Over the past few decades, business intelligence has been successfully applied to many critical business functions to enable efficiency enhancements, improved decision-making, and the rapid identification of important opportunities. But, perhaps there is no one area of an organization where business intelligence can deliver greater advantages than supply chain management.
Supply chains are, by nature, highly complex. Multiple internal processes, such as purchasing, procurement, and inventory management, as well as activities like distribution, transportation, and logistics that are managed by external constituents, must be seamlessly coordinated. This requires more than just the implementation of impeccably structured workflows. It requires the unhindered sharing of real-time information among all supply chain partners.
That’s where business intelligence comes in. While some supply chain management applications do offer basic reporting and analysis capabilities, they are really designed to deliver insight about to internal supply chain staff members about their own activities. Few have the capacity to easily provide an in-depth look into and across the most sophisticated supply chains – those that encompass the systems and procedures of numerous outside stakeholders.
A BI solution is needed to allow for the collection, aggregation, and analysis of information from across an entire supply chain. Whether the data resides in a series of internal applications, external ones that are managed by outside partners, or market or benchmark data that exists across the Web, a business intelligence tool can gather it and transform it into vital insight that is timely, relevant, valuable – and most importantly, readily accessible – to all those involved in supply chain operations. This, in turn, will enhance efficiency and cost-effectiveness, boost profitability, and improve customer satisfaction through the delivery of high quality products in the timeliest fashion possible.
This becomes particularly important as companies continue to globalize, and expand their operations throughout multiple geographies. Different cultures, currencies, and regulations make it increasing difficult to ensure rapid communication and collaboration among all partners – a necessity for the effective management of cross-country supply chains. But business intelligence can help ease these issues and enable smooth supply chain operations in all regions of the world.
By using business intelligence to enhance activity planning and execution, supply chain-intensive companies can:
- Improve workflow design, and other strategic planning activities
- Track tactical processes and identify breakdowns – before they impact fulfillment
- Better collaborate and communicate with all key stakeholders
- Accurately assess the performance of supply chain partners
- Monitor costs, and uncover areas for savings
The concept of supply chain intelligence is nothing new. But, until recently, few companies had the solutions at their disposal to properly enable it.
Because supply chain intelligence is about more than just simple reporting, the key to creating a truly successful strategy is through a blend of business intelligence and data integration technologies. Some BI vendors offer both, while others have partnered with leading integration software providers to achieve the needed level of functionality to support broad-reaching supply chain intelligence initiatives.
When BI and integration solutions work together, the information used to enhance activities is as comprehensive and unhindered as possible. Additionally, information can become an ingrained part of core supply chain processes. For example, data thresholds can be used to distribute real-time alerts when critical conditions arise. Or, information can even be leveraged to trigger subsequent, pre-defined automated events – eliminating the need for manual action on the part of supply chain personnel.