5 Important Things to Know About Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management is an essential aspect of many businesses. A business owner might think that they understand how the supply chain works for their company, but it’s changing rapidly.

If your company relies on supply chain management, you want to know these changes so that you can adapt to them.

Let’s start with understanding demand management:

1. Demand Management

The future of supply management will see a greater increase in demand management. This consists of three different aspects. These are demand planning, merchandise planning, and trade promotion planning.

Demand planning is a prediction of whether goods will get delivered reliably. This will help your business to plan for ensuring fast delivery. This helps increase customer satisfaction and revenue.

Merchandise planning helps with deciding your expenditure on the goods you sell. This way you can decide how to price your products to get the highest return-on-investment.

Trade promotion planning helps you with marketing your products. This is to increase their demand among potential customers.

2. Digital Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management will increasingly evolve in the virtual world. For example, we will see many supply chain processes that occur on the blockchain. The blockchain will allow for the supplier and the end-user to see the transportation of the goods.

It will also register when the goods have left the supplier and when they arrive with the end-user. This makes it crucial for a business to familiarize itself with supply chain applications such as this EDI software.

Digital supply chain management will bring about greater security, the introduction of smart contracts, and a more efficient process.

3. Sales and Operations Planning

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) helps business owners make decisions on improving the supply chain process. 

For example, you can figure out the marketing strategies, production, sales, inventory management, etc.

You can use these to improve the supply chain process. This is imperative for deciding the supply chain process best-suited for your business and your customers.

4. Product Portfolio Management

When managing supply chains, a business owner has to consider product portfolio management. This refers to the process of conceptualizing the product. It extends to later introducing it to the market.

This process lets your team plan out the process for each product. Once the product is conceptualized you can focus on how to build it. Then you can focus on pricing and demand. Then you can plan on how to introduce it to the market. Finally, you can look at analytics to see if you wish to continue offering this product.

5. Real-Time Data

This returns to digital supply chain management. You can expect to see real-time data on the delivery of your goods and their success with customers. This will help you decide how many products to offer. 

This can also help with providing you information on your inventory. This is the best way to plan for the success of your company.

Grow With Supply Chain

Now that you know the changes with supply chain management, you can prepare for these changes within your company. Make sure to share this guide with your fellow business owners.

Read more supply chain tips and business advice on our website.

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