In the quickly globalizing world, the question retailers ask themselves is increasingly becoming “How can we improve our time-to-market?”. While striving to develop and bring to market their private label faster and faced with competitive pressures from the supply chain giant, Amazon, as your competition, the idea of adding categories and product types can be daunting. From product conception to retail sourcing, all the way to production and delivery, the supply chain is often times only deeply inspected when something is broken; for example, high inventory levels, dissatisfied customers, or supplier problems.
This is a sentiment that is rapidly changing, as many retail industry leaders are beginning to see the importance of total sourcing management leading to an efficient and interconnected retail supply chain.
“We’re seeing mainly improved transportation costs and smoother demand flow and we’re working with our suppliers to continue to improve those benefits for all in the supply chain,” said, Mark Holifield, Home Depot’s executive vice president of supply chain and product development.
Rather than waiting until a problem has occurred forward-facing retailers like Home Depot, have begun the transformation into smart supply chain technology, as opposed to traditional transactional ERP systems. Smart supply chain is an application category that gathers and provides context to diverse data sources, providing visibility to all of the participants in the value chain to enable faster decisions. These faster decisions eventually lead to eliminating redundancy, duplication, inaccuracies and contribute to raising customer service levels. A smart supply chain will center around the following three goals:
Data Driven– Often times the system of record will be a blend of Product Information Management (PIM), Product Lifecycle Management (Retail PLM) and or Supply Chain Management (SCM) platforms. They are designed to collect supply chain data and collaborate with suppliers to gain greater supply chain efficiencies resulting in cost reductions.
End-to-End – One system of record to simplify and automate product development and retail sourcing operations resulting in a smarter supply chain for product development, vendor collaboration, sourcing, product quotation and delivery.
Communication– Smart Supply chains will utilize a system to system product development and sourcing network software that puts retailers in constant real-time communication with its private label suppliers.
If retailers are able to transform their private label supply chain with these three things they may be able to say they have developed a faster, smarter, more productive supply chain resulting in cost reductions and growing profits.
A smart Supply chain is one that complements the information management process by bridging the gap between Product Lifecycle Management (retail PLM), Product Information Management (PIM) and retail Supply Chain Management software, to allow complete data accuracy in all channels of the business. Current supply chains are fragmented, and take numerous emails and or phone calls to gain a clear picture of what stage in the process a product may reside. The quickest and most efficient way to bring all that information into one place is by using one system of record. Retailers that use these products can track their products from conception to delivery. Cutting edge Retail Supply Chain management software such as CBX Software can provide a platform capable of making a Smart Supply Chain which can encompass product development, sourcing, quality all the way through order, production and delivery. Utilizing the best strategic sourcing software platforms will help to scale a retailer’s private label, beat the competition in the marketplace, and deliver new products to market ahead of consumer expectations. To learn more about today’s product lifecycle and sourcing management tools or for more information about CBX Software please Contact Us or visit www.cbxsoftware.com.
Written by Alexander Alvira, February 22, 2018
