Enhancing Supply Chain Activities With Business Intelligence

The advantages of Business Intelligence are endless and you will have to go a long way to find an industry where the advantages don’t outnumber the disadvantages. It is especially the capability and the feature rich technology, features that allow organisations so much more than just being a reporting tool, which make it such a powerful business tool. Business Intelligence present so many other opportunities for a business to improve and for it to remain in the race to success.

Business Intelligence has been applied successfully in various industries, organisations and business functional areas over the last couple of years. Majority of these organisations implemented it to improve efficiency, decision making and assisting in identifying new and key opportunities. Business Intelligence presents benefits across the entire business spectrum but one area where it can play a significant role is in the supply chain management environment.

Supply chain management is complex as it contain so many different internal processes and activities. Some of these activities are managed internally whilst others are managed by external entities, for example, logistics, transportation and distribution. These activities in return can operate and be managed by individual entities or in some kind of combination within 3PL or 4PL organisations. No matter how these activities fit in, there is a specific need for real-time information sharing as to ensure a coordinated and seamless supply chain. It is here where Business Intelligence can play a significant role.

We can write pages and pages about the supply chain and its complexity and how Business Intelligence can reduce the complexity. So let’s concentrate on 3PL/4PL organisations to provide some idea how Business Intelligence can play a role towards improvement.

A key feature is Business Intelligence applications ability to predict future behavior based on historical and current trends. This is an important Business Intelligence feature and it allows organisations to do forward planning. By doing forward planning organisations are allowed to implement proactive strategies and with it strict mitigating controls in order to minimize or eliminate reactive approach/responses to address incidents in future. Being proactive also lead to and ensure a quick and positive time-to-value partnership between the organisation, its suppliers and its customers.

Another feature, the ability to drill down, through and into massive amounts of data with real-time data allows , in this example 3PL/4PL professionals, to analyze critical aspects like load quantities, routes and route, transporter performance, scheduling, delivery and delay times, audits and payment at any given time or place. This is a powerful feature which allow a user to drill from millions bits of data into possibly one single bit of information rapidly and at any real-time. Timing is key and this is a very important feature that allows business to identify, understand and address weaknesses or strengths quickly and efficiently.

Some other additional benefits includes:

• Identification of delivery issues at any point in the entire supply chain
• Better understanding of cost impact across the supply chain Vendor performance analysis
• Work load distribution can be evaluated to allow for efficient distribution planning leading to better utilization and improved supply chain performance
• Ability to drill into historical information for better decision-making and continuous improvement
• Better risk mitigation as incidents that impact on service delivery and efficient utilization can be visualized
• BI tools provides insight into the aspects that generates profits and cost the operation money so that management can make efficient decisions for improvement
• Knowledge of where the business are allows for quick strategy updates in order to remain competitive and stay ahead of competitors

The benefits don’t end here. Business Intelligence also permits an in-depth analysis of the end-to-end supply chain networks and to measure, for example, supplier performance. The performance of suppliers the supply chain can be evaluated in line with their service level agreements. Understanding the performance levels now allows for other opportunities, e.g. to identify new opportunities, to negotiate and to create agreements based on factual performance results.

The supply chain industry is a fast moving and forever changing industry that is continuously evolving and seeking ways to improve its existing business models. Being a part of this industry forces all organisations, not just 3PL/4PL organisations, to adapt and improve rapidly and continuously in order to remain competitive. It is here where Business Intelligence is ideal to help organisations maintain and achieve its objectives in a fast moving and evolving industry.

Business Intelligence present many other advantages to organisations and is something that most organisations should consider moving forward. It is however important to know and understand that thinking about and implementing Business Intelligence in any organisation is just the first step in the process. Making it a crucial part of the organizational decision making process is the real challenge for organisations. As with anything in business, top management buy in, clearly formulated business objectives and integration with other software solutions are key to make Business Intelligence work.

Please feel free to contact me if you interested to get more information or if you would like to discuss this further and in more detail