The Ledger

The Art of War: How Successful Manufacturers Arm Their Business with Analytics

Similar to martial arts, business success is all about perspective. Instead of focusing on the capabilities their organization lacks, business leaders should understand what they can do with what they have. First, they must find the tools that best-fit their business. Smart leaders arm their company with analytics and machine learning that provide critical insights that protect their margins and business. Martial arts and an analytics platform share the common thread of awareness. This allows business leaders to not only report on what is happening, but also predict what is likely to happen and plan accordingly. This prevents rash decisions that will negatively impact the business. Modern analytics platforms enable businesses to respond rather than react to anything that comes their way.

Read More at Industry Week >

“Quick-Fix” Cost Management Is Risky Business

In financially unclear times, it is easy for businesses to attempt cost cutting methods that are risky, impulsive and have major potential to reduce capabilities necessary to fuel digital transformation. Instead, companies must consider value and risk when making cost-management decisions, taking a cost optimization approach that aims to deliver long-term value and immediate spend efficiency. Cost optimization often starts as an exercise in cost reduction, and cost pressures endure. When business leaders make uninformed cost management decisions, the business impacts can be negative, and sometimes difficult to recover from.

Read More at Smarter with Gartner >

CFOs Can Work Smarter, Not Harder with Intelligent Technologies

“To achieve better collaboration across the business, financial leaders acknowledge the value of new technologies such as cloud-based applications, data analytics, and machine learning. These intelligent technologies have the potential to automate back-end operations, modernizing rigid legacy systems while driving efficiency across these business functions.”

By incorporating intelligent processes and technologies, CFOs can simplify their data structures to enable easier and faster closing, planning, and analysis. Dynamic tools that provide timely, meaningful insight can save money, manage data, improve business visibility, and improve efficiency.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Resolving Common Manufacturing Challenges with Process Optimization

To continually grow as they has in the past, discrete manufacturers must deal with some unique challenges. Without a robust and integrated modeling platform, they often struggle with lack of business visibility, little to no access to actionable insight, excess inventory, and declining profits. The lack of innovation in the business process and technology aspects of manufacturing has many businesses heading into a downward spiral. Consequently, competitors that continue to meet customer needs are the ones that will succeed, both now and in the long term. Short-term vision and planning can mean long-term failure or stagnating growth. Customer demand on organizations to demonstrate flexibility and continue to meet their requirements – but with more product variations – is now the reality of today’s discrete manufacturing industry.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >