Proponents of blockchain call it the next big thing. IBM is taking the lead on the supply chain blockchainization. Is its technology ready to transform the global supply chain?
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Cesario Martins
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This is a great article that demonstrates how climate change could impact ExxonMobil daily operations and, more importantly, its ability to do business in the fossil fuel industry.
The company is heavily invested and exposed to a market that may be connected to the acceleration of climate change. I believe this is the biggest threat to the company and that, in addition to the issues raised in your essay, there are more angles to explore this topic. Management needs to develop a more robust plan to be less exposed to this risk. What if new regulations decrease the ability of ExxonMobil to transform its oil reserves in oil barrels? What if the price of oil is reduced to a level that makes the production of oil unsustainable? What is the impact of technology trends like electric cars?
Your article does a really good job of outlining the impact of isolationism for Walmart. What called my attention was that the big commitment that Walmart management made on the first wave was done in 2013, in a time Trump was not there yet. This means the current Trump government was not the motivation to focus on products made in America. Rather this is a Walmart internal motivation to create jobs in the U.S.A. What I think could be better explored in your article is a more detailed explanation of why management is doing this push and the implications of it in its business.
“There is only one boss-the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” -Sam Walton, founder of Walmart.
If the customer is the boss, did management asked customers before making this huge strategic shift towards made in America products? What is the role of Walmart in the U.S.A. society? And if the jobs they create with this shift is replaced by machine and robots in the next decade?
I agree that the potential threat of import tariffs being imposed by the U.S. to avocado coming from Mexico is a serious challenge to APEAM. This market is the biggest for Mexican avocado producers and any change in the demand side will hit them directly. Every company that has a concentration of demand needs to develop contingency plans to diminishes its dependency.
I believe that finding new markets is not enough. You don’t want to have many countries consuming a little portion of your product. In order to really make a difference, APEAM has to focus on a market with huge potential for increase avocado consumption and invest heavily to develop this habit in its population. This is a very big challenge because food consumption is so much linked to culture. The Chinese market is huge and has shown a good response to avocado consumption but it is still irrelevant in terms of imports compared to other countries. If they want to take the Chinese market to the next level, they need to develop the supply chain to deliver avocado in the right location and invest in marketing efforts to change customer habits.
Digitalization is transforming everything, even companies that create technology! What to do with a resource that no longer can help you create value for your customer? Do you discharge it or invest in its maintenance? Your article does a very good job of demonstrating that these questions can be applied in the Infosys context challenge.
I am a computer engineer myself and what I learn in college is already outdated. Some important technologies did not even exist during the time of my studies and I can see the challenge of keeping updated in this rapidly changing environment. The idea of investing in the maintenance of your resources through education is key to this problem and the best for the company and the employees.
This challenge is not only for Infosys but for global technology companies and there is a new education industry emerging to help to solve this: Bootcamp graduation programs [1]. My position is that, instead of partnering with universities, the company should try to take advantage of this new education system to update the knowledge of its workers.
I agree with the untapped potential of using technology to enhance how business is done in the construction industry. The market is huge, the operation is complex and the information flow to manage a project is crucial to its success. Your article clearly explains the current situation in this market: despite its impact on other industries, the digital transformation is still a promise in this market.
Your suggestion to the Suffolk Construction Company is aligned with the idea that this company should improve its operation using technology-enabled products, but it also assumes that the team is open-minded and willing to change the way they have been operating for many years. Although they have been experimenting with BMI technology, this is not an evidence that they are willing to take the usage of technology to the next level.
In my point of view, cultural issues and barriers to change operations are the root causes of the low adoption of technology in this industry. Increase in technology adoption in this industry will come from startups with an end-to-end technology-based solution [1]. This way, a construction company can have technology embedded in its DNA and take the most of it.