Sat Nav systems are amazing. Just select your chosen destination and the Sat Nav will automatically provide a choice of routes which are tailored to your requirements. This could be the shortest, fastest or cheapest route available, It will tell you what time you will arrive for each of the routes suggested, determine the cost in fuel and even after you have set off, will track your current position, warning you of any problems ahead and then suggest the alternative routes you could take to get to your destination as quickly as possible.
Wouldn't it be great if you could buy a Satellite Navigation system that would do the same for your Supply Chain? Just enter your business goals and the Sat Nav for Business system would help you to plan how you will achieve your goals, monitor the progress towards delivering them and most importantly, would guide you around all the issues that undoubtedly will arise along the way. Well, the reality is that you already can!
Using SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) running on SAP HANA, you can have all of these benefits for your business and more. Even better is that when combining IBP with other SAP products like SAP Ariba you can get a complete overview and full control of your Supply Chain, exactly like you would expect when driving your car.
The world of supply chain planning is becoming ever more challenging as have recently seen with the outbreak of COVID-19. With so many tools available, it is sometimes difficult to know your best option is. So let’s see how we can relate SAP’s latest capabilities in Supply Chain Planning to driving your car and how IBP can support real-time decision making at a transactional level.
The Dashboard
The supply chain control tower with Intelligent Visibility is just like your car dashboard. Your car dashboard will provide detailed information on how fast you are going, calculate your current fuel consumption, the distance you have travelled and even monitor for potential issues such as low fuel or oil levels, your ABS status etc. which could all impact reaching your destination at the expected time.
Likewise, the IBP Control Tower with Intelligent visibility will give you a graphical view of current business performance. Each of your "drivers" (system users) can have their own customised dashboard to alert them to any deviations from your operational or financial plans and create real-time focus on the potential issues which could prevent you achieving your business goals. For maximum benefit, you can connect IBP to your internet of things (IOT) devices to get real-time insight into your operations.
The Rear View Mirror
Your rear view mirror is your historical data. You simply cannot change where you have been, but the experience gained from the past should 100% guide your future. Just like when driving your car and you know that a particular road is congested at certain times of the day. You would use this information to maybe change your route or travel at a different time.
So capturing the data from your rear view mirror is critical for your data analysis. We need a HANA data store to perform rapid Descriptive Analytics to know what happened, powerful Diagnostic Analytics to understand why and intelligent Predictive Analytics to determine what will happen in the future.
SAP IBP and SAP HANA have the capability to not only analyse your historical data, but to use this information to predict the future using a series of algorithms and optimisation techniques to create statistical forecasts of demand, optimal inventory plans and supply plans, customer response allocations; all of which are auditable, understandable and can be quickly visualised to provide clarity to all key stakeholders. All this with speed, and at the lowest level of granularity due to the power of HANA.
The Satellite Navigation System
At times, we all rely on our Sat Nav to get us to our destination when driving. Even when we know the route, we might still use the Sat Nav to help us get around traffic issues. IBP’s suite of tools for Sales and Operations Planning, with supplementary tools for Demand, Inventory, Supply and Response allow you to go into a 4th dimension of analysis and perform Prescriptive Analytics which allows business solutions or scenarios to be fully evaluated, operationally and financially. You can model risks and opportunities to ensure the correct decisions are taken now to deliver future business goals.
SAP Integrated Business Planning really is a Sat Nav for your Supply Chain. After agreeing on where you want the business to go, if you hit or predict a business problem, you can assess the impacts on arriving at your destination and generate a new route. This creates a truly responsive supply chain than can deal with disruption, but is still focussed on reducing costs, while maintaining customer service.
In summary
make sure your business has an informative dashboard to track business performance in real-time
make full use of your rear view mirror (not just for looking backwards)
most importantly, create the Sat Nav system your business needs to plan it's future direction and then avoid potential issues along the way.
If you would like assistance in getting the maximum benefit from your IBP system, thinking of starting an implementation or just want to ask questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
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