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.

What’s to come next year? According to IDC’s 2021 predictions, more massive growth in digital transformation investment and IT, and a pivotal role for CIOs in economic recovery.

Every year, the leading DX market research firm releases its series of FutureScape reports, which, according to IDC, “are used to shape IT strategy and planning for the enterprise by providing a basic framework for evaluating IT initiatives in terms of their value to business strategy now and in the foreseeable future.”

Let’s look at the highlights for three of the IDC FutureScape reports for 2021:

• Worldwide Digital Transformation Predictions
• Worldwide IT Industry Predictions
• Worldwide CIO Agenda Predictions

Digital Transformation Predictions

As we’ve firmly established, the global COVID-19 pandemic has largely accelerated DX efforts. 

According to IDC’s report, “direct digital transformation (DX) investment is still growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.5% from 2020 to 2023.” It’s expected that investment will approach $6.8 trillion, as a result of companies quickly modifying their existing strategies in an effort to prioritize digital-first.

“Organizations with new digital business models at their core that are successfully executing their enterprise-wide strategies on digital platforms are well-positioned for continued success in the digital platform economy,” explains Shawn Fitzgerald, research director, Worldwide Digital Transformation Strategies. 

“Our 2021 digital transformation predictions represent areas of notable opportunity to differentiate your own digital transformation strategic efforts.”

IDC has also revealed their top 10 DX predictions. The top three are:

• Accelerated DX Investments Create Economic Gravity: “The economy remains on course to its digital destiny with 65% of global GDP digitized by 2022.”

• Digital Organization Structures and Roadmaps Mature: “By 2023, 75% of organizations will have comprehensive digital transformation (DX) implementation roadmaps, up from 27% today, resulting in true transformation across all facets of business and society.”

• Digital Management Systems Mature: “By 2023, 60% of leaders in G2000 organizations will have shifted their management orientation from processes to outcomes, establishing more agile, innovative, and empathetic operating models.”

Read the full list here.

IT Predictions

When looking at IDC’s IT predictions for 2021, the firm explains that “to succeed in this period of change, CIOs and digitally driven C-suites need to focus on three areas over the next five years.”

First, they need to address gaps within IT that emerged in the immediate response to the pandemic. Up next, is making sure that accelerated IT and DX efforts are “locked in.” 

Finally, and as IDC says, most importantly, “they must seek opportunities to leverage new technologies to take advantage of competitive/industry disruptions and extend capabilities for business acceleration in the Next Normal.”

While COVID has shown that organizations can — and for the most part, did — respond and adapt quickly, to do so is a marker of future success in the digital economy, explained IDC Group Vice President for Worldwide Research, Rick Villars. 

“A large percentage of a future enterprise’s revenue depends upon the responsiveness, scalability, and resiliency of its infrastructure, applications, and data resources.”

IDC again released a top 10 list of predictions for this category. The top three are:

• The acceleration of the shift to cloud-centric infrastructure
• The increasing importance of the edge
• “The Intelligent Digital Workspace”

Read the full list here.

CIO Agenda predictions

The pandemic has caused many business leaders to rethink their entire organizational structure and workflow. 

CIOs have faced many challenges this year — given the speed of digitization for most businesses — and they’ll need to be in the front seat of the upcoming recovery efforts as well, IDC reports.

“In a time of turbulence and uncertainty, CIOs and senior IT leaders must discern how IT will enable the future growth and success of their enterprise while ensuring its resilience,” said Serge Findling, vice president of Research for IDC’s IT Executive Programs.

IDC’s list of predictions starts with these three at the top:

• “By 2022, 65% of CIOs will digitally empower and enable front-line workers with data, AI, and security to extend their productivity, adaptability, and decision-making in the face of rapid changes.”
• Cyber attacks, trade wars, and a shaky economy will mean CIO struggle to adapt. IDC predicts that 30% of CIOs will not be able to protect trust.
• The accumulation of technical debt accumulated during the pandemic will cause “financial stress, inertial drag on IT agility, and “forced march” migrations to the cloud.”

Read the full list here. 

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.