Transform planning and operations on an intelligent platform
According to Aristotle, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. A car, for example, is comprised of thousands of painstakingly manufactured components and systems, yet no one part can drive on its own. It takes all those pieces working together in harmony for the car to get out of the garage each morning. The same is true for data. When kept within a siloed infrastructure, data sets can only be useful to a certain extent. This is the challenge many manufacturers face when attempting to optimize an increasingly complex supply chain made up of hundreds of partners across the globe. It is only by eliminating these siloes and bringing the data sets together on an intelligent platform that they can achieve a fully integrated, smarter supply chain.
Based on this simple but powerful premise of better together, o9 Solutions has developed a complete end-to-end platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI). This intelligent platform not only consolidates data throughout an organization, but links engagement systems together across the supply chain ecosystem to achieve business goals. In this blog, we will provide an overview of the key solutions that make up this intelligent platform: Integrated Business Planning, Integrated Demand Management, and Integrated Supply Management, as well as the Enterprise Knowledge Graph that powers it. When combined, these dynamic solutions enhance visibility, provide greater analytics-driven insights, facilitate increased collaboration, and improve decision making.
Connect the dots across the business with the Enterprise Knowledge Graph
For decades, traditional supply chain planning has been managed with spreadsheets and siloed systems, leading to inconsistent, tribal knowledge that lacks a shared vocabulary or repository. As a result, information is often lost or miscommunicated, creating error-prone systems that are unable to capitalize on opportunities or adjust in real time.
To overcome this challenge, o9 Solutions is taking a different approach. For each individual organization, the o9 AI platform develops an Enterprise Knowledge Graph tailored to fit their unique business model. The Enterprise Knowledge Graph provides a flexible, extensible, in-memory system of record that represents the entire end-to-end business model, creates a common planning language to be used by all processes, stores all planning data, and uses rules and algorithms to turn data into institutional knowledge. By fitting seamlessly into the IT landscape, the Enterprise Knowledge Graph connects the dots across the business, providing real time visibility and insights to aid faster decision making.
Achieve cross-functional collaboration with Integrated Business Planning
As the manufacturing marketplace continues to accelerate, traditional supply chain planning is encountering bottlenecks that put organizations in danger of being outpaced by the competition. Existing planning methods can’t keep up with rapid evolution, and are constantly laboring under time-consuming, inefficient processes that impact their ability to effectively meet demand.
Integrated Business Planning, from o9 Solutions, connects teams on a real-time, collaborative planning platform, creating a single source of truth for cross-organizational data. The solution utilizes internal and external data to adapt dynamically, and automatically surfaces opportunities and risks to the teams who need to see them. The solution also enables supply chain leaders to plan more effectively by providing better answers to “what-if” scenarios that drive profitability around current and future business conditions.
By consolidating data from across the organization, Integrated Business Planning delivers increased collaboration and greater analytic insights, giving manufacturers better resources to respond quickly to changing market needs.
Creating an integrated business planning process is a crucial step toward supply chain transformation, but as manufacturers continue to embrace new business models like mass customization and product-as-aservice, they must further enhance planning activities by adding intelligent demand management.
Improve accuracy, alignment, and accountability with Integrated Demand Management
Today’s data-filled world has fundamentally changed the way manufacturers manage demand. A treasure trove of unstructured data is generated every second from sources like historical performance, as well as email, social media, market trends, and other external channels. For manufacturers looking to retain their competitive edge, the problem remains: How do you effectively ingest and manage this data to drive intelligent demand sensing?
Integrated Demand Management, from o9 Solutions, automates processes and centralizes internal and external data, using the Enterprise Knowledge Graph to improve demand forecasting accuracy and optimize sales and margin performance. Leveraging AI, Integrated Demand Management can monitor, track, and analyze large, omni-channel, multi-region product portfolios, removing the burden of arduous manual processes and empowering sales teams, distributors, and partners to increase productivity. The solution also provides initiative management support by creating a system of record for sales, marketing and promotion initiative plans, and engaging advanced analytics to learn from past initiatives and improve new ones. By taking advantage of cloud capabilities, Integrated Demand Management can help manufacturers achieve greater visibility, enabling them to successfully identify and capitalize on new market opportunities.
Integrating business and demand planning together on an intelligent platform creates a strong edge for manufacturers looking to transform their business, yet one more piece of the puzzle remains. In an omnichannel world where everyone wants their products yesterday, demand must be met with an equally responsive supply.
Create cost-effective, reliable, and responsive supply with Integrated Supply Management
As demand for innovation increases, a manufacturer’s ability to produce smart products relies on their growing network of partners and suppliers. In such a rapidly changing market, meeting customer demand with a “one-size-fits-all” approach to service levels is no longer feasible. Responsiveness and agility are required throughout the supply chain to provide exceptional service and manage costs.
Integrated Supply Management, from o9 Solutions, consolidates data from internal systems and automates the supply management process by matching customer orders to supply in real time. With AI, Integrated Supply Management enables prescriptive insights, empowering supply chain managers to surface system recommendations and engage automated exception resolution. The solution also offers continuous analytics capabilities, segmenting customers and supply chains to deliver optimal service levels with lower cost and inventory. By utilizing AI and advanced analytics to improve productivity and instantly automate demand response, Integrated Supply Management can help make complex supply chains dramatically more responsive, cost effective, and reliable in meeting market needs.
It’s clear that each solution in the o9 portfolio can stand on its own as a crucial tool for increasing agility, decreasing costs, and optimizing supply chain performance. Yet, when working together, these powerful solutions have the potential to transform manufacturing planning and operations.
The premier AI platform for integrated planning and operations management
It’s time to move beyond slow, siloed, and inefficient processes. The o9 portfolio of solutions, Built on Microsoft Cloud technology, enables manufacturers to achieve operational excellence by providing the agile, intelligent, and collaborative approach required to stay ahead in today’s dynamic manufacturing landscape. o9 is positioned highest and furthest for completeness of vision and ability to execute in the visionaries quadrant of the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for S&OP Systems of Differentiation, and is also positioned furthest for completeness of vision in the challenger quadrant of the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Retail Assortment Managementi. To learn more about how the o9 Integrated Business Planning solution can streamline business planning processes, try out the demo on Microsoft AppSource.
