Essential Technology in Supply Chain Management: Data Fabrics
When contemplating supply chain software vendors, InterSystems might not instantly come to mind. However, the company is aiming to change that with its expansion of the data fabric portfolio. Today's fast-paced business cycles demand agility and the ability to make quick adjustments. InterSystems believes that supply chain data fabrics can aid companies in enhancing their supply chain processes.
Who is InterSystems?
A fast-growing global private company, InterSystems boasts nearly 2,000 employees and revenues exceeding $1 billion. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, they specialize in offering software systems and technology for complex integration, rapid application development, and advanced analytics. They have had significant success in the healthcare industry with their healthcare information systems. InterSystems aims to replicate that success in the supply chain sector, recognizing the potential for improvement in existing supply chain planning and execution systems and processes. Their flagship supply chain product is InterSystems Supply Chain Orchestrator.
The Integration Challenge
Companies employ integrated business planning (IBP) for comprehensive supply chain planning, balancing projected demand against what can be produced. However, the resulting plan from the IBP process was too static and inflexible, failing to adapt to changes in market conditions. This led to a shift towards agile planning, allowing companies to better adapt to market demands.
Implementing integrated business planning and agile planning is complex, involving various internal and external systems and data sources. Data from sensors, machines, and smart factories is often disconnected and fragmented across various applications, further complicating the process.
InterSystems offers an enterprise data fabric to address these challenges, providing speed and simplified access to data assets across the entire business. The platform can access, transform, and harmonize data from multiple sources to make it more usable and actionable for various business applications.
The Orchestration Challenge
Supply chain orchestration requires complex integration, ensuring both long-term integrated business planning and short-term agile planning as well as execution. Various stakeholders, such as supply chain, manufacturing, logistics executives, sales and marketing, finance, and suppliers, must be coordinated and automated.
When disruptions occur, complex tradeoffs are often required to meet competing demands. InterSystems' solution, being AI-enabled and leveraging advanced analytics, can help evaluate these tradeoffs, enabling informed decision-making to better handle disruptions.
Combined with their smart data fabric architecture, InterSystems' Supply Chain Orchestrator provides real-time connective tissue, unifying disparate data sources, and offering next-generation solutions to accelerate decision-making and drive efficiencies throughout the entire supply chain.
In conclusion, InterSystems' Supply Chain Orchestrator addresses integration and orchestration challenges by providing a comprehensive platform for real-time, intelligent, and actionable insights. It utilizes smart data fabric architecture, advanced GenAI and ML capabilities, and AI-enabled decision intelligence to optimize supply chain operations and deliver significant benefits to businesses.
- In order to overcome the challenges of integrated business planning and supply chain orchestration, InterSystems collaborates with various transportation vendors to ensure seamless data exchange and coordination between different systems.
- Recognizing the importance of data accuracy and consistency in intersystems communications, InterSystems works diligently to provide its clients with access to real-time, up-to-date data fabric, potentially saving companies from costly layoffs due to inefficiencies in their supply chain processes.
- As InterSystems continues to expand its datafabric portfolio, they are partnering with several billion-dollar vendors to integrate their supply chain orchestration solutions, aiming to strengthen their position in the transportation and logistics sectors.