Page 137 - COVID-19: The Great Reset

while providing a customer experience that isn’t just about online
banking.” [131] Similar examples abound.

The social mitigation response to the pandemic and the
physical-distancing measures imposed during the confinement will
also result in e-commerce emerging as an ever-more powerful
industry trend. Consumers need products and, if they can’t shop,
they will inevitably resort to purchasing them online. As the habit

kicks in, people who had never shopped online before will become
comfortable with doing so, while people who were part-time online
shoppers before will presumably rely on it more. This was made

evident during the lockdowns. In the US, Amazon and Walmart
hired a combined 250,000 workers to keep up with the increase in
demand and built massive infrastructure to deliver online. This
accelerating growth of e-commerce means that the giants of the

online retail industry are likely to emerge from the crisis even
stronger than they were in the pre-pandemic era. There are
always two sides to a story: as the habit of shopping online
becomes more prevalent, it will depress bricks-and-mortar (high

street and mall) retail still further – a phenomenon explored in
more detail in the next sections.

2.1.2. Resilient supply chains

The very nature of global supply chains and their innate

fragility means that arguments about shortening them have been
brewing for years. They tend to be intricate and complex to
manage. They are also difficult to monitor in terms of compliance
with environmental standards and labour laws, potentially

exposing companies to reputation risk and damage to their
brands. In light of this troubled past, the pandemic has placed the
last nail in the coffin of the principle that companies should
optimize supply chains based on individual component costs and

depending on a single supply source for critical materials,
summed up as favouring efficiency over resilience. In the post-
pandemic era, it is “end-to-end value optimization”, an idea that
includes both resilience and efficiency alongside cost, that will

prevail. It is epitomized in the formula that “just-in-case” will
eventually replace “just-in-time”.

136