There’s little doubt that COVID-19 had a profound effect on the food supply chain.

As one example, just think back to roughly March of this year, when virus transmission was rapidly picking up speed. Remember the reports of food and beverage companies only producing their most popular or essential products? Or how it would take slightly longer than usual to restock certain products? What about the rush to integrate — or quickly improve the efficiency of — digital and e-commerce. 

Panning out a bit, think about food safety and quality professionals. The need to stay safe — and in many cases, stay at home — meant performing the very hands-on job of monitoring, auditing, inspecting at a distance, i.e. digitally. 

When the food supply chain was hit by storages, delays, breakdowns, and lockdowns, the end result was — like in so many sectors — a rapid digital transformation.

As The Food Safety Market — an SME-powered industrial data platform dedicated to boosting the competitiveness of European food certification — elaborates in a new discussion paper, “technology has played an important role in enabling business continuity in the new reality.”

Agroknow (Coordinator of the TheFSM project) and 13 distinguished leaders from a variety of supply chain stakeholders discussed the changes we should expect regarding the Digital Transformation of Food Quality and Safety.#foodsafety #foodquality
👉https://t.co/VSdqwWP2LT

— TheFSM (@TheFSMeu) November 10, 2020

The paper — Digital Transformation of Food Quality & Safety: How COVID-19 accelerates the adoption of digital technologies across the food supply chain — features industry experts from companies like Nestlé, Ferrero, PepsiCo, McCormick & Company, and more discussing the effects of the pandemic on the supply chain.

A few highlights from the paper:

• John Carter, Area Europe Quality Director for Ferrero put the issue of food access into perspective at the start of his interview:

“The production of food defines our world. The effects of agriculture on our daily lives are so omnipresent that they can be easy to overlook; landscapes and societies are profoundly influenced by the need to feed our growing population. But much has been taken for granted. Only occasionally are we forced to consider: ‘where does our food come from?'”

• Ellen de Brabander, Senior Vice President of R&D for PepsiCo provided insight on the cost benefits of digital transformation:

“The need for customization is a big driver for accelerating digital transformation and moving away from a ‘one size fits all’ approach. This means that the cost to develop and produce a product must be lower and digital technologies provide a clear opportunity here.” 

• Clare Menezes, Director of Global Food Integrity for McCormick & Company brought up one area where digital tools need to go:

“There aren’t any areas where digital tools “fail”, but there is a need for tools that ‘prove out’ predictions around where the next integrity event will play out and how it could lead to quality or food safety failure. These tools are an obvious candidate for AI given the number of PESTLE factors that might come into play.” 

Want to read all of the interviews? Check out the paper here.

It’s a common refrain to hear of digital transformation efforts that fail.

New research from Boston Consulting Group, however, has identified six critical success factors that, when fully applied, can reverse the odds of DX success from 30% to 80%. 

With COVID-19 widely seen as a catalyst for an all-around, multi-industrial acceleration of transformation — BCG found that 80% of companies plan to accelerate their companies’ digital transformations — these findings are crucial.

Current successes

According to the research (which you can fully explore here), 30% of transformation efforts resulted in sustainable change — meeting or exceeding targets. 44% had limited long-term change. 26% had created “limited value (less than 50% of the target) and produced no sustainable change.” 

Though digital transformations are an imperative for many companies, BCG research shows that 70% of digital transformations fall short of their objectives, often with profound consequences. https://t.co/ct9gIqmu3t pic.twitter.com/oj7CwUFWfx

— Boston Consulting Group (@BCG) November 1, 2020

“In the short term, digital technologies and ways of working offer productivity improvements and better customer experiences,” explained Patrick Forth, a BCG managing director, senior partner, and report co-author in a press release.

“In the medium term, digital opens up new growth opportunities and business model innovation. Successful transformations also set companies up for sustained success; they won’t have to digitally transform again as they master continuous innovation.”

When compared to those that created limited value, successful transformations yielded 66% more value, 82% more corporate capabilities, and met 120% more targets on time.

Factors needed

The key to flipping the success rate lies in the application of these six success factors:

• An Integrated Strategy with Clear Transformation Goals. 
• Leadership Commitment from CEO Through Middle Management.
• Deploying High-Caliber Talent. 
• An Agile Governance Mindset That Drives Broader Adoption. 
• Effective Monitoring of Progress Toward Defined Outcomes. 
• Business-Led Modular Technology and Data Platform. 

Digging deeper, two conditions lie at the heart of these factors. The first is ensuring that management addresses every factor in each of the planning, preparation, and execution phases. “Most companies put effort into this, but the majority of these organizations do not address each factor sufficiently,” BCG explains.

The second condition is that all six factors need to be addressed. According to BCG, “Companies that adequately addressed only three or four failed. Of all of the possible combinations examined, none had the same impact on success as these six.” 

“The positive and material impact of the six success factors can be seen across all types of digital transformation, geographies, and industries,” says Tom Reichert, BCG Chairman of Global Practices, global leader of DigitalBCG, and co-author. “That said, it is neither practical nor desirable to delay transformation in pursuit of perfection. Instead, winners will be aware of shortcomings and will put an action plan in place to address each as they proceed.”

According to a new study, business success is largely dependent on how smooths consumers find their digital transactions.

The global study by The Economist Intelligence Unit and consumer credit reporting agency TransUnion found that close to 85% of global executives surveyed said they believe “smooth digital transactions are ‘essential to business survival’ rather than merely a competitive edge.”

In a survey completed by over 1,600 senior execs — including 180 from the US — @TheEIU study for TransUnion assesses attitudes toward various long-term trends affecting #fraud, #security and #commerce in the #digital domain. https://t.co/wBXnnOsZoL pic.twitter.com/LvBldFXz9s

— TransUnion B2B (@TransUnionB2B) October 23, 2020

The report — titled New Dimensions of Change: Building Trust in a Digital Consumer Landscape — featured responses from 1,610 executives in Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Hong Kong, India, the Philippines, South Africa, the UK, and the US. 

One of the biggest takeaways is that technologies like AI, national IDs, and super-apps (apps that act as all-in-one experiences like WeChat and Alipay) “can help overcome hurdles and possibly create new challenges to building digital trust.”

New transformations mean new risks

Going hand in hand with the COVID-related acceleration of digital transformation — in conjunction with work-from-home and stay-home mandates — there’s been a massive surge in online spending. According to the report’s introduction, global e-commerce monthly traffic has grown from 16 billion to 22 billion between January and June this year. 

But of course, with this acceleration comes a whole new range of risks, with a rise in cyber-fraud and phishing scams. 

Per its introduction, the report asks these important questions:

How can executives both grow their business, while also mitigating fraud and managing the upheavals of the pandemic? What changes have they made to the digital transaction process? And how has the pandemic played into longer-term digital transformation initiatives such as artificial intelligence (AI), digital wallets and national digital identification schemes?

“All of this digital progress will be wiped out if we can’t remove these barriers to building bilateral digital trust,” explains Shai Cohen, senior vice president of Global Fraud Solutions at TransUnion. For instance, two-thirds of executives in the study who said their company changed their digital transaction process as a result of the pandemic experienced glitches.”

Building trust

When looking at ways of building consumer trust, en route to preventing fraud, respondents overwhelmingly indicated that:

• Biometrics will emerge as the dominant method for customer authentication (85%).
• AI can go a long way in security and fraud detection (43%).
• Consumer fraud can be mitigated through a national digital ID system (79%). It should also be noted that 7 in 10 respondents believe that such a system would allow low-income groups to have better access to services.

“Technological innovations like AI, biometrics and national digital IDs paired with proven fraud prevention methods like device intelligence can provide a more convenient and inclusive way for consumers to transact that still protects security and privacy,” said Cohen.