Supply Chain Challenges That Can Be Fixed with Supply Chain Control Tower

3 Supply Chain Challenges That Can Be Fixed with Supply Chain Control Tower

A supply chain control tower has the power to transform businesses by closing the gaps that stand in the way of a company’s success. It enables business owners to spot trends, prioritize actions, understand challenges, and resolve them to improve efficiency across the supply chain and align processes as per strategy.

What is a supply chain control tower?

A supply chain control tower is a customizable central console/hub that captures, stores, and manages data, while also displaying key analytics and events from the entire supply chain in real-time. Analytics from a supply chain control tower also uses this data to make predictions of what’s to come if you continue the same path or do things differently. It also allows you to completely understand the minute details of your business and make sense of the raw data collected from several sources. There are numerous applications of a supply chain control tower, but for the sake of this article, we will focus on only three of the many challenges it can fix.

Challenge #1: Unpredictable disruptions

A systematized supply chain is imperative to maintain the quality of products throughout their life cycles and ensure that all resources utilized are of the best quality. Supply chains comprise numerous small and large components, which makes it difficult to monitor each aspect. That is why supply chains are quite susceptible to disruptions. Disruptions have a plethora of negative impacts on a business, with varying degrees of severity, so pre-empting disruptions and navigating them successfully becomes crucial for any business.

How supply chain control towers help

Predictive analysis helps you make a forecast on whether your business is on the right trajectory and alter the functions that hinder your growth. So, making decisions based on its analytics helps you improve your company’s overall performance and efficiency, and hence earn more revenue while preparing you to handle disruptions. Control towers allow you to use real-time predictions based on trends and patterns, supply and demand, and make decisions about productivity and resource deployment, accordingly, thereby saving costs where possible, making the best use of resources when the demand surges, and minimizing disruptions.

Challenge #2: Data analysis

Collecting and analyzing data is key to the success of any business. It allows business owners to spot trends, capture invaluable insights, and identify hindrances, working on which enables a business to improve consistently. In a traditional supply chain, a huge amount of data is lost, as there is no means to capture, let alone analyze it. Even businesses that collect data often have no means to analyze and draw conclusions from it to upgrade their supply chains.

How supply chain control towers help

Supply Chain Towers use advanced technologies such as AI with machine learning to compile complex data across the supply chain, extract insights from your company’s raw data, analyze it, and present it in the form of dashboards and reports to understand complex information easily. You also receive key insights drawn from a variety of data that help you make better decisions and be better prepared for disruptions. Information is power, and with the right information, you can make changes that you probably would not have thought were necessary or were overlooked. Many companies collect a bunch of data but let it go to waste by not investing in a smart control tower. The longer you use it, the better feedback you will receive, as trends and patterns are more pronounced in the long term.

Challenge #3: Data silos

In a typical business, the different departments that comprise the supply chain work independently, with minimal data exchange and collaboration. As a result, there is a disconnect among different verticals, and there is no way to gather and access the combined data. This disconnect is detrimental to supply chain health, as there is no way to get a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the entire chain. A tiny problem in one of the stages could have massive repercussions if it persists down the line. The lack of information flow can cause sudden disruptions that can have drastic impacts on business.

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How supply chain control towers help

A control tower collates and stores data across verticals, becoming the central hub of all information. It also analyzes the data and prepares reports, enabling business owners to spot trends, prioritize actions, understand challenges, and resolve them to improve efficiency across the supply chain and align processes as per strategy. Supply chain control towers also allow collaborations among different departments and ensure that each vertical has access to the master data stored and key insights from its analysis. If you want to know more about supply chain control towers, feel free to reach out to us for a discussion. We’d be happy to answer any/all of your queries about the technology. We have helped several businesses with our Supply Chain Control Tower solution and would love to do the same for your business.  Click here to discuss.

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