Align supply chain with financeTrade & Supply Chain
challenge
The company was using a mix of hundreds of large spreadsheets and inflexible legacy tools to manage their supply chain process and financial planning! The process was slow—even simple scenarios required up to six hours to run. In order to avoid the inflexibility and delays of using the legacy tool, averages were used for many planning scenarios, leading to large discrepancies between forecasts and actual costs. Inventory management was disjointed, and when there was misalignment in the planning process, it led to lost sales opportunities and excess inventories.
solution
With a single flexible and agile planning platform, our consultants were able to integrate finance and supply chain planning processes, allowing the company’s finance teams to accurately evaluate product costs and complete profitability analysis. The integration also empowered the company to anticipate, predict, and accommodate market changes in real time.
For example, the company struggled to prioritize product allocation. But now, they can run real-time scenarios and see what areas may not be profitable and report this back to their sales, channel sales, and logistic teams to adjust strategy.
results
The supply chain finance planning process, which previously took two weeks, was narrowed down to two days. Previously, when there were demand changes, it took the company on week to react. It now takes less than five minutes to come up with the necessary adjustments in its production. The company can now look at what drives profitability of a channel, SKU, or customer on a monthly basis. Decision-makers now have visibility to this information, which arms them to make quick, informed decisions.