Consumer Packaged Goods
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies can maximize the effectiveness of Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM) by adopting a metrics framework-based approach to monetize investments in business intelligence and analytics.
Given the limitations of people, infrastructure and budget, companies must classify and prioritize their business requests, which in turn, require them to implement a formal IT governance process . However, to prioritize BI requests...
along specific criteria, they need a BI governance process. How is a BI governance process defined? Why should it go beyond the basics of approving and prioritizing initiatives?
Implementation of a self-service BI platform is a daunting task. Its benefits, however, are substantial and influence the performance of everyone in the company. Find out how a self-service BI platform can be enabled effectively.
Providing Business Intelligence capabilities to suppliers is imperative to enable c-Commerce across a value chain. However, access to information is not sufficient in itself. The key to a successful c-Commerce relationship lies in strong performance management.
Effective BI can help companies gain a comprehensive understanding of the factors affecting their business, enabling them to take informed business decisions. Companies use BI applications or technologies to analyze...
information from external and internal sources. Such information helps companies get a better understanding of changing trends in the market, customer behavior and spending patterns, empowering managers to take informed business decisions for better results. However, while BI vendors have developed software tools to gather and analyze large quantities of data, it is difficult to obtain correct business requirements that guide metric definition and analysis. Our white paper examines why it happens and shows how visual representation of requirements using clickable mock-ups can provide an effective way to overcome the problem.
Demand Management
A typical IT environment in the manufacturing industry lacks visibility into the customer and supplier fronts of the supply chain, which holds the key to strategic planning and execution. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and...
Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) investments contribute to increased productivity and improved profitability only through efficient order management processes. Taking an enterprise view of CRM and SRM systems, companies must integrate them to capitalize on opportunities from demand and supply perspectives to increase profits and return on investment.
Providing Business Intelligence capabilities to suppliers is imperative to enable c-Commerce across a value chain. However, access to information is not sufficient in itself. The key to a successful c-Commerce relationship lies in strong performance management.
Energy and Utilities
The oil downstream distribution segment is adopting a range of supply chain solutions. However, the unpredictability of prices and margins, and long lead times make the process extremely challenging. Our white paper describes the complexities of applying such solutions.
The use of Linear Programming (LP) tools for both long-term planning and day-to-day scheduling is fairly common in refineries. However, there are variations between the LP run plan output and actual operations. The use of LP tools...
is one of the best ways to identify and quantify these variations. Depending on the level of business and IT tools adoption in a company, the challenges can be either in making a 'retro' LP model or in defining the framework for performance evaluation or in data consolidation and validation for the LP run. In terms of benefits, apart from the obvious benefits of performance monitoring, use of the same LP model that was used for planning helps in fine-tuning the model itself and identifying further areas of GRM boosting.
Advanced refinery planning requires responding rapidly to changes in the market or refinery capacity. Traditional methods for running linear planning tools rely on time-consuming processes for data collection, verification...
and situation analysis, resulting in delayed decisions. Rapid and informed decision-making requires integrating data of plant, trading and marketing. Infosys proposes refinery planning data integration by adopting an enterprise portal approach. Portals serve as a point of integration for data collection from both internal sources and external partners, perform analytics and generate proactive alerts and reports on demand for a variety of users, in a secure manner.
Finance
Financial supply chains are full of untapped savings opportunities. Infosys believes that in an increasingly networked environment, systematic and proven techniques can help realize such opportunities.
Hi-Tech
Greater variability and uncertainty across global supply chains have increased the complexity of manufacturing and distribution. Infosys’ experts believe that inventory optimization, backed by advanced technology, is the only way out.
Our expert tracks the supply chain ecosystem in the semiconductor industry and evaluates supply chain planning scenarios in both collaborative and non-collaborative systems.
Supplier Risk Management (SRM) has become a focus area in the wake of low-cost country outsourcing, geo-political instability and recurrent natural disasters. Infosys proposes a new SRM framework to mitigate risks.
Financial supply chains are full of untapped savings opportunities. Infosys believes that in an increasingly networked environment, systematic and proven techniques can help realize such opportunities.
Our expert maintains that a 360° approach to looking at where enterprise spends are being made can help procurement departments manage costs better.
Transforming supply chain data to information and further synthesizing information to knowledge for decision-making is imperative for competitiveness and profitability.
A supply chain analytics solution can help managers across the enterprise analyze barriers to market entry, respond to competition within well-defined supply tier structures, deal with the threat of product substitutes, continually...
drive product innovation, and manage product lifecycles to maximize returns.
An overwhelming majority (70%) of supply chain managers indicate that managing the global supply chain is the most challenging factor in new product development and product lifecycle management. These challenges are higher...
in priority above mergers and acquisitions (10%) and overlapping value chain (20%). It confirms the growing tendency for high technology companies to become lean and focus on their core competencies, while judiciously sourcing and forging global alliances.
Inventory Management
E-commerce traffic continues to rise exponentially in the retail industry. Growth, however, is hindered by slow e-commerce websites. Retailers need to rethink their inventory availability strategies to achieve faster browsing without...
compromising on-time deliveries. Our white paper addresses the challenge of scalability by using a differentiated inventory visibility strategy. It avoids maintaining inventory positions for sold items leading to an improved website shopping experience.
Greater variability and uncertainty across global supply chains have increased the complexity of manufacturing and distribution. Infosys’ experts believe that inventory optimization, backed by advanced technology, is the only way out.
Better use of technology can tackle shrink, from mitigating theft to Point-Of-Sale error reduction. The reasons behind shrink are varied, depending on the type of products and clientele. Our white paper provides an approach...
that ensures diligence in identifying the primary causes of shrink before proceeding to mitigate them, thus ensuring maximum return on investment.
Logistics and Transportation
Our white paper discusses best practices from the most successful inbound logistics programs of manufacturing companies in the automotive industry and Consumer Packaged Goods manufacturers. It also discusses the...
role of a 3PL services provider (focusing on transportation and warehousing services) in this equation.
Traditional approaches that help companies reduce landed costs focus on the symptoms and not the causes of the problem. If a company views transportation as a problem area, it may implement a Transportation Management...
System (TMS), expecting it to curtail creeping landed costs. While any TMS streamlines transportation procurement and generates optimal loads and routes, it is constrained by inputs. Our white paper goes beyond the symptoms contributing to landed cost and, instead, examines underlying factors to provide a solution. While the reasons for a rise in transportation spend such as rising fuel costs and external supply chain visibility, are well known, the overlooked causes mostly pertain to organizational behavior. Infosys' Logistics Optimization (LogO) solution, which ensures internal visibility coupled with collaboration, can go a long way in addressing the problem.
Manufacturing
Customer retention, the lack of seamless collaboration, unreliable performance and service measurement, and inaccurate forecasting are some of the challenges that plague service practitioners in the manufacturing...
industry. In the face of increasing business complexities, service functions need to be transformed to improve customer satisfaction, enhance profitability, create a responsive service supply chain and optimize field service operations. Infosys' experts examine how the Service Performance Workbench (SPW) helps address these challenges by providing visibility and offering performance metrics for the after-sales service supply chain.
For any MES/ enterprise integration effort to be manageable and effective, it must adopt a top-down perspective and use processes as the organizational foundation for a staged implementation of integration.
Service
In a majority of industries, the key to cutting costs lies in successfully managing returns. Cutting reverse logistics costs by refurbishing and reselling returned goods can positively impact a company's profitability. Reverse logistics...
can, in fact, be transformed into a strategic differentiator for companies in the high technology industry. Infosys' experts discuss this challenge and how an integrated solution approach promises high optimization, track and trace reconciliation and decision support to reverse logistics processes.
Warranty management is an enterprise-wide challenge that impacts departments of quality, customer service, product development, finance and procurement. Infosys' approach to warranty management encompasses strategy, warranty...
operations and processes. We focus on:
- Bridging gaps between customer service, quality and engineering departments
- Ensuring OEM collaboration between upstream and downstream partners
- Leveraging technology to gain insights into quality, engineering and manufacturing processes
Our approach strikes a balance between automation, manual claims processing and analytics by blending Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and an Early Warning System (EWS) based on advanced analytics.
The retail industry seeks to meet consumer demand with a range of products and variants. Ironically, the wide choice elevates consumer expectations to such high levels that the slightest variation in product attributes causes...
dissatisfaction and returns. In their quest to compete with traditional retailers, online retailers have adopted extremely liberal, high-cost return policies. A focused approach to reverse logistics management can improve back-office operations, efficiency, customer experience and brand loyalty.
Customer retention, the lack of seamless collaboration, unreliable performance and service measurement, and inaccurate forecasting are some of the challenges that plague service practitioners in the manufacturing...
industry. In the face of increasing business complexities, service functions need to be transformed to improve customer satisfaction, enhance profitability, create a responsive service supply chain and optimize field service operations. Infosys' experts examine how the Service Performance Workbench (SPW) helps address these challenges by providing visibility and offering performance metrics for the after-sales service supply chain.
Sourcing and Procurement
Contract compliance is a critical area for all Chief Procurement Officers. They constantly monitor dashboards to curb savings leakage owing to contract non-compliance. This view point...
proposes Contract Performance Management Maturity Assessment Framework to identify shortfalls in contract management processes and technology capabilities. Further, our expert recommends investments in effective spend analysis capabilities and metrics to identify opportunities for shoring up bottom-line margins.
Companies face challenges in contract management, resulting in lost savings. Contract management, an integral part of spend management, links strategy with execution. Infosys' experts share their perspectives on the benefits...
and implementation of the 'right' strategy to help you address issues while leveraging contracts across the enterprise.
A typical IT environment in the manufacturing industry lacks visibility into the customer and supplier fronts of the supply chain, which holds the key to strategic planning and execution. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and...
Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) investments contribute to increased productivity and improved profitability only through efficient order management processes. Taking an enterprise view of CRM and SRM systems, companies must integrate them to capitalize on opportunities from demand and supply perspectives to increase profits and return on investment.
Supplier Risk Management (SRM) has become a focus area in the wake of low-cost country outsourcing, geo-political instability and recurrent natural disasters. Infosys proposes a new SRM framework to mitigate risks.
Financial supply chains are full of untapped savings opportunities. Infosys believes that in an increasingly networked environment, systematic and proven techniques can help realize such opportunities.
Our expert maintains that a 360° approach to looking at where enterprise spends are being made can help procurement departments manage costs better.