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Take Control of Your Supply Chain with Supply Chain AnalyticsBy Douglas Zopfi

Reimagine technology to accelerate your buisness

As executives, managers and supervisors in Supply Chain operations, you need visibility and timely information about the performance of your Supply Chain at your fingertips to support dynamic decision making and knowing where to focus corrective action. This need has been significantly magnified in the past decade as Supply Chains have become increasingly more complex, leaner in nature and operating on a global scale.

Unfortunately, many organizations still rely on measuring their Supply Chain effectiveness with antiquated, disparate, cumbersome and manual processes to get at the information they need to measure and monitor the key activities within their Supply Chain. In addition, this information is often dated and reflects what took place last week, or in some cases, last month. That would be like driving your car by only relying on what you could see in your rear view mirror.

The right data is no longer the problem

Historically capturing key data from various activities and partners in your extended enterprise was a key inhibitor for effectively managing your Supply

Chain. You may have had technical limitations for enterprise wide visibility within your network, but a complete end-to-end view was often unattainable.

With today’s ever increasing array of data gathering devices and data storage hardware available in the market a fully linked and connected Supply Chain is now achievable and affordable.

What to do with all of this data is now the challenge

Today, an increasingly common challenge faced by many companies is how to quickly make sense of the vast array of information and data that is now available to effectively manage their Supply Chain. Wrangling relevant data from disparate sources and developing useful advanced analytics dashboards and analysis tools is often not a core function for many organizations. They either lack the expertise, software skills or capacity to invest in this type of support activity.

Take Control of Your Supply Chain with Supply Chain Analytics

Are you missing key opportunities?

If you are still relying on Excel spreadsheets and ad hoc queries to react to what has already taken place In your Supply Chain in the past, you are likely focused on events or performance that you have little if any influence to change or improve.

However, industry research confirms that increasing total Supply Chain visibility has become a key focus for many organizations.

73%of organizations believe

they need more intelligence imbedded in their supply

chain applications to improve decision making and

performance

Source: Gartner

79%of companies with high-performing supply chains achieve revenue growth

greater than the average within their industry

Source: Logistics Bureau Report

46%of companies say

that increased visibility across their operations will support

growth

Source: Zebra 2017 ManufacturingVision Study

Build a robust Supply Chain Analytics Solution for your business

To provide your organization with the timely, end-to-end information that is needed to dynamically manage your Supply Chain, a complete Supply Chain Analytics solution is strongly advised.

Selecting a software package to build the Analytics platform is also a key consideration. There are a number of industry leading Analytics and Business Intelligence software products. For a complete view of these products, see Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms.

Regardless of which software product is selected, there are several key attributes that should be incorporated into your final solution design:

Visual

Device Agnostic

Displays Trends

Drill Down Capability

Actionable

Dynamic

Scalable

Graphs and charts tell the story vs. data buried in spreadsheets

Supported on Smart phones, tablets and desktops

Provides trending analysis over time vs. snapshot in time

Allows drill down into multiple levels of underlying data

Highlights areas where improvement should be focused

Provides ability for user to ‘slice and dice’ data into multiple views

Supports growth and changes in the business model

Attributes of an Effective Analytics Solution

Take Control of Your Supply Chain with Supply Chain Analytics

Douglas Zopfi

Douglas Zopfi is the Principal Supply Chain Consultant for Ciber Global’s Supply Chain Practice area headquartered in Troy, Michigan. This practice focuses on helping companies identify, design, implement and sustain Supply Chain solutions that drive bottom line financial improvements in network design, technology solutions, Supply Chain optimization and Supply Chain Analytics.

Prior to joining Ciber in 2008, Zopfi held the position of Director – Mopar Global Supply Chain responsible for managing all aspects of an annual $4 billion supply chain of vendors, distribution centers, and transportation providers that delivered service parts to over 5,000 dealers and distributors worldwide.

Mr. Zopfi has over 40 years in the Supply Chain space and brings extensive knowledge and firsthand experience in managing all aspects of a complex, global supply network.

About The Author

Supply Chain Analytics solution increases performance

The best Supply Chain Analytics solution is not in and of itself a “Silver Bullet”. On its own, it doesn’t move the needle to improve productivity, quality, customer service, inventory asset utilization or any of the key metrics that you manage in your Supply Chain. What these solutions do provide is the information that you need to quickly analyze key trends, identify segments of your Supply Chain where corrective action should be focused and drill down into multiple layers of underlying transactional data.

A robust Supply Chain Analytics dashboard and set of analytical tools will drive improvements in your Supply Chain performance and results. Annual

year over year improvements ranging from five to ten percent in major key performance indicators are achievable. What would those types of improvements mean to your Supply Chain?

Leverage Ciber’s extensive experience in designing, developing and deploying customized Supply Chain Analytics solutions to begin realizing these types of improvements in your Supply Chain.

About Ciber Founded in 1974, Ciber partners with organizations to develop technology strategies and solutions that deliver tangible business value. Ciber is an HTC Global Company. For more information, visit www.Ciber.com.

Ciber Global LLC | 3270 West Big Beaver Road | Troy, MI 48084 | 833-609-4950 www.ciber.com

© 2018 Ciber Global, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Take Control of Your Supply Chain with Supply Chain Analytics