The development of internet and mobile technologies and their increasing ubiquity in life and business require companies to analyze their strategies and approach to the market. GS1 faced a similar challenge over a year ago and invited Prof. Sanjay Sarma from MIT in Boston to collaborate, who helped the organization identify and assess both the threats and new opportunities associated with these technologies and their use. The results of the joint work led to decisions on changes in the organization’s strategy, which were adopted at the General Assembly on May 13, 2009.
The GS1 organization was created on the initiative of its members and operates exclusively for their benefit and in their interest. The organization closely monitors market changes and strives to adapt to evolving needs. 30 years ago, it started with barcodes; after more than 10 years, it decided to enter the area of electronic commerce and standards for transactional documents; 6 years ago, it became involved in RFID technology, and in 2009, the time came for mobile commerce.
The first signal of the need to consider entering a new technology was the report titled “2016 The Future Value Chain” published by GCI (Global Commerce Initiative) in 2006, supplemented by another report in 2008. These documents were the first to attempt to predict the changes that would occur in the consumer goods market over the next 10 years. The vision of these changes is shown in Figure 1. The most important projected change concerns the reconfiguration of the retail market. The report’s results show that the importance of supermarkets and hypermarkets will decline in favor of organized local distribution directly to consumers’ homes. The customer will place orders via the Internet, using their mobile phone and taking advantage of online discounts. In the future, the factor determining competitiveness will primarily be the extent to which a company is able to understand its customers’ needs and use the potential of new technologies to their advantage. It is the end customer who will increasingly decide on the range of products delivered to the market, and the ability to engage in dialogue with them will determine the company’s success. By 2016, not only video games but also products and services will function in virtual reality, and full information will be available from a single device.
Is this vision possible? It is difficult to answer unequivocally, but the changes currently taking place require being prepared for anything. The Chinese consumer needed only 3 years to change their market habits in the 90s and start shopping in hypermarkets and supermarkets instead of local markets. That is three times less time than Europe needed in the 50s to move from small local shops to supermarkets. How much faster can such changes occur by 2016! Especially since generations raised on instant messengers, social networks, and computer games will enter professional life by then.
Mobile technologies and social portals have already caused a significant reduction in the area separating the professional world from the private world. Recently, Forbes, one of the most influential business magazines, suggested the need for management staff to use tools belonging to so-called Web 2 social portals, such as Facebook, blogs, or wikis. In these portals, the paradigm of interaction between site owners and their users is changing, putting the creation of most content into the hands of the users. And this best illustrates the essence of the changes that are to take place by 2016. This is particularly important in retail and supply chain management, where maintaining constant relationships with customers is of key importance. And this is not limited only to the use of mobile phones. Chains and their suppliers can take advantage of all available technologies: online collaboration tools, video, mobile applications, and RFID (radio-frequency identification) to better understand their customers and be able to cooperate more closely.
The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” 4/2009.