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November 12, 2001

One Quick Hit at a Time

Using portal technology can help you extract value from your supply chain one step at a time

By Ram Reddy

Continued from Page 1

INTEGRATING ACROSS THE SUPPLY CHAIN FOR QUICK HITS

Figure 1 illustrates customer touchpoint aggregation. The figure looks daunting, but consider using a building-block approach where only one or two systems may be aggregated at first. Aggregation of customer touchpoints from across the supply chain may gradually lead to integration across the supply chain. Accomplishing this task successfully requires a planning and architecture function that looks at the current and future business needs and reconciles those with the current and future technology infrastructure. In many companies today, there is a proliferation of integration technologies that rarely interoperate as advertised and create post-implementation integration challenges. Without the architecture role focused solely on the strategic business and technology infrastructure needs, integration technologies will continue to proliferate and adversely affect the company's competitive responsiveness by limiting its ability to aggregate and integrate structured and unstructured systems.

This building-block approach focuses on the here and now of aggregating applications quickly to improve operational efficiencies and the company's agility. It also has the added benefit of reducing and eliminating the customization requirements of ERP and SCM systems that frequently challenge implementation timelines. Shifting the focus of customization to the portal minimizes the effect on SCM and ERP implementations. Selling this concept to the enterprise would fall to the architecture and planning role, which can then ensure that the customization requirements are built in the portal. To do this, the architect needs a good understanding of the current and future business strategy, the business processes within the enterprise and across the supply chain, and the supporting technology infrastructure.

THE DANGER OF EASY-TO-IMPLEMENT PICTURES

During my long tenure in corporate IT, I would cringe when looking at pictures like Figure 1 that appear easy to implement. Although Figure 1 is a high-level vision of how to aggregate systems across the supply chain, implementing that vision is not a trivial task. Further complicating the issue is the difficulty in selling technology infrastructure within an enterprise. Fortunately, portal technologies can be built in an incremental fashion with infrastructure costs embedded within the cost-benefit analysis for a quick-hit supply chain opportunity. In other words, the technology infrastructure itself can be built incrementally - one quick hit at a time. Ensuring that these quick hits are aligned to support the company's business strategy requires the guidance of a dedicated architect.

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The incremental portal approach leverages existing technology investments across the supply chain in ERP and SCM systems. Long-term strategic goals may require a complete overhaul of SCM systems. In the interim, the company still has to compete in the marketplace and doesn't have the luxury of calling a time-out with its competitors while it gets its SCM technologies in order. Portal technologies combined with the architecture function can provide the necessary operational efficiency and agility to achieve two objectives at once: short-term quick hits and long-term supply chain alignment goals.

Ram Reddy [ramreddy@tacticagroup.com] is the author of Supply Chains to Virtual Integration (McGraw-Hill, 2001). He is the president of Tactica Consulting Group (www.tacticagroup.com), a technology and business strategy consulting company.

RESOURCES

Georgia Tech Supply Chain Study: "Putting a Price on Supply Chain Problems"

Related Article at IntelligentEnterprise.com:

"Chasing Windmills," Oct. 24, 2001