In its recent report, ALM Vanguard Supply Chain Planning Consulting, ALM Intelligence found that companies look to consultants to help them align and synchronize their cross-functional planning activities through operating model and process design, but they increasingly seek opportunities to use data — made available by the ongoing digitization of their supply chains — to improve supply chain planning performance.
A major focus of consultants is helping clients to extract more value from existing ERP-based planning systems, which have proven inflexible in meeting actual business requirements. While the solution can be as simple as Excel spreadsheets, more complex environments benefit from new cloud-based software solutions that scrape and shape data from existing systems and enable a master data set or single source of truth from which the entire organization can make more informed decisions from planning through execution.
With this digital infrastructure in place, companies can begin to use their data more strategically, that is, not only in pursuit of reducing cost and inefficiency but also in enabling distinctive capabilities that support growth by improving lead times and service levels. Consultants are helping companies embed powerful new analytical tools and methods that enable planning organizations to streamline and improve their processes. The two areas ripest for applying planning analytics are in improving demand forecasting accuracy and improving organizational responsiveness to changing market conditions.
Concerning demand forecasting, consultants are helping clients capitalize on system connectivity to capture a wider variety of data sources (social media, demographics, weather, geospatial) combined with advanced demand-sensing and predictive analytical methods and machine learning algorithms to generate increasingly accurate, granular, and forward-looking demand forecasts. These tools help tighten the link between commercial, product development, and supply chain operations, for example using greater customer and product insights to design segmentation strategies, shape demand, smooth production, optimize product life-cycles and portfolio profitability, and other business objectives.
Rather than relying on gut feeling or conventional paradigms, supply chain organizations are increasingly using data to improve their speed and ability to respond to both planned promotional events and unexpected market disruptions. Consultants are helping these clients build digital models and organizational capabilities that allow them to use scenario and simulation tools in evaluating alternative actions, assessing risk and performance trade-offs, and drawing correct and rapid conclusions.
Looking forward, many companies seek to build upon these real-time demand forecasts and rapid optimization tools to achieve autonomous supply chain planning systems. The idea is to eliminate forecasts, which are always wrong, and instead produce to actual demand using data-dictated governance systems to continuously and autonomously recalibrate production parameters (e.g., capacity utilization, inventory buffers) and self-optimize production operations in line with enterprise-wide strategic goals.
These so-called demand-driven supply chains are rapidly maturing from proof of concept to actual deployments and require the development of forward-looking talent strategies that support fewer but more analytical and digital-savvy planning professionals.
The research report by ALM Intelligence, ALM Vanguard Supply Chain Planning Consulting, delves deeper into the leading methods and capabilities of consulting firms offering Supply Chain Planning consulting services.
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