How does your favorite product get on a shelf in your local store? What journey does it take, from raw materials to its final form, in order to eventually end up in your hands? And who is responsible for the success of the whole process?
Supply Chain Management – Solution Overview
Supply chain is a network composed of all individuals and companies involved in the process of acquiring raw materials, transporting them, manufacturing the product and shipping it to the end user. Supply chain is not a modern invention – people have been creating, transporting and delivering products for centuries. However, in the current age of globalization, the journeys that products need to take become more complex and often include longer distances than the ones in the past. Taking care of every step of the process is a challenging thing to do. Poorly planned and acted out supply chains can lead to many serious consequences, such as financial losses and dissatisfied customers. Luckily, there are existing technologies that provide solutions to supply chain problems.
Supply chain management software is designed to take care of the product’s journey from the very first to the very last step, increasing the efficiency of your supply chain and lowering the risk of wasted time and resources.
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Supply chain tool we're supporting
OpenBoxes is an open-source system developed by supply chain professionals working in resource-scarce settings.
Supply Chain Challenges & Solutions
Challenge
WASTE
One of the biggest challenges that every company would rather avoid is supply chain waste. Due to the risk of having insufficient products or materials in stock, there is a tendency to overstock that can end up in significant waste. Supply chain waste can be harmful not only to the companies themselves, but also to the environment.
Solution
WASTE
Many SCM systems provide data analyzing and AI-driven forecasting tools that help in creating more accurate predictions to avoid understocking or overstocking.
Challenge
Bottlenecks
Points of congestion in a supply chain are called bottlenecks. There can be many reasons as to why they appear. Some of them are local (i.e. limited capacity of local manufacturers) or global (i.e. port congestion caused by COVID-19 pandemic). Bottlenecks slow down the whole supply chain or can even block its flow completely.
Solution
bottlenecks
SCM systems can greatly help in optimizing your supply chain routes. They provide tools that allow analyzing all of the factors that need to be taken into account in order to plan the most cost- and time-efficient route currently possible, and effectively avoid predictable points of congestion.
Challenge
Visibility
Supply chain is a network that spreads across multiple entities that are responsible for different parts of your product’s journey. It tends to cause a lot of issues with the limited visibility into certain parts of the chain and, in result, serious errors in planning, which can lead to the waste of time or resources.
Solution
Visibility
SCM systems give you an insight into each part of your supply chain, including inventory, orders and transportation. It allows making more accurate and data-based decisions that increase the efficiency of your supply chain.
Challenge
Customers’ High Expectations
Customer demands when it comes to the speed of delivery are significantly higher than they were in the past. The order is often expected to be shipped on the same day that it was placed, and delivered within no longer than a few working days. If any part of the supply chain for some reason fails, the whole delivery ends up being delayed, leading to customer dissatisfaction.
Solution
Customers’ High Expectations
In order to maximize customer satisfaction, a supply chain needs to work like a well-oiled machine, in which every screw and every gear is doing its job, but can be replaced, if necessary. SCM systems help in increasing the flexibility of your supply chain and, through the real-time data, allow quick response to the changing situation.
More benefits of using Supply Chain Management System
Reduce your costs
Investing your time and resources into a broken supply chain certainly does not align with your business goals, whatever they might be. SCM software can help you find the imperfect and fragile parts of your supply chain and optimize them, allowing you to eliminate costs and reduce waste.
Avoid risks
You wouldn’t want your shipment to get stuck in a bottleneck, ending up with hundreds or thousands of unhappy customers, right? While some risks can not be predicted, many of them actually can. SCM software allows you to analyze the situation in real-time to make quick decisions and avoid unnecessary problems.
Improve forecasting
Supply chains are vulnerable to rapid changes of external factors that can affect the journey of your product in numerous ways. That’s why it’s always better to be safe than sorry. Transparency provided by SCM software allows you to have an insight into each part of the supply chain. Easy access to rich data gives more space for accurate predictions. SCM software offers high-quality forecasting tools that are designed to foreshadow any potential issues that can affect your supply chain.
Increase customer satisfaction
Customers don’t care about the specific parts of your supply chain. All they need is for the product to be delivered safely on time. To grant their wish, you might want a support of SCM software that will help you act flexibly and handle all of the issues that might arise immediately. Let the problems that belong behind the scenes stay behind the scenes, not affecting the time and quality of delivery. As long as the customer receives their order as promised, they will be satisfied.
Decrease delays
When it comes to supply chain management, real-time data can often save your whole delivery. It allows you to make quick decisions based on the current situation. SCM software provides efficient solutions that support agile decision-making in urgent circumstances, resulting in reduced late shipments and decreased number of delays.
Improve product quality
It’s difficult to work on your product’s quality when you constantly end up going out-of-stock, right? What you need is a reliable supply chain that will help your business grow, rather than slow it down. SCM software is designed to optimize all parts of your supply chain and increase its efficiency. Having your supply chain in place, you will be able to put more focus on improving the quality of your product as well as its relevance in the marketplace.
Improve collaborations
Having the access to real-time data provided by SCM software, you can improve the information flow between your company and your business partners. With the bigger picture in mind, your employees are likely to act more efficiently, whereas your partners’ trust can increase. SCM also helps in pinpointing weak spots in your supply chain that might require you to consider establishing new collaborations or terminating the existing ones.
Increase customer trust
Transparency and real-time information on your shipments are viewed positively by customers as well. They are more likely to trust a company that shares the current status of their order, than the one that leaves them guessing. Data collected by a SCM software can help you improve your communication with customers. If they know that they can rely on the information that you provide, their trust towards your company will also increase.
