InetSoft Webinar: Supply Chain Analytics

This is the transcript of a podcast hosted by InetSoft on the topic of "Supply Chain Analytics." The speaker is Abhishek Gupta, Product Manager at InetSoft.

What are some of the key challenges in planning for manufacturing companies?

One of the key challenges manufacturing companies is how to make the planning process much better, using much better data to do much better forecasting, particularly in the area of supply chain management. This is an area that is complex because supply chain management needs to bring together a lot of different processes.

And if you want to bring together processes, you need first to bring together the right information. Every business unit has to deal with the same information and with the same analytics that they can use for doing the planning. This is I think one of the key challenges which is still found in many companies.

Why is analytics a key driver for success?

Analytics closes the loop between process management and the results of the processes and the data that you get out of the processes. So if you collect all this data, you are doing the analytics, and you are doing the planning based on the analytics in best case in real time, for example, and you use it also for planning.

Especially, if you talk about supply chain management, you always talk about the resources, about forecasting, predictive forecasting. You need to know what you have to produce, but also you talk about new logistics and new supply chain management, and this means knowing where are all the resources and the stocks are in the supply chain.

This means you need to have really good analytical systems. Otherwise you don't have the right information, and the planning will suffer. The effect is that you have the so-called financial underperformance.

What exactly is supply chain analytics?

Well, you can supply chain analytics to supply chain management. I see supply chain management as something that is a horizontal discipline. Supply chain analytics is going more in the vertical way.

With supply chain management, you try to connect all processes together in automotive or other manufacturing industries. With supply chain analytics, you try to bring together different business units and the information demand they have just to bring it together and to have the same information to get the single version of the truth so that everyone can do the same planning and to get the same results out of the planning that they could use for supply chain management.

View a 2-minute demonstration of InetSoft's easy, agile, and robust BI software.

How does InetSoft help supply chain management?

InetSoft's BI application is perfect for this challenge because the strength of the software in bringing all this data together, and we bring it together in a way not only just looking into the back but also looking into the future. We bring it together in real time so that you can make the right decisions and to get the right analytics that you need for doing this supply chain analytics.

With our data mashup engine we have the capability to get all this data together, and there is a lot of data that you could collect in automotive companies for example, starting backwards with quality and warranty, with all the production data, with all the data of the development of cars. So there are terabytes of data you can collect and that you need to bring together to form the single version of the truth in order to do all the planning.