The Total Integration of Supply Chain Software, with Vuealta

Accurate predictions and planning for the next few years’ activities will always be at the core of an effective supply chain company. In previous articles on Tech HQ, we’ve been looking at issues like demand planning with specific regard to this sector, but like every business, supply chain companies are the sum of their parts. At key times in the business cycle, the different functions in the business come together to look back on performance and consider the future — what’s worked well and what should be happening over the next few years.

Our previous articles on the Vuealta Solution Suite (part of the Anaplan ecosystem) focused on the software’s ability to draw data together from supply and demand metrics and how predictive modeling can lay the foundations for business strategy. There are significant areas of the Vuealta software that help decision-makers draw together the disparate threads of the business to not only get near-real-time oversight into operations but also review demand, supply, marketing, operations, and financial information — all side by side, in the context of one another, with causality mapped between decisions and results.

The single pane of glass

The Vuealta platform surfaces insights from data and presents them context-sensitively in a single-pane-of-glass dashboard. It uses a series of default layouts specifically crafted for supply chain operations — although, of course, individuals can create their own variations on the out-of-the-box configurations or start from scratch.

Companies that use Vuealta solutions develop plans for the business by a process of consensus — from demand, supply, marketing, and finance functions, among other stakeholders. The dashboards show how that consensus was reached, how plans have changed from previous periods, and where the changes are at their most significant level of variance from those models made in the past. For instance, most planning exercises will have started with a basic model created by the statistical engine. On top of this, there will have been input from sales, marketing, demand planning specialists, and a coterie of others.

The dashboard will show variance from the different consensus models, where the anomalies emanated from, and how, for instance, demand planning varied from the commercial. But like all top-level views, operators can drill down into the data to see, for example, how backorder strategies changed inventory position over time.

Each to their own

Each business function will want to develop its specific dashboard(s), where data critical to its operations can be most quickly surfaced and acted on. Marketing will want to see how their campaigns have impacted seasonal trends in demand, for example, while operations professionals might want to drill down into the performance metrics of individual DCs. Sales might want to review the best-performing products and identify new, emerging areas of strength to give teams focus at specific times in critical periods.

The beauty of Vuealta is that the different needs of the various business functions are met by the software, with insights available to improve practice in each area, and for the business body as a whole. The accumulative effect of improvements at every level are huge cost-savings, much greater efficiency, and long-term business resilience in even the most volatile of markets.

As you’d expect from modern enterprise software, all dashboard views and the data held on them are available on mobile screens, too (optimized for smaller displays and touch-centricity), so remote operators are never out of touch.

Go specialist, not generic

Unlike many prominent cloud based digital business vendors that can (at a cost) shape and blend their offerings to the specific needs of the supply chain, the Vuealta platform has been designed specifically for use in this environment, whether part of a larger business or in an organisation dedicated to logistics, distribution, warehousing, or combination of these. Adhering to the Anaplan ethos, the Vuealta solution is modular and therefore capable of adapting to different use-cases, adding capabilities as required over time.

To learn more about some of the areas of which we’ve barely scratched the surface here, head over to the Vuealta website for more information, or better yet, reach out to a supply chain specialist representative to discuss your specific needs.