CGI opens center for building digital supply chains

European transport and logistics IT services provider CGI Group Inc. has opened a new global center of excellence (COE) in Lyon, France, dedicated to helping clients worldwide transform their supply chains through digital technologies, the company said yesterday.

Lyon-based CGI says the center includes 350 experts and the company will hire 250 more employees for the task in the next two years. Together, that staff will work with clients to develop new digital supply chain solutions and to identify digital business partnership models that can improve collaboration and innovation, the company said.

The center will address three specific hurdles that manufacturing executives face in their effort to drive performance and enhance the customer experience by digitalizing business processes, CGI said:

• improving the collection and distribution of data to drive insight,
• using this insight to rethink their organizational models, and
• integrating traditional supply chains with digital technologies to automate and transform processes.

CGI plans to tackle those challenges by offering tools in three categories:

• hosting discussion forums with the firm's digital supply chain experts;
• offering access to a network of manufacturers, retailers, and customer service companies; and
• providing technology solutions including collaborative platforms, control tower decision support, and improved logistics visibility, the company said.

CGI provides its information technology and business process services for transportation-industry clients in the aviation, rail, maritime, and road and regional sectors, and for postal and logistics clients that are trying to transform their business through IT modernization, the Internet of Things, digital insight, cybersecurity and other technologies.