Actionable Intelligence – What is your strategy? January 31, 2008
Posted by Jay Melton in Actionable Intelligence, Analytics and Business Intelligence, Business Community Management, News, Supply Chain Visibility.Tags: Actionable Intelligence, Deductions, Supply Chain Visibility, Vendor Scorecards
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I was reviewing an article the other day referencing a recent online study about Supply Chain Visibility. It brought up some very good points and some interesting trends in visibility. Many companies still do not have access to the data necessary to make quick decisions related to their supply chain. This is alarming in today’s fast paced high tech world, but it is not insurmountable. Some companies do have visibility, but no strategy around visibilty and are therefore unable to make decisions based upon that visibility.
A visibility solution is very important, but what you do with visibility and how deep you go is crucial to true supply chain optimization. Therefore, Actionable Intelligence is a better term for this. Not just information, but the ability to make strategic decisions based upon that data. For instance, for a retailer, they can be informed of supply chain issues before they happen, allowing them to make necessary adjustments to avoid empty shelves, missed sales, etc., while informing the necessary parties within the organization. For a vendor, they can measure their performance with “reverse scorecards” and assess the quality of their transactions.
As the article explained, to improve supply chain efficiency, companies need to move “from merely tracking to driving change.” This is the crux of Actionable Intelligence – driving change within the organization, saving money and becoming more efficient. One issue with these types of solutions is the sheer amount of data and what you can do with it. For instance, are you trying to reduce costs around deductions or create and manage vendor scorecards? Actionable Intelligence solutions can automate and manage those solutions and much more.
Just as important as having a solution is having a strategy in place around the solution. Simply tracking data is not enough, utilizing the data to streamline not only your processes but your business partners as well is a key facet of Business Community Management.
