Gerry Mattios headlines SBR webinar on modern supply chains

The deep-level supply chain strategy expert will provide an update on managing logistics and supply lines in the Post-Covid era.

Gerry Mattios is an expert vice president in Bain & Company's Singapore office. He is a leader in Bain's Performance Improvement practice with deep expertise in the Supply Chain Management sector. He is also a member of the firm's Advanced Manufacturing & Services and Consumer Products practices.

He has more than 15 years of industry and management consulting experience across the globe, serving clients primarily in the broader Asia Pacific region and specialising in advising multinational corporations in the automotive, industrial, FMCG and hi-tech sectors on supply chain issues at both strategic and tactical levels.

He is one of the high-profile thought leaders providing their expertise to Singapore Business Review's upcoming webinar: From Turbulence to Triumph: A look at the modern supply chain. He'll be presenting on the ways supply chain operators and organisations have weathered the COVID-19 storm, and are now putting in place new strategies for supply chain resilience. 

We caught up with Gerry Mattios to ask what the webinar audience could expect from his part of the August 4 event.

What factors are involved with modernising supply chains in this new era?
From our perspective at Bain and Company we see four key factors that are engaged here. The first one is supply chains to get more transparent and have greater visibility in the depth of their supply lines. For example, companies need to understand how their suppliers (and their suppliers’ suppliers) are dealing with the potential risks that may exist either financial risk or supply risk or operational risk.
The second trend that we see is more empowered organisations and supply chains are getting more fragmented.
We need to have people in within those supply chains that are empowered to make decisions and that empowerment will help accelerate the decision-making process. The third trend that we see is in an acceleration of investments in automation warehouse, automation supply chain information, digital applications, and so on. And the fourth item is about the need for more agile networks and the fact that supply chains are getting more risky. We need to become more resilient.

How have these changes evolved with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Well, the simple answer to that is that they have accelerated. The trends that I've just described have already been in place since probably 2018 with the trade war, especially on reassuring supply chains and ending the era of global supply chains. But the pandemic arrived this year and those trends have now accelerated probably three times faster than before.
We see companies that specialise in logistics automation; they're booming in terms of revenues and growth. And then we also see companies that are operators of global supply chains that are very quickly shifting their focus from global supply chains to restoring and developing these more fragmented networks.

Can you give us a glimpse into your presentation at the From Turbulence to Triumph webinar?
I want to cover a few key messages. The first one is that we are in the process of retooling for the New World.
This pandemic started and that caught a lot of businesses by surprise and everybody was dealing with what we called The Act Now phase – how to respond to the pandemic.
But now that the Post-Covid world is becoming apparent, all companies are thinking about how to retool for the new world, and how to get their supply chains reconfigured.
The second message I want to pass on is that we're seeing a very consistent shift of companies that are proactively investing in supply chain resilience.
The third message that I’ll be passing in our presentation is that resilience supply chains feature five main capabilities: Network agility high degree of digitalisation, connected visibility insight, creating action and empowered organisations. I'm going to talk about each one of these in detail.
And then the final message I want to bring on is that there are multiple strategies that procurement supply chain organizations are taking on to tackle the Post-Covid world.
There are multiple questions that have to be answered. And now is a very good time to start answering those questions that will help build a transformation agenda for supply chain organisations.