Today, with the vulnerability of supply chains coupled with changing consumer expectations, supply chain management has become a critical area for the overall smooth functioning of operations for supply-oriented businesses. By leveraging digital technologies specifically Cloud, AI/ML, and Analytics and advanced analytical capabilities companies can streamline the entire supply chain. In an exclusive interview, Kaushik Mitra, Senior Director- ERP/EPM Sales, Oracle India, explains the role of Cloud in allowing businesses to address their bottlenecks pertaining to complex supply chains.
What are the major issues and challenges businesses these days are facing in supply chain management and how it can be handled effectively?
Over the past few years, we have observed a series of fundamental changes in consumer behaviour. Additionally, supply chains have been hugely disrupted over the last few years, especially post pandemic. The vulnerability of supply chains coupled with changing consumer expectations, supply chain management has become a critical area for the overall smooth functioning of operations for supply oriented businesses. Several components including increased costing for operations, labour costs, compliance related challenges, slow production, talent gap, rise in demands for personalisation and customization from consumer and expensive IT systems that require modern technologies among others are the prime reasons for creating disruptions in any supply chain network. To address these hurdles, it is extremely vital for businesses to ensure quality and speed at the supply chain process and address all the escalations on time. To do so, there is a need for solid data and analytics capabilities that help in understanding supply chain complexity, anticipating potential disruption, and quickly developing a response. In a nutshell, businesses should navigate all the operational challenges while addressing the needs of consumers and suppliers as well.
As per Oracle SCM survey 2021, supply chain disruptions have negatively impacted consumers as well as ultimately affecting the overall business. As per this survey, over 93% of Indian consumers worry that supply chain issues are here to stay for a longer period in the future. Also, over 76% of people would trust and more willing to buy from a company if they knew it used advanced technologies like artificial intelligence to manage its supply chain.Hence, it is imperative that businesses evaluate their supply chain management strategies and develop a proactive business plan to address these difficulties. Furthermore, it is critical for companies to soon adopt the required digital technologies to streamline the entire supply chain.
How do companies with the implementation of new-age digital technologies can develop smarter and stronger supply chains? Also, which technologies, in particular, can bring a significant impact?
We are in modern times, where every organization, including the ones operating in logistics and supply chain processes need constant improvement in terms of digitalisation and innovation. Logistics and supply chain operations already are quite multi-faceted and complex processes in nature and are integral part of most trade and market relations, thus it needs to be constantly improved. We believe that businesses can gain competitive advantages over factors such as costs, delivery times, pre-sales preparation, time, and after-sales service by smart digitization of delivery chain.
Many new-age technologies have emerged which are changing the way of traditional working, but specifically Cloud, AI/ML, and Analytics have the inherent ability to help manufacturers with supply chain disruptions. The adoption of digital technologies and solutions will overall benefit manufacturers and suppliers and help increase the level of collaboration and openness of the supply chain. Furthermore, leveraging digital technologies and advanced analytical capabilities will assist companies in garnering what is required to support customer fulfilment, integrated business planning, physical process, and other more proactive business process decision-making needs.
Why are business leaders today moving towards more flexible models that allow them to modify the scale of their operations?
Over a period of time, it’s proven that supply chain alignment is one of the critical components for any company in forming its business and operational strategy. The last few years were extremely transformational due to the global pandemic when businesses have faced unimaginable challenges related to production, financial crunch, mobility, and flexibility issues. In these challenging times, the majority of organizations and their CIOs & business leaders realized the importance of keeping their supply chain network aligned.
They were indeed witnessing dramatic fluctuations with respect to transparency, lack of visibility, and bottlenecks. As a result, business leaders realized the vulnerabilities of their supply chains. To streamline their supply chain, they had to take conscious decisions to enhance their supply chain by adopting flexible models that allowed complete visibility of their supply chains from complete production to delivery cycle.
How can Cloud bring agility, scalability, and flexibility to supply chain and logistics management and create operational transparency within any business?
Cloud technology has taken a centre stage in the transformation of the supply chain and logistics industry as well along with many other key sectors. Cloud-native applications can essentially streamline the entire supply chain network and overcome all the disruptions companies are facing over a period of time. Cloud applications and SCM solutions can truly provide a comprehensive view of the entire supply chain, ultimately allowing businesses to address their bottlenecks. Hence, these solutions help organizations respond quickly to changing demand, supply, and market conditions.
Cloud build applications have the potential to improvise planning, optimize inventory management, streamline integrated manufacturing, increase reliability, improve coordination across channels, even minimise logistics costs and accelerate product innovation. Additionally, cloud applications with embedded technologies like IoT, Data Analytics, and Blockchain enable data-led and strategic decision-making. It allows businesses across industries to streamline and enhance their supply chains. All these benefits account for bringing the kind of agility, scalability, and flexibility to manage the supply chain.
Tell us how Oracle is helping businesses to leverage cloud solutions to develop leaner, smarter, and more agile supply chains, please support your answer with examples.
Oracle has supported many leading industry players in streamlining and modernizing their supply chain network and helped them overcome challenges pertaining to flexibility, automation, scalability, user accessibility and mobile enablement which were causing major disruptions. Talking on a global level, DP World is one great customer example to share. One of the leading and fast-growing logistics company that was struggling with slowed operations and increased costs due to its on-premises systems sprawl for a long time. They were required to streamline their internal operations and build a back office that could support growth, including quickly integrating acquisitions and starting up new facilities. They had opted for Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications and soon after implementation, could maintain critical operations during the pandemic with most of the staff working remotely.
While talking about Indian companies, Apollo Tyres is one such example. They are one of the leading tyre manufacturers in India and one of our key customers in this segment. By using Oracle SaaS platform, Apollo Tyres were able to create smarter, more transparent, and streamlined supply chains. Safexpress is also another great example, who uses Oracle’s ERP to fine-tune their operations, as well as our OTM (Oracle Transport Management Solution) to quickly and efficiently onboard their customers. Whereas, leading manufacturer, Hindalco, also implemented Oracle’s EPM solution to modernize its financial management and regulatory reports in a cost-effective manner by leveraging data and smart automation.
Another, aspect that Oracle SCM solutions is covering and helping our customers is with respect to ESG. As our customers focus on their sustainability mandates, our SCM solutions are supporting their ‘save the planet’ initiatives. For instance, our global customer Unilever is using Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) solution to advance their ESG goals; they have achieved 29M fewer vehicle KMs driven and 9% reduced CO2 emissions.
Similarly, one of the biggest Generic Pharma company in India was facing challenges around Excess Inventory. Inventories were touching around 12 months which was unsustainable. To produce that inventory the needed natural resources are – Water, electricity, resources among others. Also, there was a situation wherein some inventory because of FDA Shell Life restrictions, had to be written off. That’s almost criminal – manufacturing something which can’t be consumed and robbing earth of its natural resources. We are working with this organization to streamline their Supply Chain to ensure that inventories and at the optimum levels only and they do not keep on manufacturing. Not only will it reduce Inventory costs, but it will also reduce the manufacturing costs to produce these inventories.
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