The Importance of Data Analytics in Supply Chain

What are supply chain analytics?

Supply chain analytics refers to the processes organizations use to gain insight and extract value from the large amounts of data associated with the procurement, processing and distribution of goods. Supply chain analytics is an essential element of supply chain management.

Why are supply chain analytics important for digital supply chain transformation?

One of the most exciting aspects of digital supply chain transformation is the impact of analytics tools on business performance. This goes way beyond establishing scorecards and KPI reporting which businesses already do with varying degrees of success to harnessing and testing the power of optimisation and prediction tools to create competitive advantage from data sources across supply chain, finance, operations, social media, mobile and more.

Failure to develop your people, processes and technology capabilities for analytics is putting your business at considerable disadvantage within a digital economy where more digital savvy competitors reap the benefits of reduced costs, increased profitability, better decision making and superior customer service through well-structured and disciplined analytics programs. It is therefore essential that you make the time and effort to tailor an analytics program to the particular needs of your business if you haven’t already begun to do so.

How do I apply supply chain analytics effectively?

While technology is central, critical and necessary to analytics, it is part of a wider system deployment that requires careful attention to the people and process requirements as well. Many businesses fall into the technology trap whereby they rely exclusively on self-service analytics through department specific reports and dashboards, thereby missing the value that comes from a much more integrated human, business tools and technologies framework, capable of analysing data to provide business insights and answers to questions within a robust and sustainable analytics processing architecture.

At its most basic level, digital analytics must support fact-based decision making, through real-time measurement of supply chain performance and profitability across the various lines of business. The resulting insights help identify opportunities to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, generate incremental revenues, drive service performance and ultimately increase customer satisfaction. Developing deep digital analytics competencies will bring immediate and future value to your business.

Data Analytics platform you can rely on

As digital data continues to grow exponentially with technologies rushing headlong to keep up, businesses must figure out approaches that best suits their particular circumstances and use a Data Analytics platform that you can rely on. We are more than happy to: