IDC: Supply chain changes to expect in the post-COVID-19 era

IDC Research has released a new IDC Perspective outlining what we can expect in the coming weeks, months, and years as social distancing measures and concerns about future pandemics or other disasters fundamentally alter the movement of people and goods as we know them today.

The report offers recommended actions for the technology buyer to grapple with the immediate and long-term impacts of school and store closings, event cancellations, audience-less sporting events and shows, remote work and schooling, border closings, increased online shopping and carryout-only services.

Jordan K. Speer, research manager, global supply chain for IDC, said this is a time of challenge meeting opportunity. Many of the technologies that were poised to take a leap forward, such as 3D design and printing, autonomous mobile robots, and blockchain will be accelerated, some immediately and some over time, by the demands made on the supply chain by this global pandemic.

“The duration of COVID-19 and the level of ensuing deaths and chaos it leaves in its wake will determine to some degree the way supply chains evolve,” Speer added, “but the havoc this global pandemic is already wreaking on manufacturing, retail, and society at large will have effects that will remain long after the coronavirus — this version of it, at any rate — has come and gone.”