In today’s fast-paced business environment, supply chains play a critical role in ensuring the efficient movement of goods from manufacturers to customers. Over the years, supply chains have evolved significantly, and the integration of digital technologies has had a massive impact on it.
In this fifth blog of The Inside Track, you will discover how converging supply chain and technology strategies leads to competitive advantages. Shaping your supply chain application systems requires so much more than compiling a set of best of breeds solutions.
Skander Kammoun, Director Deloitte SAP EWM & TM Centre of Excellence, elaborates on how a conjunction of phenomena have driven the supply chain to a revolution: The so-called: digital supply chain
First of all, customer centricity made it into the core of a new generation of supply chains. Organisations realised that their supply chain has to evolve from just a cost centre into a winning factor in today’s market. This goal could not be fulfilled with a traditional linear model where different functions are operating in silos.
Data analytics, cloud transformations, machine learning and artificial intelligence were the major factors that pushed the software providers to reshape and rethink their solutions providing their version of the ‘digital supply chain’.
This shift opened a world of new possibilities and capabilities when it comes to offering a scalable and standardised cost-efficient supply chain landscape with a clear framework for innovation. It was unique to see the business of supply chains and the technology world marching towards the same goal.
In the past Deloitte was helping customers to select a WMS (Warehouse Management System) or a TMS (Transport Management System), focusing on the ability of that system to deliver a set of capabilities that were deemed necessary to optimise the operation of the company. Those decisions were taken in silos, function by function.
Stijn Van Hoof, Partner at Deloitte, gives some examples of that silo-thinking.
Therefore it was important to rethink the strategy of building a supply chain execution landscape.
To build a cohesive integrated supply chain system, companies should first shortlist the software providers that offer an off-the-shelf and natively integrated supply chain execution suite. Of course, the back bone ERP system has an influence over which provider to assess first: if you have an Oracle ERP, you should consider Oracle first, but if you are running on SAP ERP, it is better to explore the SAP chain suite first.
Nevertheless, the goal should be to select the supply chain suite that covers most of the foundational end-to-end processes. Maybe the TMS that comes as part of a particular supply chain suite doesn’t offer the company the best capabilities. As a consequence, the company should choose another TMS to obtain the strategic goal to implement a cohesive supply chain execution ecosystem. Of course this comes with a cost.
The secondary but nevertheless critical step of building a robust and integrated supply chain solution, is to enrich your supply chain ecosystem by opening up to innovative solutions that offer competitive advantages towards your competitors.
One way of doing this is to integrate you core supply chain suite to potential third party software that could complement your WMS, TMC, etc.
Some examples:
The first step to an integrated end to end supply chain is an integrated supply chain system landscape. Prioritize in acquiring a natively integrated suite and avoid the risk, the cost and the time that is required to build the integrations yourself. Once you have your core capabilities covered, it’s time to look at the competitive advantage capabilities offered by cloud based third party applications. Explore the opportunities and pick what fits your company and goals.
Stijn Van Hoof, Partner, SAP
Every executive agrees an end-to-end process integration is a desirable outcome. The debate is more towards how you get there?
Deloitte’s point of view is clear: