Today at SAPPHIRENOW, SAP announced the delivery of a new release of SAP Supplier InfoNet.
In a recent blog (Can Your Business Survive the Butterfly Effect?), I wrote about the increased risk in today’s complex business environment where trading relationships are global and interlinked. I also discussed the key technologies available today to address these situations:
Big Data – Leveraging structured and unstructured data across your supply base, government and regulatory information, news, and third party sources
In-Memory Computing - The need to analyze massive amounts of data for instant business insights is necessary to transform organizations into a real-time business.
Social supply chains – Leveraging social collaboration and sentiment analysis.
The Cloud – Lowering total cost of ownership and reducing ROI
SAP Supplier InfoNet is a cloud-based information network powered by SAP HANA, which enables companies to proactively monitor and predict supplier performance and risk in real-time across their multi-tier supply network.
With SAP Supplier InfoNet, companies can:
- Proactively monitor and predict risks for their supply network with real-time alerts and leading-edge machine learning and statistical analysis tools
- Benchmark supplier performance on quality and delivery across the supply network and identify significant shifts and trends in their performance
- Gain instant insights into the operational health of the supply network by aggregating and transforming supplier data from enterprise systems and thousands of external data sources
These capabilities delivered by SAP Supplier InfoNet empower companies to minimize supply chain disruptions, drive stronger performance of their suppliers, and save time and operational costs of managing the supplier base. Using this innovative approach, customers are provided answers to key questions like:
- How do my suppliers perform for others in the business world? With Supplier InfoNet common KPIs, such as on-time delivery, are pooled together, tracked over time, and shared as “averages” to compare with customers? This enables customers to see what an average delivery performance is for a supplier across the pool, as well as how that compares historically. Are these suppliers improving or deteriorating?
- Are there suppliers of my suppliers that may cause me a problem? Supplier InfoNet connects the supply chains and allows participants the flexibility to share information on their own supply base to their customers so they can finally get Tier-N visibility into their concerns instead of only being able to review suppliers that provide goods and services to them directly.
- What's my supply outlook for the future? Supplier InfoNet uses real-time news alerts from over 16,000 news sites, which includes financial data, government debarment information, legal news, and other components to alert users to information that could result in possible disruption or challenges with the supplier.
For more information on SAP Supplier InfoNet, check out the following links:
You can follow me on twitter @howellsrichard
