If you’re struggling to stay on top of your global supply chain, you’re not alone.A recent survey showed that 91% of businesses can’t stay ahead of their supply chain complexity.“The supply chain plays a critical role in an increasingly digital economy, businesses can’t keep up with supply chain challenges,” according to a report from Koerber, a German company that supplies fully integrated and digitised processes, including both the software and automation solutions.The company polled 1,200 supply chain professionals to see how they were coping with more challenging market conditions, as well how they are transitioning from manual to automated processes.They found that there are four key ‘pain points’ that they had in common.4 Supply Chain ‘Pain Points'91% Staying ahead of supply chain complexity48% Supply chain has gotten more complex in the last year.51% Only able to tackle one supply chain complexity at a time.48% Challenges with integrating their end-to-end supply chains.The need to diversifying supply chains into more locations to avoid country risk has added one more complication to systems that were already struggling to become more agile and reduce lead times. And, of course, cope with more price pressure.According to Koerber, 73% of companies say that within their organizations, senior executives see supply chain as mission critical. “Supply chain complexity is a constant,” it adds, “However, most experts believe their executives see conquering supply chain challenges as a priority.”How E-commerce Has Complicated Supply ChainsThe rise of e-commerce has made this even more complicated. Before it was simply a matter of shipping containers to distribution centres, or moving pallets into a warehouse or stockroom. Today, companies need to be able to work with products on even an individual product basis - deliver that product directly to a consumer at a wide range of global locations.This is requiring companies to re-think how they manage inventory, from just-in-time supply chains to re-evaluating warehousing and distribution.As companies recognise the risk in having most of their sourcing located in one or two countries they are now tasked with rebuilding supply chains - at a time when most export markets are facing a lot of uncertainty surrounding consumer demand.That’s leading more companies to look at establishing several smaller supply regional chains, instead of larger more global strategies, said consulting firm McKinsey & Co.Companies are going to have to assess technology investments and reset them for value and speed, according to McKinsey.