5 benefits of a centralized supply chain management platform

Globalization has dramatically improved brands and retailers’ capabilities, market reach, and profit margins. One thing it has not improved is the complexity and fragility of their supply chains.

In an attempt to increase supply chain oversight and efficiency, many organizations invest in tools such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and product lifecycle management (PLM). However, PLM and ERP software rarely provide deeper insights that satisfy the needs of global brands and retailers in their quality, compliance, and delivery operations.

Organizations manage quality, compliance, and production tracking with different manual tools such as Excel and email and, in most cases, are unable to centralize activities and data from these key functions in a way that is efficient and provides actionable insights.

Below, we look at the challenges of a decentralized system and the benefits of centralization to manage key functions such as quality, compliance, and production tracking.

The challenges of managing supply chain functions with a disconnected system

Even though PLM and ERP software attempt to digitize certain aspects of the supply chain, a key problem still exists: companies use multiple systems to maintain quality, compliance, and production tracking.

This leads to several challenges:

Repetitive manual work

The need to manually input data leads to information silos, repetitive work, and the need to migrate data between different platforms to extract insights:

• On average, spreadsheet maintenance requires 12 to 18 hours per month.
• To answer a single business question, 81% of professionals manually combine data from at least five different spreadsheets.
• Furthermore, the average data entry error is between 3 and 5% — meaning up to 1 in 20 data are incorrect.

Low efficiency

Manual, unoptimized work processes lead to redundancy, wasted time, skipped steps, and inaccuracies — all of which contribute to poor efficiency. This means companies don’t know where the issues lie or where to invest their money.

Poor visibility

With gaps between different systems, information cannot pass between them. This lack of visibility impairs the ability of business leaders to assess current problems, predict future ones, and allocate budgets properly.

Communication silos

Many companies have responded to increased complexity by introducing more systems to manage it. Unfortunately, a larger number of systems means more silos since the information stored in one system is inaccessible to another.

Poor collaboration

Different teams, different systems, sluggish collaboration. When teams use different tools to complete tasks, it’s nearly impossible for other teams to access data without requiring both parties to waste time duplicating and sending it over.

Incomplete view of supplier performance

Managing supplier performance requires monitoring, data sharing, and collaboration, all of which allow you to raise a red flag in time. With multiple decentralized tools, this is not possible.

Decision makers in different parts of the supply chain have their own business objectives, and decentralized tools limit brands' and retailers’ ability to control overarching business operations. This leads to a lack of agility and collaboration — problems the centralized Inspectorio platform addresses directly.

How centralized supply chain management addresses these challenges

A centralized network platform means the ability to connect everyone in your supply chain to one another, allowing the same information to be accessible by all parties. With true end-to-end connection, a supply chain has the ability to approach real-time visibility.

All parts of a centralized platform communicate with each other, giving data higher value and effectiveness. This leads to greater responsiveness, resilience, and cohesive corporate culture across globalized supply chains. In response, organizations can better predict problems and react to changes in market demand.

Compared with digital tools like PLM, a network platform like Inspectorio offers far more robust and granular control over supplier performance. Our product suite helps you deep-dive into details during production so you can drive meaningful improvements and better allocate resources:

• Inspectorio Rise helps brands, retailers, and suppliers manage compliance and sustainability
• Inspectorio Sight provides complete visibility and control over quality and inspections
• Inspectorio Tracking helps track production milestones and ensure on-time delivery

By comparison, a PLM or ERP has limited scalability and outreach in these specific areas of the production chain, making deeper analysis difficult.

Inspectorio utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver unparalleled visibility and optimization into the production chain. Its all-encompassing capabilities allow you to interconnect all of your operations and truly seize the benefits of digital transformation.

 A platform like Inspectorio enables:

1. Automation

Streamline processes and improve efficiency by delegating the burden of time-consuming activities to software. Eliminate pen-and-paper data collection and entry and the high degree of error associated with it. Set automated workflows to ensure your requirements are met. Mitigate risk and ensure compliance with real-time identification of issues.

2. Increased visibility

Today, working with multiple suppliers is the industry standard; and with a centralized platform, you don’t have to jump from portal to portal to access information on each. This increases transparency and sharing between different supply chain partners.

Inspectorio’s digital network platform provides end-to-end visibility over the entire production chain by “connecting suppliers, teams, and functions under a single platform,” according to Carlos Moncayo Castillo, CEO and Co-Founder of Inspectorio.

3. Centralized communication

Similarly, all stakeholders are connected on a single system. This eliminates complexity and inefficiency across global production networks, all while encouraging the sharing of ideas and actionable feedback.

4. Better decision making

Machine learning and AI continuously analyze data to help identify risk. This helps you make better decisions and put your limited resources to better use in addressing high-risk areas.

5. Improved supplier performance

Every transaction and its associated data are recorded in a centralized system, and analytics tools like dashboards and data visibility let you set up alerts for lagging supply chain metrics.

Because Inspectorio is the industry standard across suppliers’ systems, you can integrate with your partners and help them improve.

Simplifying supply chain management with Inspectorio

With Inspectorio, you can optimize your production chain workflows and manage the performance of your suppliers. With the majority of tasks now automated, decision-makers have more time to commit to optimization.

Inspectorio allows you to:

• Track key KPIs like defect trends and performance ranking
• Transform automation into autonomy, including resource optimization and risk mitigation
• Implement product tracking with robust Time & Action management, production monitoring, and tracking analytics
• Maintain a global view of your entire supply chain and take local action in real-time

Contact us for more information on how Inspectorio can centralize your supply chain management and provide significant ROI.