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For more information, contact: 
Melini Hadjitheori
melinih@marcusevanscy.com

Supply Chain order management processes have traditionally been transactional and driven by ERP systems data. How has it changed in today’s digital world, and what is the business impact? 

In a traditional ERP centric environments only the data the ERP requires is captured and used. Valuable data can be ignored, or its full potential missed. Data which does live in the ERP can often remain siloed and static thus lack intelligence. Data which lives outside of the ERP also remains static and undervalued. This inside out way of working does not aid operational teams working in diverse and fast paced environments. Each day teams need to evaluate which exceptions to address (if they know about them), understand their impact, and make decisions quickly whilst communicating (or not in many cases) with customers and each other. Decisions are being made in environments where teams do not know the full picture and trying to obtain the full picture is time and effort heavy, costs are higher than they need to be, and customers receive suboptimal customer experiences.  

Digital innovations are leading to new more accessible and scalable capabilities that help supply organisations derive intelligence from their order management processes, catch up with the evolving expectations of their customers and achieve efficiency gains that bring down operating costs and remove points of failure. Specialist point solutions configured to run single processes well, integrated platforms, cloud computing and AI are all allowing companies to move to an outside in way of thinking, become more agile to customer requirements, combine upstream and downstream processes together and drive proactive collaboration and communication with customers to innovate processes in ways traditional ERP centric environment alone cannot.  

What are the new technological trends that help to improve measurement and execution in Supply Chain? 

The emergence of new technologies which can get data from sources which were traditionally inaccessible and apply AI, such as predictive analytics, are enabling supply chain organisations in ways traditional ERP systems alone cannot. New and accessible digital innovations are making much more use of unstructured and structured data from multiple sources. Combining these developments with cognitive algorithms and improved user interfaces are making it easier for supply chain leaders to plan more accurately and with more agility, track performance and respond faster with insights that are easier to digest and act upon.


Could you please give us some practical examples of how today’s supply chain leaders can harness different technologies to get both structured and unstructured data? 

Let us take an example of a customer’s Goods Receipt Note (GRN) which contains the quantities of goods the customer is booking in to their system. The GRN could be uploaded by the customer, in a PDF format, to a web portal, turned into an EDI message, be shared in a PDF format via email or embedded in the body of an email. The EDI is structured data and getting it is easy if you have the correct software. Accessing the PDF on the web portal is straight forward enough but manually intensive. Receiving the GRN via email or in the email is again straight forward but processing it requires someone to digest the email and its contents. In all three scenarios it is likely that the once the GRN has been received teams do not know quite what to do with it.

Different data extraction tools which process unstructured and structured data now allow companies to access customer data regardless of format and turn it all into structured data in real time. OCR technologies exist to extract data from images, data-to-data extraction tools exist to lift unstructured data from formats such as emails, PDFs and spreadsheets.  Even the downloading of the GRN from a web portal can be automated using robotics.  From there intelligence can be applied to the data, the extracted data can be blended with other data points to tell a wider story, derive insights and, using AI, pre-empt problems before they occur or at least ensure problems are managed much more quickly and efficiently than before. The final layer is then being able to raise exceptions, track them and enable teams to resolve them.

We are now able to get the GRN data, regardless of format and identify, in real time, if the customer is reporting any delivery discrepancies. This is achieved by comparing it against despatch data such as Despatch Advices or ASNs. Pre-emptive actions can be automatically issued to different teams upstream and downstream to alert them to the fact there will likely be a dispute related to that shipment and invoice before the customer makes contact (if at all). The customer could be contacted proactively, a proactive investigation into the delivery can be made and a credit could be proactively issued. Each action is helping supply chain teams stay on the front foot, engage better with customers and ensure as many invoices get paid in full as possible as quickly as possible. All of this is made possible by harnessing the power of the data which exists in the process regardless of format.

How do you get adaptive and customer centric in an agile environment?

This is a process which takes time to achieve and begins by establishing multi-enterprise visibility. Starting from the position of trying to understand how customers behave end-to-end and how your processes and systems are impacting customer experience will drive you to bring together all the data points that help tell this story. When we say multi-enterprise we mean customer, supplier, 3PL and internal data. There are large volumes of disparate sources of information created and shared by these parties, such as spreadsheet reports, PDFs and emails which, when combined together with other sources of data from systems provide much more valuable insights. You have a much more accurate picture of what is happening. This information all exists today but its potential is not being met because it is managed in isolation. The first steps to an adaptive and customer centric way of working is to bring it all together. Applying intelligence to this data then changes it from being static to highly responsive and ultimately, predictive. This can be achieved using business intelligence tools but being able to monitor processes, identify problems and predict changes in real time is much more likely to put you on the front foot look forward as opposed to be being better at reacting.

Ahead of the Supply Chain Controlling and Performance Management conference, we spoke with Gareth Bennett, Head of Product Strategy, OmPrompt, UK about the new technological trends that help to improve measurement and execution in Supply Chain.

About the Conference:

This marcus evans conference is a unique opportunity for Supply Chain finance leaders to discuss how to deliver significant cost savings and improve performance of your Supply Chain as well as to implement the latest trends in technology to get a better control and more visibility. With rapidly changing customer and market requirements, it is also a good opportunity to discuss how to become flexible and agile and encourage business interaction from the S&OP perspective and how to align Supply Chain with customer value proposition. The Supply Chain Controlling and Performance Management will be held  December 3-5, 2018 in Sofitel Berlin Kurfürstendamm, Germany.

Copyright © 2018 Marcus Evans. All rights reserved.

About the speaker:

Gareth started his career in supply chain leading a team in customer services operations working closely with both customers and internal teams, collaborating to improve service levels and customer retention. He drove down the number of order fulfilment errors and increased customer satisfaction by focusing teams on “getting it right first time”, developing proactive processes and continually analysing process performance, much of it without the help of specialist technologies. Over the past eight or more years Gareth has learnt first-hand the many challenges that supply chain organisations face each day. Taking his experience of life at the coal face and his natural desire to understand how to take friction out of processes to make them sustainable and as customer friendly as possible, he joined OmPrompt where he has designed and supported client solutions and now focuses on OmPrompt’s product strategy. Gareth is responsible for analysing the market needs, latest technological innovations, such as Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP), and bringing them together to create solutions which deliver real value for clients and that place them in a position to better serve their customers.

New Technological trends to improve measurement 
& execution in Supply Chain

Gareth Bennett, Head of Product Strategy, OmPrompt
garethbennett@omprompt.com

Speakers Include: 
  • Emanuele Tamiazzo
    Finance Director Supply Chain
    CHEP, Spain


  • Maarten Cornelissen
    Head of Supply Chain
    Teijin Aramid, Netherlands


  • Gauthier Baivier
    Supply Chain & Performance Director
    HYPRED, France

     
  • Hans Ehm
    Lead Principal Supply Chain Head of Supply Chain Innovations & Innovation Services
    Infineon Technologies AG, Germany


  • Jacob Nielsen
    Director, Business Finance
    Novozymes, Denmark



  • Marcel Lohmueller
    Head of Methods, Processes and Supply Chain Controlling
    Siemens, Germany


  • Patrick Dietz
    VP Demand Planning and Logistics LATAM | Automotive Aftermarket Division
    Robert Bosch, Brazil


  • Teemu Kautto
    Business Controller
    Sandvik Mining, Finland
Key Practical Case Studies
  • Bosch discuss actionable indicators and efficient planning

  • CHEP identify how to get adaptive and customer centric

  • Vestas learn how to secure profitability with supply chain
    cost out programmes
    in an agile environment


  • Infineon Technologies investigate how to deal with the increasing
    challenges for the manufacturing industry


  • Novozymes develop a virtual platform to get supply chain
    performance measurement on track

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