Best Practices for Implementing a Supply Chain Planning Solution
The supply chain is an integral part of any business model. With everything from the procurement of raw materials to the delivery of a good or service to the customer covered, improving supply chain efficiencies can have a massive impact on a business. However, this is one of the areas that is often neglected after an initial strategy is created.
Deploying a supply chain planning solution that updates the original strategy every few years can help an organization stay modern with the times, all while reducing negative repercussions that could occur from an antiquated strategy.
What is a Supply Chain Planning Solution?
Supply chain planning solutions are platforms that provide technological support for managing, aligning, collaborating, and sharing data across all aspects of the supply chain. This technology covers all five elements of the supply chain starting with the planning of a strategy all the way through potential returns of products or services.
By deploying supply chain planning software within your organization, issues related to downtime, inventory management, insufficient planning, and high sourcing costs can all be identified and solved before they become too problematic.
Benefits of Improving Your Supply Chain
Understanding the importance of integrating supply chain planning software within your organization starts by developing an understanding of the benefits it provides. The below are just a small sample of efficiencies a company can receive:
- Reduced downtime means fewer necessary spare or replacement parts that may cost a company time and money
- Improved inventory management that can reduce storage costs
- Better leverage of buyer power to negotiate better prices, thus reducing overall sourcing costs
- An improved long-term strategic goal that optimizes the supply chain while keeping the goal of lower costs in mind
The global supply chain management market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.1% through 2030 alone. With rising demand and increased awareness of the benefits of SCM being the main drivers, investing in strong supply chain planning software is more important now than ever.
4 Best Practices for Supply Chain Planning
As you go about integrating supply chain planning software at your organization, there are four general tips to keep in mind. These tips will help you develop a strategic goal that maximizes the speed at which you can seamlessly integrate supply chain planning software.
1. Focus on Using Your Data
Identifying the best supply chain planning software for your organization can only be done by analyzing data to see where the most efficiencies can be created. By understanding where optimization is needed most, you can reduce potential implementation costs for departments that don’t need any optimization.
2. Gather Internal Approvals
Deploying supply chain planning software will be a massive organizational overhaul, which is why informing each supply chain partner is important. You will want to have the most amount of positive feedback, which means ensuring the timing of the integration aligns with as many teams as possible.
This will also help to reduce errors in the integration or any potential delays due to teams being in the middle of massive projects within the supply chain. Additionally, anytime procedures are changed it’s good business to inform your workforce so they can be better prepared to work with the new system.
3. Enhance Your Technology
With the global Internet penetration reaching 63% in 2022 and 91.6% of Fortune 1000 companies investing in Big Data and AI, understanding the technological needs of your organization has never been more important. By identifying antiquated technology within your organization or the technological areas where supply chain planning software could be particularly effective, you can optimize planning and ordering.
4. Always View Supply Chain Relationships as a Partnership
Part of supply chain management is developing relationships with your suppliers. Avoid viewing the relationship with your suppliers as purely transactional, and instead, focus on them as partnerships. This can help you work directly with them using supply chain planning software, and make them more likely to accept potential changes in their part of the supply chain.
Develop Your Supply Chain Strategy
Neglecting your supply chain strategy is a quick way to cause a negative effect on your business. Every business owner should constantly be thinking about new ways to optimize their supply chain to save money and improve their relationship with the customer. Focus on deploying effective supply chain planning software that can identify issues with your strategy before they become a problem.
