Digitalization of information flow management in international supply chains of retail companies

Abstract

In a technologically changing world, economic operators are organizing themselves and adapting to these changes. The development of trade in the global market makes the supervision of the supply chain more complex. Distributors are often part of an international supply chain that is a series of steps from marketing, product development and design, distribution and delivery to customers. Today, to optimize their international supply chain, many retail companies are integrating the physical process with digital tools: this is digitalization. Indeed, digitalization transforms this long chain into a fully integrated ecosystem that is transparent to all stakeholders. Digitalization is creating a great transformation and requires companies to re-think the way they design their supply chain, in order to implement Industry 4.0 which implies that many processes within the company must be digitalized. This study aims to analyze and evaluate the digitalization in the supply chain of retails companies in Cameroon. To carry out the study the main methodological approach used in this research is the design thinking method in order to understand, explore and materialize the phenomenon of digitalization in the Cameroonian context. The study started with a systematic review of the literature, followed by detailed observation of the functioning of the supply chain of retail companies in general and that of Cameroon in particular and an interview phase in order to identify and clearly define the problems encountered within the companies in Cameroon. During the literature review in this thesis, no literature on supply chain digitalization was found in the Cameroonian con-text (at least in the databases used), this is due to the fact that it is a new phenomenon in the Cameroonian context. Nevertheless, it helped to design the interview guide for the different interviews, which revealed the main problem related to the poor management of information flows within the supply chain, which has consequences on the whole company, the case study was used revealed that companies in Cameroon are at the second phase of digitalization which is the use of the Enterprise Ressource Planning system. Faced with this situation, different scenarios were developed in order to show step by step the process of digitalization and what each step implies and finally a concept development was elaborated to underline the requirements and the precautions to be taken when digitalizing the supply chain.