Sup­ply chain pro­fes­sion­als from around the world trav­eled to Chica­go on Octo­ber 29 – 31 for the ASUG Expe­ri­ence for Sup­ply Chain and Pro­cure­ment. They joined peers and indus­try thought lead­ers to dis­cuss chal­lenges, inno­va­tions, and how to meet cus­tomer expectations.

ASUG’s CEO Geoff Scott wel­comed the atten­dees on Tues­day morn­ing, shar­ing insights ASUG Research had gath­ered in a 2018 study with the sup­ply chain and pro­cure­ment industry.

One of the most inter­est­ing insights he shared was that most com­pa­nies (76 per­cent) feel that their inven­to­ry process­es need improve­ment. In fact, the sin­gle biggest goal for sup­ply chain and pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als in 2019 is to make process improvements.

Scott did some inter­ac­tive polling dur­ing the keynote where he asked: 

• Why are you here today? 
• What’s the most impor­tant emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy for your company? 
• Does your com­pa­ny believe that sup­ply chain trans­paren­cy is a key to busi­ness success? 

Pin­point­ing Pain Points 

More than half of the atten­dees in the room par­tic­i­pat­ed in the poll and iden­ti­fied edu­ca­tion and net­work­ing as the main rea­sons for being at the ASUG Expe­ri­ence event.

“There are 30 ses­sions here over the next cou­ple of days,” Scott said. ​“So, there is a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty for you to think about how you want to approach your learn­ing journey.”

Many of the atten­dees in the room (49 per­cent) point­ed to machine learn­ing as the most impor­tant emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy for their com­pa­ny, fol­lowed by the Inter­net of Things (28 per­cent). It’s worth not­ing that both machine learn­ing and IoT ranked as the top two emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies in the ASUG research study.

Most who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the inter­ac­tive polling (72 per­cent) answered yes to whether their com­pa­ny believes that sup­ply chain trans­paren­cy is a key to busi­ness success. 

Open­ing the Future with the Right Key 

Dur­ing her keynote address titled ​“Con­nect Dig­i­tal­ly to a Per­fect Real­i­ty” on Tues­day evening, Hala Zeine, pres­i­dent of Dig­i­tal Sup­ply Chain at SAP said, ​“We can­not solve prob­lems for mod­ern peo­ple with­out mod­ern tools.”

She talked about the need to not only adopt new tech­nolo­gies but to also rethink how the process­es behind them work. Zeine point­ed to how an intel­li­gent enter­prise con­nects these tools togeth­er with­in a sup­ply chain to bet­ter design, man­u­fac­ture, deliv­er, and man­age products.

“A great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence relies on a great prod­uct expe­ri­ence,” she said. ​“To do this, you need to be able to pro­vide cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty in every sin­gle part of the sup­ply chain, you need to have vis­i­bil­i­ty, and you need to have busi­ness inno­va­tion,” Zeine said. 

Dri­ving Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion with SAP Ariba 

For a sup­ply chain and pro­cure­ment pro­gram to run effec­tive­ly, it needs a plan and process in place that allows buy­ers and sup­pli­ers to man­age every­thing from con­tracts, to pay­ments and sourc­ing with­out con­flicts or slowdowns.

Enter SAP Ari­ba. Deb Kaplan, who took the stage on day two to deliv­er a keynote, called her­self a ​“Sup­ply Chain Evan­ge­list for SAP Ari­ba.” She cir­cled back to what Zeine dis­cussed about cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty, total vis­i­bil­i­ty, and inno­va­tion and said, ​“Although SAP Ari­ba fits into the net­work and spend man­age­ment part of the intel­li­gent suite of an SAP S/4HANA solu­tion, from an orches­tra­tion per­spec­tive, it is con­nect­ed to cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, man­u­fac­tur­ing and sup­ply chain, dig­i­tal core, and peo­ple engage­ment as well.”

Dur­ing one of the ses­sions titled, ​“What you Need to Know About SAP Ari­ba Sup­ply Chain Col­lab­o­ra­tion,” pre­sen­ter Raj Alluri explained SAP Ari­ba as a prepacked net­work solu­tion that offers fore­cast, inven­to­ry, qual­i­ty, and order collaboration.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Accen­ture and Adi­ent talked about their jour­neys to the SAP Ari­ba Net­work. Both stressed the impor­tance of inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, data cleans­ing, and the peo­ple behind the work. ​“You have to under­stand your process to dri­ve what the tech­nol­o­gy needs to do,” said Accenture’s Eli Lambert.

Learn­ing About Machine Learning

Accord­ing to the ASUG Research sur­vey, many com­pa­nies are plan­ning to, but do not cur­rent­ly take advan­tage of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies like machine learn­ing or arti­fi­cial intelligence.

There was a round­table dis­cus­sion, as well as a few ses­sions ded­i­cat­ed to machine learn­ing and how your com­pa­ny can ben­e­fit from it. Par­tic­i­pants of the round­table dis­cussed chal­lenges they face with adopt­ing emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing cost and com­pre­hen­sion. ​“Just because some­thing is new, doesn’t mean I’ll get the val­ue out of it,” one man said. ​“We haven’t even used all the new stuff in ECC yet.”

Cathy Ken­lin, man­ag­er of busi­ness appli­ca­tions at Zaus­ner, as well as an ASUG vol­un­teer, lead the dis­cus­sion and point­ed par­tic­i­pants to open­SAP train­ing. ​“It’s a free resource and a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn about all of these emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies,” she said.

Feed the Machines Data

Patrick Green of SCM Con­nec­tions defined machine learn­ing sim­ply by say­ing, ​“It is based around the idea that we should real­ly just be able to give machines access to data and let them learn for them­selves.” In his ses­sion, atten­dees learned more about how to use the data they’ve col­lect­ed in their sup­ply chain, com­bined with exter­nal data, to make bet­ter busi­ness decisions.

“Let machine learn­ing ana­lyze and test the data inputs to find pat­terns and to under­stand the cau­sa­tions that result from them. Let it eval­u­ate, man­age, and mit­i­gate sup­ply chain risk,” he said.

Man­ag­ing Through Col­lab­o­ra­tion and Integration 

Some­thing many of the atten­dees were ask­ing about was SAP Inte­grat­ed Busi­ness Plan­ning (IBP), which is a cloud-based solu­tion that com­bines capa­bil­i­ties for sales and oper­a­tions; demand, response, and sup­ply plan­ning; and inven­to­ry optimization.

One of the key points made dur­ing the two days at ASUG Expe­ri­ence was the need for sup­ply chains to remain agile and inno­v­a­tive. SAP IBP can be a tool to help orga­ni­za­tions do just that. And just like its name sug­gests, it inte­grates with oth­er prod­ucts such as SAP S/4HANA and SAP Ariba.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, Patrick Green dis­cussed how SAP’s IBP cloud archi­tec­ture allows for easy inte­gra­tion of machine learn­ing and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence appli­ca­tions, and with this, ​“com­pa­nies can bal­ance demand with sup­ply to attain prof­itable goals.”

The Future Lies in Planning…or Maybe in Twinning 

So, what’s the future path for sup­ply chain and pro­cure­ment com­pa­nies look­ing to stay ahead of the curve? Zeine said, ​“It’s some­where where the dig­i­tal world and the phys­i­cal world are entan­gled. It’s where you can sim­u­late in one and exe­cute in another.”

By adopt­ing a dig­i­tal approach and the new tools that come with it, mak­ing process improve­ments doesn’t seem as daunt­ing a task for com­pa­nies. With the help of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies, a sup­ply chain can have vis­i­bil­i­ty into all aspects of design, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and deliv­ery, as well as cus­tomer demand, expec­ta­tion, and satisfaction.

Link­ing it All Together 

This con­fer­ence was just what the atten­dees want­ed — a hub for learn­ing and net­work­ing. ​“I’ve learned so many things. All of this was new to me and I’ve made some great con­nec­tions,” said attendee Tra­cy Paulus. 

Although imple­ment­ing new tech­nolo­gies was at the fore­front of many of the ses­sions, most atten­dees learned that they’re all fac­ing sim­i­lar chal­lenges and journeys.

You can stay con­nect­ed with the sup­ply chain and pro­cure­ment com­mu­ni­ty all year long by becom­ing an ASUG mem­ber.