Hybrid Communication Strategies and Tools as a Strategic Lever to Improve Supply Chain performance

In this highly volatile global economy, organizations need to deploy various levers to improve supply chain performance. Supply chain needs to be responsive and agile to changing market conditions. The objective of the supply chain is to have the right products and services in the right quantities, at the right place, at the right moment, produced with minimal cost with the required quality level. To facilitate that, communication is considered one of the key levers to its success. While traditional communication approaches improved supply chain performance, in this dynamic environment there are still significant gaps and few opportunities to innovate the communication process within the whole supply chain. The purpose of this article is to explore how organizations can improve the performance of the communication process within the whole supply chain through the application of hybrid strategies and tools. The research methodology was qualitative exploratory in nature to confirm the relevance of the research question, and to explore through extensive literature review different strategies and tools to be applied to improve communication in supply chain.Supply chain managers can potentially benefit from this research, this study contributes to communication process in the supply chain by going beyond the benefits and problems of communication process that occur in day-to-day operational communications. It adds a new perspective to fit the flexibility and agility exist in the market place by proposing the use of hybrid strategies and tools to improve connectivity, information exchange, knowledge sharing and relationship alignment in the networked supply chain.