Optimise your supply chain with the cloud
Supply chains have long been a crucial part of almost any business’s processes. Ensuring that you have the right materials and items to complete your work is more than a question of effective sourcing: it’s also about forward planning and adequate data-sharing. It can be disastrous if things go wrong.
There have been plenty of technological developments in the supply chain management field, such as modelling software designed to locate where efficiencies can take place. However, emerging cloud technology has an increasingly essential role to play in developing optimised and efficient supply chains.
Trends and forecasts
Taking steps to migrate your firm’s infrastructure to the cloud can ensure that you retain your competitive advantages in the face of an increasingly cloud-focused supply chain landscape.
According to the Supply Chain Software Trends and Opportunities Benchmark report, well over half of professionals think that either some, most or all of their supply chain applications are moving to the cloud.
With P&S research reporting that the overall value of cloud-based supply chain management software packages will go above $11bn in five years’ time, it’s clear that having a cloud solution is only going to become a more and more crucial aspect of management.
Why the cloud?
However, there are other reasons to consider cloud hosting for your supply chain management, or SCM, solution.
Take data: the best supply chain decisions are informed by the latest and most relevant data. It’s often only in statistical evidence that rigorous insights into profitability and efficiency lie. If this data is stored physically in one office or department but isn’t accessible to another, then taking a collaborative and informed decision could be hard. However, if it’s all stored in a cloud-based location, then there is no excuse for not to taking data-based decisions.
Think about all those times when you’ve needed access to accurate and detailed inventory data, and you’ve needed to dispatch someone to go to a certain point in the supply chain and carry out a physical check. With the cloud, you can keep constant track of how much you have left in real time, allowing you to plan ahead of time, and to make reorders in sufficient time so as not to disappoint any of your clients.
If you manage to get your supply chain processes right, then it’s likely that you’ll also have a good shot at getting everything else right. Not only can an effective supply chain help you to increase your profits, but it can also provide you with time and resource savings.
Cloud technology is on the verge of revolutionising supply chains in so many ways.
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