Today, one of the main challenges of supply chain departments is to better structure their processes. Why is this so important? Where do you start? And how does a well-built supply chain software help achieve this goal? You will find all the answers here.
Supply Chain. Why should you improve your processes?
In the life of a company, things change every day: new employees, product launches, market opportunities… All this requires that inventories be handled reasonably and optimally.
This is a key stake for companies, and it is all too often performed in Excel. It might work for a while but over time, spreadsheets can quickly prove to be utterly inadequate.
Spreadsheets are not very user friendly, poorly adapted to the task, often heavy and quickly, they can no longer keep up with the pace. In addition, they do not offer employees a global vision on operations. In this context, it is difficult to structure processes and take advantage of the competitive benefits that an adequate digital tool would provide:
- Reduced planning cycle and workload,
- Improved forecast reliability,
- Reduced inventory,
- Reduced stocks-outs and late deliveries,
- Increased sales and margins,
- Improved working atmosphere and synergy between the teams,
- Stability and employee satisfaction.
Supply Chain tools: which features facilitate process structuring?
Intuitive, innovative, and reactive, supply chain software outperforms Excel spreadsheets in all aspects. These new tools help businesses improve performance in the short and long run.
Thanks to cloud-based demand and supply planning software, users have simple and intuitive access to sales forecasts, but not only that. Other integrated functionalities help structure processes and quickly become a necessity. These include:
- Collaboration. These new solutions are resolutely collaborative. They combine data centralization and decentralized use. Sales representatives, forecasters, partners and suppliers can seamlessly use the tool according to their needs. Used by every link in the supply chain, the software adapts to all needs in terms of information accuracy, whether detailed or macroscopic.
- Financial overview, analytics, and reporting. Digitalizing demand planning allows users to modify their forecasts in real time and to instantly see the financial and organizational impacts of these changes. The most comprehensive demand and supply planning software offer “advanced analytics”, which are detailed and fully customizable dashboards accessible with a few clicks. To help users in each of their tasks, these technologies use intelligence and visualization to remain easy to understand. The result: operational excellence.
- Robotization & Machine learning. Significantly automating low added value tasks, helps teams improve productivity and increase efficiency. The user’s task is to make decisions and the machine’s is to execute them. Teams find their work less tedious and more motivating as they get to make decisions with high added value.
- Computational capacity and algorithms. Forecasting, planning, alerts… automated decisions systems (or robots) can apply predefined strategies to the dot. These can be coupled with other innovations such as advanced algorithms. For example, depending on the behavioral profiles of given markets or products, the robots define which algorithm is the most relevant. Another constraint can be added to this: the level of calculations. The tool of the future will not only choose the best algorithm but also at what level to run it.
Colibri, an innovative solution to quickly organize your supply chain processes
At Colibri, we know that operational excellence, speed, and process simplification lead to performance. These three concepts are therefore at the heart of our software solutions.
When companies are faced with a problem and opt for a supply chain tool, they want to benefit from a quick ROI after the implementation of the solution. But in some cases, this delay can be long, too long!
In a world where speed has become a matter of survival, a modern, flexible, adaptable and efficient solution such as Colibri gives you a real competitive edge.
Interactive dashboards, synthetic vision, multi-level collaboration … all of these features and many others allow quick productivity gains. No more time wasted producing tedious specifications and heavy design files, only to end up with a solution that might even be out of date by the time it is launched…
Many companies from various industries have already chosen Colibri. This is the case of IZIPIZI, a company founded in 2010 that offers timeless and colorful glasses at an affordable price. Today, thanks to Colibri’s Supply Chain solution, the benefits are real for them: “Thanks to COLIBRI, we have better control over our inventory and procurement. This tool finally allows us to have a vision of these two elements, so that we can give Finance the necessary outlook to better manage the company.”
Interested in testing this cloud solution? Colibri can create a prototype in 2 days, with real data. This way, if you detect any points of dissatisfaction, we can make the solution evolve by iteration, until we reach the satisfactory, usable, productive tool you need.
To increase speed and reliability, choose a tool that quickly structures your processes. To learn more about Colibri solutions and associated technologies (advanced algorithms, machine learning, robotization…), contact our Supply Chain experts to get a demo!
