Technology > Forecasting & Demand Planning | SupplyChainBrain

Forecasting & Demand Planning: Page 113

You Don't Have a Big Data Problem. You Have Hundreds of Little Data Problems

Many manufacturing and distribution companies are wrestling with the enormous challenge of Big Data, trying to turn mountains of data into actionable information. And while some companies curse the landslide of data overwhelming their organizations, others look to capitalize on what they realize is an opportunity to better understand their customers, suppliers and costs. But the challenge is more nuanced than sculpting a huge collection of unwieldy data.

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SAP Announces Plans to Acquire Inventory-Optimization Vendor SmartOps

SAP AG is acquiring SmartOps, the vendor of software for inventory and service-level optimization.

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Chief Executive of Maersk Focuses on Improving African Infrastructure

The CEO of Maersk Group toured Nigeria, Angola and Ghana in a bid to focus on African infrastructure improvements. As African economies boom, infrastructure improvements become more important to turning the growth into sustainable development, and Maersk is planning to take a role in this transition.

Managing Intersection of Marketing, Operations Is Strategic Lever to Competitive Advantage

Analyst Insight: Simply stated, the marketing mission of any business is to profitably create "something" that a customer will buy. The operational objective of the business is to deliver the "something" to the satisfaction of the customer. The financial objective is to charge a fee equivalent to the customer's perceived value while generating a return on the capital investment the business made to create "something." - Rich Sherman, Supply Chain Discipline Expert at Trissential

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5 Steps to Better Data for Supply Chain Decision-Making

In today's environment of Big Data and analytics, effective supply chain decision-making is only as good as the data influencing the decisions. Drawing actionable conclusions based on the best information possible is critical to maintaining a supply chain that is efficient and effective, but also acts as a continual driver of strategic and competitive advantage. But how can your organization ensure that the data used to draw conclusions and make decisions regarding the supply chain is clean, relevant and accurate?

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Moving from Marketing-Driven to Market-Driven Supply Chains

Analyst Insight: The corporate goal is to drive profitable growth. Growth happens through success in new products, capturing market share in emerging markets or brand building in existing regions. To make these initiatives successful, the supply chain matters more and more; however, the greatest success happens when companies shift from marketing-driven to market-driven value networks. In market-driven value networks, companies build the capabilities to listen, test and learn in vitro with zero data latency to maximize market opportunity. - Lora Cecere, Founder of Supply Chain Insights

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BizSlate Launches Small Business Supply Chain Assistant

New York-based BizSlate is launching its cloud-based resource planning tool to give small business a hand with their supply chain challenges. Unlike legacy vendors in that sector, including SAP and Netsuite, the technology is specifically designed for department stores, retail chains, small boutiques and the like. Chief executive Marc Kalman says BizSlate is ideal for companies that have "outgrown QuickBooks" but don't have ample resources at their disposal for IT.

Ahold To Share Data With CPGs

Ahold USA plans to launch a vendor collaboration initiative next month that will include sending POS, supply chain and merchandising data via a third-party to some number of its CPG suppliers in order to improve product availability and customer satisfaction.

USDA Funds NC State Study to Develop Global Food Supply Chain

The Supply Chain Resource Cooperative (SCRC) in North Carolina State University's Poole College of Management is one of several partners in a five- year, $3.9m grant-funded project to build and evaluate supply chains for local farmers and fishers to supply large-scale markets in North Carolina. The project is led by the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS) in NC State's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), which has been awarded the first year's funding of the grant by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Gulf Cooperation Council Invests $36bn in Port Development

The GCC countries are allocating $36bn to further develop their port infrastructure amid increasing foreign non-oil trade volumes. Saudi Arabia is powering ahead with port infrastructure development with more than $750m allocated to Dammam's King Abdul Aziz Port, which includes the launch of a second high-tech container terminal in 2015 with capacity for 1.8 million TEUs per annum.

Okay, We Need Management Commitment. So, How Do We Get It?

Supply Chain Management is a "tale of two cities", Leader City and Laggard City. Residents of Leader City, according to benchmarks from APQC, outperform their median competitors with an overwhelming cost and performance advantage. As you navigate the journey to Leader City, at some point, you are going to have to obtain management commitment as evidenced by the fact that we've all been to dozens of case study presentations at conferences over the years. What do they all have in common? You have to have management commitment to be successful. What they never tell you is how to get it! Here's one of the secrets to gaining management commitment that Rich Sherman reveals in his new book. Material excerpted from Supply Chain Transformation: Practical Roadmap to Best Practice Results, by Richard Sherman, 2012. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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Are You Ready for Supply Chain Management-as-a-Service?

Doug Colbeth, chief executive officer of Kinaxis, delves into the new idea of supply chain management as-a-service, examines the state of cloud-based applications, and suggests a new term to replace "supply-chain management."

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