What is Supply Chain Management?
In today’s day and age, one should not talk about supply chain management without talking about efficient supply chain management software.
Put simply, the purpose of supply chain management software is to manage the flow of materials within a company, whether that means raw materials, semi-finished products, or finished products. These materials need to be placed correctly within the supply chain, while keeping inventory maintenance as minimal and optimized as possible.
The importance of supply chain management software, therefore, is to optimize your supply chain to its most efficient level.
And why is Supply Chain Management Software important?
Because when you manage to organize your supply chain, your company can cut delivery times, but also excess costs. An efficient supply chain software solution becomes your competitive advantage.
This can be done using the correct supply chain management software tools that match your strategy and business.
Keep reading to get an overview of what should be considered before starting an optimization of your current supply chain management using supply chain management software.
Why Choose PERITO as your Provider of SCM software?
Why is Supply Chain Management crucial for your business?
Because when you manage to organize your supply chain, your company can cut not only delivery times, but also excess costs. An efficient supply chain solution becomes your competitive advantage.
This can be done using the correct supply chain management tools that match your strategy and business.
Keep reading to get an overview of what should be considered before starting an optimization of your current supply chain management.
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Different Companies — Different Supply Chain Management Software
One thing to consider when discussing supply chain management solutions and supply chain management software is that different companies need different supply chain management software.
A starting point for getting an overview is to consider your current business and what is important to you to match with the right supply chain management software:
- What are your strategic priorities?
- How do you want to optimize?
- Which critical supply chain constraints exist?
- Your footprint –
- Are you working according to longer or shorter lead times?
These questions are important to answer, as the way you should work with supply chain management software depends on your specific way of doing business.
To give an example, companies can be broadly placed into one of two categories:
Category one: These companies primarily move materials between units. Here, companies are extremely focused on effective transportation between these units, while simultaneously taking lead time into account. The different products need to have different touch points in the supply chain — as they always need to be in the right place in the supply chain.
For category one companies, it often makes sense to place materials far back in the supply chain. For other companies, products should be placed closer to distribution/the customers, making the products able to reach the customers much faster.
Category two: Companies within category two are characterized by much larger production units in their supply chain. In these cases, what should always be considered is optimization versus the utilization of capital. If you have larger operational equipment, your supply chain might be utilized best by keeping the machinery running rather than stopping production due to lower demand.
Don't Just Take Our Word For It
PERITO proved to be outstanding at identifying a robust S&OP solution that balances our current maturity levels with our goals for improved S&OP planning. In the supply chain domain, it is rare to come across consultants of this caliber who think end-to-end and have the skillset to implement solutions that seamlessly integrate people, technology and processes.
Steen Winkler, Head of SIOP, Business Unit Service, Vestas Wind Systems A/S
… We chose PERITO for their Managed Services. PERITO is now responsible for managing all statistical areas of our demand planning that requires expert statistical skills. Having PERITO specialists to support enables us to provide more precise forecasts – and thus build trust in the planning process across the organization and among retail partners. Through our partnership with PERITO, we can leverage our core competencies much better and improve our collaboration with the global sales organization …
Jacob Frederiksen, Sr. Director, Planning & Operation, Bang & Olufsen
…Boiled down to its essence, our IT Vendor Selection for IBP Software contained benchmarks across 12 different Software vendors. We examined features and functionalities across all IT vendors and compiled fundamental considerations into a Software Advice Vendor Scorecard. PERITO won the IT Vendor selection because they met and understood our requirements regarding how to balance Demand Planning and Planning of capacity(3M)
Birgit Thomsen, Board Member, DINEX
Empower supply chain transparency through PERITO IBP 360° Solution
Supply Chain Management Software Demo
To get your customized supply chain management software solution, one main question needs to be asked:
Are your supply chain management decisions based primarily on data or on your intuition?
Most companies tend to do a bit of both and, for some companies, many decisions are made based on gut-feeling. These types of companies can see tremendous benefits after switching to intelligent supply chain management software.
A Software Demo of a PERITO IBP solution
The PERITO IBP solution come with an array of benefits that will improve the quality of your supply chain management. For instance, PERITO IBP 360 gives you:
- Optimization through automation of your demand and supply planning. You’ll know what to expect to put out into the market and the effects it will have on your inventories, supply planning etc.
- Better handling of manual processes and tasks in your S&OP. The software automates 90% of your non-critical manual tasks, leaving you time to manage the remaining critical ones.
- A follow-up process of your supply chain outcomes. The software provides an overview of potential versus real-life scenarios of your supply chain.
- A data-driven decision software. Most importantly, the data-driven software gives you a transparent view of your S&OP process. The data makes your decision making more accurate and precise.
If any of these points sounds remotely interesting, we recommend that you explore the topic further by trying a demo of our software.
Features of Supply Chain Management Software
What features make up leading supply chain management software?
Different vendors offer different perspectives on the matter, naturally. However, PERITO Consulting’s Integrated Business Planning (IBP) consists of the following to work as efficiently with supply chain planning as possible.
Demand Planning Module uses an intuitive interface capable of sensing trends and seasonality with high accuracy. The demand planning module uses data sensing, product segmentation and categorization, campaign management and data cleaning automation.
Supply Planning Module balances your assets to meet demand and reduce your costs through a unique automation software. A supply planning setup by PERITO includes a range of scenarios designed to calculate the financial impact of stock, service, and capacity levels in the short and long run.
Financial Forecasting Module creates an accurate financial forecast and connects the output from PERITO’s Demand Planning Module. This enables your financial data to generate gross and net figures, as well as cash flow statements faster and more accurately than seen with any other supply chain software.
Inventory Planning Module uses a multitude of sophisticated analysis tools that enable a simulation of your overall inventory situation. By analyzing your current inventory levels, and using economic stock optimization (ESO) software, a larger economic optimization exercise generates recommendations for optimal stock levels.
Control Tower Module enables transparency in your supply chain. The Supply Chain Control Tower Module creates end-to-end supply chain visibility enabling the deepest insights into your supply chain’s current and past performance.
S&OP Process is the crucial planning tool supporting every decision made in your supply chain. An S&OP or sales and operations planning tool is what helps you connect and delegates all assignments and tasks. The S&OP process is an integrated management process module designed for every needed step in your monthly S&OP cycle.
Capacity Balancing Module is an essential component highlighting bottlenecks in your labor and production capacity months in advance. This enables the planning of your production to always match the time and resources available in your supply chain.
The Importance of a Supply Chain Control Tower
A control tower module is inevitable if you want to understand everything happening in your supply chain.
It is common that supply chain planning software have a one-dimensional focus on data modelling. This is not efficient, as managers end up making decisions based on incoherent and isolated information.
To gain the full effect of a supply chain management software solution, a control tower module encompassing the supply chain as a whole is essential.
A supply chain control tower module enables supply chain managers to analyze, understand, and effectively manage your supply chain operations in real time. The overviews make it easy to identify problems in your supply chain and fix them as they occur.
Empower supply chain transparency through PERITO IBP 360° Solution
The Right Supply Chain Management Software Provider
Deciding on the right vendor, when deciding on a transformation of your supply chain, can be difficult.
The right solution needs to combine state-of-the-art IBP applications with premium operational specialists to yield significant improvements that stand the test of time.
For large companies (and even for many smaller companies too) the transformation of your supply chain can seem unmanageable.
Companies fall into one of two categories when considering a new provider and a transformation of their supply chain and supply chain management software.
They either never get started, because they are waiting for the perfect time, or the implementation they do start is too slow and the transformation doesn’t show any remarkable results.
However, once a sufficient supply chain management software vendor has been selected, the fear of imperfect data needs to be overcome.
There will never be a situation where your data is perfect. This simply doesn’t exist.
Instead, you can prepare your supply chain for automation by following the six steps mentioned in the linked blog post.
Optimize Your Supply Chain for Profit and Sustainability
Even though companies may be different, the initial goal is always the same: to utilize your current supply chain in the best possible way, which means utilizing the availability of materials.
A way to update your current supply chain is through PERITO’s Integrated Business Planning (IBP) software.
The materials or products need to be in the correct place, at the correct time, and in the right volume. It is irrelevant whether this is for internal processes or for customers – the goal is the same.
Optimization should happen between departments as well. Sales, production, and warehouses must work together efficiently and effortlessly. Here, it is important to categorize every single customer based on their importance for your business. The most crucial customers need to get their deliveries first.
Furthermore, your supply chain probably needs to be optimized according to both soft and hard criteria.
Back in the day, supply chain management was just an economic optimization exercise: “How do we optimize our supply chain to gain the most capital?”
Today, however, softer perspectives are considered as well. A big one is sustainability, which has become increasingly important for companies undergoing optimization of their supply chain. Another area that is more important than ever is preparing supply chains for future crises.
Why Choose PERITO as your Provider of SCM software?
Striving for Automation: Enable Supply Chain Forecasting Software
One last thing that needs to be addressed is automation. Automation of your supply chain management is something you should have in your development roadmap.
The end goal of optimization of your supply chain management should always be automation. Using supply chain forecasting software makes time for the areas of your supply chain that need to be handled manually. So, supply chain management automation software makes it possible to operate more efficiently in the future.
A supply chain management solution from PERITO enables automation and optimization of your supply chain by emphasizing two main areas:
The first area is optimization of the design of the supply chain using different supply chain management tools. Simply, we help design the complete layout of the supply chain and answer questions like:
- Where should the warehouses be placed to operate most efficiently?
- Where should the different connection points be located?
- How far away should the warehouses be placed from each other/from the connection points?
The second area of supply chain management design is the automation of daily operations.
The automation allows you to focus your attention on the right areas of your supply chain — the areas of most interest. The solution should give you the opportunity to focus on the exceptions in the operation and fix the most critical issues first.
For large companies, the ideal is that 90% of your supply chain should be automated, leaving only 10% to be handled manually. This means managing your supply chain by exception — the 10 %. Preserving your resources for the important and impactful tasks.
Read this article to prepare your supply chain planning for automation.