The Ledger

Back to Basics in the Supply Chain

“It is critical to examine the basics of your supply chain before an improvement strategy can be designed and implemented.”

Demanding customers, emerging technologies, global supply bases and ever-changing market landscapes require companies to continuously adjust their supply chains to stay competitive. Most supply chain executives find themselves trapped in a vicious cycle where every new or newer technology presents the solution that the previous versions could not address. To break the cycle, rather than reaching for the latest technologies, some managers have gone back to basics and have emerged with lasting return and a competitive advantage.

Read More at Industry Week >

Data Complexity Challenges in Financial Services

Unrelenting pressure from non-traditional players is driving financial services organizations to digitally transform themselves. To become data-driven enterprises, banks and insurance companies need to address three key data management trends: data volume, ubiquity, and user demands. To reduce complexity, companies need to combine their existing and new data into a single data universe. Universal data helps firms enhance visibility, delivering insights that can improve efficiency, automation, and growth. By converting data into insights, organizations can become intelligent enterprises.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Effective Planning Requires More Than Just Your ERP

We live in an age driven by data and, for businesses, the ability to quickly and accurately process large data sets has changed from “nice to have” to “essential” in a relatively short time. It’s crucial for businesses to be able to process data from a variety of different sources from across their operations, regardless of the form that data comes in. Unfortunately for many companies, their ERP alone is not equipped for the task. It is important to find a tool that gives access to data from anywhere inside or outside the business that applies advanced analytics on top of the data. That way, even unstructured data such as text, predictive, spatial, time series, and event streams no longer pose a challenge. Instead, it can be easily harnessed to inform business decisions.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Retailers Must Prepare for the Next-Generation of Customers

“The changing landscape across today’s retail and consumer industries has resulted in a rapid rise of emerging technologies, especially when it comes to automation and artificial intelligence. Retail is one of the sectors to already implement and invest in cognitive and AI technologies, resulting in new and unexpected offerings for consumers and shoppers around the world.”

As the next generation of customers expects brands to provide unmatched experiential design and functionality across multiple interfaces, retaining customer loyalty requires retailers and manufacturers to implement cognitive, automated services while still remaining transparent and secure.

Read More at MH&L >