Supply Chain optimisation remains a top priority for organisations trying to cut operational cost, sustain business growth and increase customer satisfaction. Major factors such as low Supply Chain visibility, shortening product life cycles, high warehousing costs, inefficient supplier networks, ineffective forecasts, changing customer preference, commodity prices, volatility in the marketplace, and weather patterns, are all putting enormous pressure on Supply Chain leaders. That’s where Data Analytics comes in.
Analytics tools are used in many industries to allow companies and organisation to make better business decisions. Analytics relies on the simultaneous application of statistics, computer programming and operations research to quantify performance. It refers to the skills, technologies, practices for continuous inter-active exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning.
From a Supply Chain point of view, companies are looking for answers to questions such as:
· Who are my top suppliers and how many B2B transactions have I exchanged with them?
· Who are my top (and bottom) performing suppliers based on specific key performance indicators such as complete orders, accurate shipments, on-time deliveries and processing of payments?
· Which suppliers/customers has the order/payment volume increased or decreased by the last 12 months?
· Which customers sent the most orders during the end of year holiday, and which ones sent many changes?
· How much overall to spend on marketing?
· How to allocate budgets across a portfolio of brands and the marketing mix?
· Which is the more tactical campaign support, in terms of targeting the best potential customer with the optimal message in the most cost effective medium at the ideal time?
Why should you invest in Analytics?
It is in the best interest of the organisation to adopt Analytics, because analytics support business growth. There is also another reason why organisations need to invest in Analytics: reducing the level of human intervention but making better decisions. This can only be done by advanced Analytics that can predict future scenarios, or analyse real time data and make complex, profitable decisions, sometimes on the spot. There are multiple BENEFITS when adapting an Analytics tool:
- Helps attain top-line growth to enhance profitability.
- Improves marketing campaigns, website creative content, and information architecture.
- Enables more collaboration among partners, including key customers and suppliers.
- Provides point-of-sale data, better insight for everyone involved, better forecasting decisions.
- Determine the outcomes of campaigns efforts, guide decisions for investment and consumer targeting.
- Increase key insights that further help end-users make data-driven decisions.
- Provides an integrated visibility into the value of the Supply Chain.
- Help reducing inventory cost, accelerating time to market for products, improves sustainability and profitability in the long run.
- Leading to better forecasting decisions.
- Improves efficiency, cost and quality, and not just for manufacturers.
- Better insight into service exceptions.
- Team members create dashboards every morning to guide their efforts for the day.
- Can slice and dice the data as needed, understands and anticipates demand.
- By segmenting stock according to demand and other characteristics and focusing on high-value, high-volume and high-urgency items.
- Customer Segmentation techniques are used on the market to study customer profiles and identify which customers most likely form the target market.
- Keep inventory better aligned with what it will actually sell and when. Achieved an actual reduction in inventory.
- Helps companies manage human resources. The aim is to discern which employees to hire, which to reward or promote, what responsibilities to assign, and similar human resource problems.
- Offers deeper insights into transaction based trading partner activities.
- Provides earlier identification of exceptions, allowing corrective action to be taken sooner and prevent Supply Chain disruptions.
- Helps ensure that orders are shipped to the correct destinations and invoices not only get paid on time but comply with the ever increasing number of compliance regulations.
CONCLUSIONS: Multiple organisations are involved in many supply chains, each with its own profit motives and objectives. The Supply Chain is a great place to use Analytics tools to look for a competitive advantage. An Analytics platform brings new visibility to the Supply Chain, enabling the wholesaler to better anticipate and meet demand and offers service levels it couldn't have previously, enabling users to simulate different scenarios for a better understanding of the pros and cons of alternative decisions.
Dave Food