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What is a supply chain control tower?

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Overview

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A supply chain control tower offers a centralized view into supply chain processes that leverage data from multiple sources. Unlike most supply chain applications, a control tower takes a holistic approach to visibility, helping users see the big picture and respond proactively to possible disruptions. A command center builds on this foundation with AI, IoT, and analytics, expanding access to insights, enabling smarter decisions, improved performance, and streamlined supply chain automation.

Supply chain control tower

How can a supply chain control tower help with business operations?

Supply chain control towers enable faster and more informed decision-making. By aggregating data from various sources and streamlining analytics, they provide holistic insights that allow users to make quick, data-driven decisions, which is crucial in today's fast-paced business environment, where market conditions can change rapidly.

Through better decision-making, supply chain control towers help drive down operational costs and reduce the impact of supply chain disruptions. By optimizing inventory levels, improving forecasting accuracy, and streamlining logistics flows, control towers can help businesses reduce excess stock, minimize transportation costs, and improve overall operational efficiency, which can lead to substantial savings across the supply chain.

The key difference in how businesses approach their control towers lies in the level of visibility and insights provided. Traditional systems might offer retrospective analysis and limited forecasting capabilities. In contrast, modern control towers leverage advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and Internet of Things (IoT) to provide real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and prescriptive recommendations.

supply chain control tower

What are the key benefits of a supply chain control tower?

In addition to improving operational efficiency, control towers can help identify potential disruptions early, such as supplier delays, transportation issues, or demand fluctuations. By providing early warnings and suggesting mitigation strategies, organizations can mitigate potential risks and proactively address challenges before they escalate into major problems.

Supply chain control towers enable businesses to:

  • Mitigate risks and respond quickly to disruptions
  • Make better-informed decisions based on real-time data
  • Improve operational efficiency and reduce costs
  • Enhance customer satisfaction through improved service levels

By providing a holistic view across different data sources, control towers help organizations become more agile, responsive, and customer-centric in managing their supply chain operations.

What are the key features of an effective supply chain control tower?

For businesses looking to increase supply chain visibility and resiliency, a control tower can help track products, inventory, orders, and shipments in real-time, enabling more accurate forecasting and better-informed decision-making about day-to-day operations.

Key features of supply chain control towers include:

  • Real-time visibility: Access up-to-date information on logistics, fulfillment, inventory management, and other relevant processes, so you can stay ahead of potential issues with real-time tracking and instant alerts for inventory, shipments, and production disruptions.
  • Data integration: Combine data from multiple sources and present it through customizable dashboards, including internal systems like enterprise resource planning (ERP) and warehouse management system (WMS), external partners, IoT devices, and even external data sources like weather reports or economic indicators.
  • Advanced analytics: Analyze data, identify inefficiencies, and predict potential disruptions using AI and machine learning to understand what's happening, diagnostic analytics to determine why it's happening, and suggest optimal courses of action.
  • Visualization tools: Use dashboards, interactive maps, and other graphical interfaces that present complex data in an easy-to-understand format to understand the current state of their supply chain and identify areas that require attention.
  • Collaboration tools: Facilitate information sharing and communication between partners across the supply chain to share data, discuss issues and coordinate actions.
  • Autonomous execution: Advanced control towers can move beyond decision support to autonomous control and decision-making, reducing the need for manual intervention in routine tasks, which is increasingly important with fewer IT resources available.
  • AI and IoT integration: IoT provides real-time data from the physical world while AI interprets, predicts, and recommends actions. Within a supply chain, combined AI and IoT capabilities turn a control tower into an automation hub instead of just a dashboard.

How can an organization successfully implement a supply chain control tower?

Successful implementation of a supply chain control tower requires careful planning and execution. The first step is to clearly define the objectives and scope of the control tower, which involves identifying the specific supply chain challenges the organization wants to address and the key performance indicators (KPIs) it wants to improve.

  • Stakeholder support: It’s important to get support from both top management and other departments that will be impacted by the control tower. Clear communication about its benefits and challenges helps ensure everyone is on board.
  • Choosing a vendor: Selecting the right technology partner is crucial. The vendor should have experience with control towers and offer a solution that fits your organization’s needs and existing systems.
  • Data integration: Successful implementation requires identifying relevant data sources, ensuring data quality, and setting up processes for ongoing management. This may involve cleaning and standardizing data before starting.
  • Training: Users need training on how to use the control tower and how to make decisions based on the insights it provides, which may require a shift to more proactive supply chain management.
  • Implementation: The vendor should use a phased approach, starting with a pilot project or limited scope. This allows testing, issue identification, and adjustments before full rollout. Each phase should be reviewed to ensure it meets goals.
  • Continuous improvement: As the supply chain evolves, the control tower should adapt to new challenges. Regular reviews and updates will keep it valuable over time.

How do control towers differ from command centers?

The terms supply chain control tower and supply chain command center are often used interchangeably, but they have some key differences.

A supply chain command center is an evolution of the supply chain control tower. Command centers build on the key ideas behind control towers but look to expand visibility across the different functions within the supply chain and beyond, democratizing access to supply chain data across the organization. Command centers also bring additional focus on driving action from the insights generated.

Command centers use contextual, continuous and connected data from various sources, which can include functional control towers. Often, the focus of a command center is on cross-functional use cases to facilitate optimal decision-making based on all data available across the organization.

How can OpenText modernize supply chain control towers?

OpenText™ Trading Grid is a unified B2B trading partner management and integration platform that allows companies to connect once to our trading partner network of over one million pre-connected companies and reach internal and external people, processes, and things across an extended digital ecosystem. With its cutting-edge data and application integration technologies, OpenText Trading Grid facilitates comprehensive business-to-anything integration and communication within a unified cloud-native platform.

With our trading grid, you can power your supply chain control tower with reliable data in order to:

  • Reduce costs: Reach all trading partners and exchange information in any format via a single connection, lowering costs of in-house integration tools by 40% on average.
  • Increase operational productivity: Improve efficiency, on-time delivery rates and inventory turnover with operational control and faster, more accurate business transactions.
  • Speed time to revenue: Comply with ecommerce requirements and start taking orders faster with accelerated customer onboarding.
  • Accelerate trading partner onboarding: Easily connect, communicate, and collaborate with new trading partners using the pre-connected trading partner community and extensive self-service tools.
  • Build a future-proof integration environment: Quickly establish a digital foundation across the extended business ecosystem to enable business growth and support future digital transformation initiatives.
  • Modernize the B2B integration experience: Increase efficiency and make the right decisions faster with a built-in conversational, private generative AI-based, self-service virtual advisor.

How can OpenText help take supply chain control towers to the next level?

OpenText also offers solutions to augment your control tower with a command center. OpenText™ Trading Grid Command Center leverages the OpenText Trading Grid integration platform to deliver contextual insights on key business processes.

Essentially, OpenText Trading Grid serves as the foundation for supply chain data exchange and collaboration, while OpenText Trading Grid Command Center builds upon this foundation to provide advanced analytics and visibility for supply chain optimization.

OpenText Trading Grid
OpenText Trading Grid is a unified B2B Integration platform that:

  • Connects businesses to a network of over one million pre-connected trading partners
  • Facilitates comprehensive business-to-anything integration and communication
  • Supports various connectivity types (EDI, API, file-based)
  • Enables automation of key processes like procure-to-pay and order-to-cash
  • Provides a digital foundation for business growth and future digital transformation initiatives

OpenText Trading Grid Command Center
OpenText Trading Grid Command Center is a portfolio of supply chain analytics and visibility tools that:

  • Leverages the data from the OpenText Trading Grid integration platform
  • Goes beyond traditional supply chain control towers to enable cross-functional collaboration
  • Provides detailed, contextual insights into B2B transactions and supply chain processes
  • Offers various monitors for integration, performance, risk, and tracking
  • Enables data-driven decision making and optimization of supply chain operations
  • Supports flexible API-based access to the insights via a centralized data platform

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