How to Streamline a Complex Supply Chain With Anaplan!

The supply chain has long transitioned from being a “chain” of items to being a WEB of complex activities. It is a network of activities where one part affects the other, and to remove the discrepancies working together is of utmost importance. 

And while working on multiple components, having unified data on a single platform, can help you make adjustments to each component while ensuring that the entire ecosystem continues to work in complete harmony. For such requirements, it is where Anaplan comes into the picture. Before we discuss what Anaplan is and its features are (P.S. we also talk about how you can integrate it with other platforms like Microsoft Power BI or Microsoft Azure), let’s check a few functions of a supply chain.

Source: Anaplan

Supply Chain Activities

You can clearly see them in the picture above. But for the sake of clarity let’s take an example to look at how complex can this web can be. For an executive, knowing the Demand is important as it is useful to determine the level of inventory required and to determine the production schedule. Trade promotions based on the historical data or upcoming seasons can also determine the demand which in turn changes the demand. Think about more parameters. Are you planning to have a strategy in place such that you increase your assortments? Then what would the mix of goods you want to display? Is this planning for the short term or long? There are multiple questions that need to be answered.

It is not easy to determine the levels of production if you are planning to have changes to your processes and goods. You might need scenario & demand planning to have a combined effect to understand the state you are in and plan further. It is to solve this complexity that Anaplan has come into play.

What is Anaplan?

Anaplan is a SaaS-based company that provides Connected Planning services. By using the Anaplan platform for supply planning, you can say goodbye to static, linear decision-making and say hello to a dynamic process. Anaplan for supply chain planning ensures an accurate supply prediction across the whole network by providing real-time, end-to-end insight and "what-if" scenario planning. With Anaplan you can achieve end-to-end visibility and plan scenarios in real-time by seeing how the change in one parameter affects the others. 

Customers, suppliers, and other network partners can all benefit from the Anaplan platform, allowing them to interact more efficiently. 

If you don’t believe us, this is what an Anaplan user has told about it in feedback.

“It used to take us five days to react to demand changes. Now, it takes us five minutes.”

At its core, Anaplan can help you with Demand Planning, Supply Chain Planning, Sales & Operations Planning activities. Its motive is to make pro-active changes than to make reactive changes to the demand planning, as in this volatile environment Demand planners have to be ready to adjust their plans when change happens to help them sense and drive the demand. 

Inventory and supply network optimization with Anaplan

Knowing where to put goods in the supply chain to cut prices and boost efficiency is at the heart of inventory optimization. The Anaplan platform with its trademark Hyperblock engine makes these choices simple. It factors in all variables, such as service levels, lead times, demand variations, customer commitments, and supply reliability, to show supply chain specialists exactly how much inventory to keep at each site to match the customer's service standards.

Seamless collaboration with Anaplan

Now that you’ve understood how to utilize Anaplan in the Supply chain, let’s delve a little deep into its usability and how it is utilized in real-time. We’ve discussed previously the various aspects and nodes of a supply chain. While handling this in real-time how this would look like is with a stream of emails with purchase orders and excel columns exceeding 40 and thousands of rows. And for eliminating such a strenuous task, you can leverage Anaplan, by combining it with other resources or software which are already in use with the organization or can be combined to create a better effect. For example, let’s talk about the collaboration between Anaplan and Azure. 

We know that with Anaplan you can create models with multiple scenarios. In this process, you might need to create separate apps for finance, demand, orders, etc. For such transparency, you can leverage Microsoft Azure’s robust, cloud platform to store historical snapshots of the information entered in Anaplan in a SQL Server database. This allows you to connect a variety of tools to the data in order to perform valuable analyses. This process of connecting with Azure can reduce the overall timeline of implementation.

It can also go to the next mile i.e. for Data Visualization, for connecting with platforms like Power BI. With a seamless native connection between Anaplan and Power BI, you can align plans and decisions for reporting. You can access Anaplan models and conduct data query all the while allowing instant data refresh to automatically update reports.

If you’re thinking about why is it required, then take it this way. With this, you can Extract data from Anaplan into Power BI, eliminating the need for technical support, and easily create reports, dashboards, and visualizations. You can leverage the capabilities of Power BI like merging data from multiple sources and publishing it to the cloud. 

In conclusion

The only question we’d like to ask you, is - Are you ready to move your supply chain beyond its limitations driven by outdated ERP systems and traditional spreadsheets? If your answer is yes, then by now you must have understood how Anaplan can help you to collaborate across the enterprise, quickly adjust to market changes, and reap benefits, including lower costs and increased efficiency.

If you want to know how Anaplan platform has enabled many leading supply chain organizations to achieve accurate forecasts and increase profitability or would be interested to know more about its capabilities contact us.