Technological Scaling of Supply Chain Operations
Companies working with production and distribution must be able to run key business processes 24/7 and have flexibility in their supply chains. Doing this is quite possible thanks to scaling technology.
New technology is now available to scale and sustain operations 24 hours a day during peak uninterrupted transaction times. This functionality helps improve performance, prevent service interruptions and maximize uptime.
Difficulties with connectivity arise when business processes compete for the same system resources. At this stage, units of scale help to run flexible operations. Scale units run in the nearest Microsoft Azure datacenter. The logic is to connect all units of scale to your enterprise-wide Supply Chain center to have all the information available.
Cloud scale units provide two key goals:
• When a company is offline or network latency is high: Mission-critical processes must continue to run.
• When productivity is high and heavy processes run in parallel: Production and warehouse processes should still be supported, ensuring high user productivity.
As a result, Scaling helps create flexible production management due to unreliable connections.
E-Commerce
The customer channels that businesses use to offer their products and services are gradually expanding. For example, customers expect services to be delivered remotely via digital channels, rather than visiting a store in person, which is further required by evolving circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This change in channels means different things for your order management system or other related business processes. Thus, companies have started to make larger investments in e-commerce platforms, with the acceleration of digital commerce channels in the midst of COVID-19.
Dynamics 365 Commerce is a very good alternative to existing business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce as a holistic solution that is smart and user-friendly, with the addition of business-to-business e-commerce capabilities. In other words, purchases made using digital self-service between businesses are more advantageous for both parties in terms of reconciliation and partners.
In addition to the agility and resilience in the supply chains of businesses worldwide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past few months, their adaptation to new customer needs through digital channels has allowed them to survive and consolidate their market position.
However, as vaccines become available, many businesses still do not know their customers' future shopping needs, ie what a return to in-store purchases will mean for their customer experience. According to Forbes' research, with the impact of the epidemic that is expected to last for years, retailers and shoppers will get used to the changes long after COVID-19 is under control.
Besides the actual shopping experience, the physical retail stores of the future will change due to the epidemic. Here are 10 changes that are likely to be seen in existing and new retail areas in the post-COVID-19 world.
Established distance: Most stores practice social distancing with signs to keep customers one and a half feet from each other while waiting in line. Future retail spaces could make the distance more permanent with different colored rugs or waiting areas to mark where each customer should stand.
Product placement for speed: Most retail stores are designed to encourage customers to dig deeper in the store and spend more time browsing. But in the future, stores will change their product placements to facilitate faster and smoother trips. Customers will want to get in and out quickly, and brands will want to discourage customers from touching items they haven't purchased.
Calming colors: After months of being at home, consumers are understandably worried about returning to physical stores. In the future, more brands will adopt soft lighting and shades of blue and green in their signage and decor to create a more calming atmosphere.
Autonomous stores: The cashier-less shopping model has gained momentum due to the pandemic and more stores are likely to implement this technology in the future. Autonomous stores keep customers and employees safer. The customer only touches the items he is considering buying, card readers are contactless. No need to interact with cashiers.
Built-in drive-thru services: There has been an explosion of in-home delivery models in recent months. In the future, the integration between technology and physical stores will be strengthened so that customers who come to the market can receive their shopping without leaving their cars.
Smaller stores: As e-commerce continues to grow, physical stores do not need as much space. Smaller stores can also help brands cut costs during economic uncertainty.
Filtering system improvements: Some of the biggest changes in physical spaces may not raise customers' awareness, but improved filtration systems can increase air humidity and potentially reduce the spread of microbes.
Open spaces: In many parts of the world, large groups of people are prevented from meeting. Outdoor retail spaces, such as walking centers, may see an increase in the future.
Showrooms: Retailers will bridge the gap between physical and e-commerce shopping, with showrooms allowing customers to view products in one space before deciding exactly what they need and ordering online.
Physical barriers: Stores are focused on protecting not only their customers but also their employees. Many stores implement plastic clear dividers between cashiers and customers. In the future, there will be creative ways to create physical barriers between people without harming the personal communication and service that occurs in stores.
Field Service
Dynamics 365 ERP is integrated with Dynamics 365 Field Services. By automating service operations in the field, customers can significantly reduce downtime of geographically dispersed mission-critical assets, ensuring that the right resources (labor, machines, parts, and tools) are available at the right place, at the right time, to proactively maintain them.
Companies can improve the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) of their geographically dispersed mission-critical assets by performing predictive maintenance based on real-time performance data from the IoT and data from Dynamics 365 Field Services. Traditionally, disparate systems hamper the ability to accurately forecast demand for critical and expensive parts that are often used in both service and new production. Due to the lack of foresight to service demand, companies are constantly removing parts from production to meet service demand and vice versa to provide good customer service. This often creates a shortage for new production and significantly affects on-time delivery to new customers. As a result, the company fails to deliver an enjoyable customer experience on both fronts. This integration will eliminate the need for disparate systems and significantly improve the forecast accuracy of these mission-critical parts through real-time monitoring in the service supply chain.
Improving Supply Chain Flexibility, Traceability, and Predictability with Blockchain
Many new technologies have been and continue to be involved in the transformation of the supply chain industry over the years. However, problems such as lack of traceability especially for raw materials and lack of trust in data between parties have not been fully overcome. Dynamics 365 ERP has implemented a custom blockchain-based solution to address this issue. This new technology has resulted in significant and sustained cost savings by increasing traceability.
The lack of visibility, product-level traceability and predictability causes uncertainty in supply chain operations, even for companies with the most advanced supply chain management in the world. This leads to overspending, errors, risks of fraud, fraud and more. Microsoft's blockchain platform addresses these challenges, uncovering hidden costs, increasing end-to-end material traceability, reducing cycle time and revealing expanded margins.
All supply chains have parties on both sides of the chain. Reconciliation of data between parties, giving visibility to goods requires an understanding of the complex and multilateral relationship of these goods, invoices, purchase orders and refunds.
When parties are solving a system problem regarding traceability within the walls of the enterprise, they result in a fragile web of interconnected systems. The result is a lack of visibility that hinders agility and makes it difficult to increase cost-efficiency.
The dream of many technologists within the supply chain is a unified platform that provides inventory and financial traceability through production, shipping, warehouse and delivery to solve the visibility problems of goods on the road/in production/warehouse in multi-layer supply chains. Today's technology is finally ready to overcome this problem and it is now possible to demonstrate the traceability of materials to the end of their life or to achieve transparency in the procurement of raw materials.
Blockchain has distinctive features that can include unique product identification, tracking, visibility, and three or more suppliers. Traditional ERP systems help clustered enterprise system designers resolve two-sided relationships, but lose visibility in the three or more (n-tier) supplier relationships that are typical in complex supply chains. The data structure of the blockchain and the n-layer participation in a blockchain network are open possibilities previously constrained by existing approaches.
With this technology, a repository of industry tools and supply chain data can be created that benefits all participants, such as unique market data previously unavailable from any source.
The expected results are traceability of inventory from its source, in transport and storage, and at the destination. The system provides network participants with digitized business statements (Scope of Work), invoices, and digitized purchase orders (PO) of serialized items and related financial and information flows. This goes beyond traditional systems such as tokenized payment agreements, reduced risk, and lower loan costs, which are the foundation of digital transformation capabilities. The transformation in pay and pay will help build a more sustainable and resilient supplier base by improving cash flow and easing financing fees for the smallest suppliers.
With a collaborative focus, Microsoft has created an ecosystem in which all parties are actively involved.
"This is one of the most promising innovations I've seen applied to the industry's biggest challenges," says Chuck Graham, General Manager, Cloud Sourcing and Supply Chain, Microsoft. “The single, shared dataset that allows all parties to view, contribute and monitor data is revolutionary in its ability to build trust in data between all parties. Blockchain platform digitizes elements in a shared data structure, saving hidden costs, end-to-end item-level traceability, reduced cycle time, and saves on expanded margins."
