In today’s retail industry, the term digitization pops up every now and then as a critical value proposition for companies to leverage growth and viability. But sadly, a lot of companies don’t even know what a digitized supply chain actually means.

Why is the Digitization of Supply Chains so important?
At most companies, products are delivered to customers in a very standardized process. Marketing teams analyze customer demand and try to predict sales for future periods. According to that prediction, they order raw materials, components, and parts for the anticipated capacity. Gradually, distribution teams account for upcoming changes in the amount of product coming down the pipeline, and customers are told when to expect their shipments. Now, if by chance all goes well, the gap between demand and supply at every point in the system is small. But we all know that this rarely happens.

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Forecasting remains a big question mark and the data it depends on can also be inconsistent or in fact incomplete. It is also common knowledge that most manufacturing teams operate independently from marketing, customers, suppliers, and other partners. Here, the lack of transparency cuts down the link of all supply chain processes. Inevitably, the orderly flow of products from marketing to a customer is bound to be disrupted somewhere or the other.

This is where a digitized supply chain can help you in reshaping your supply chain management to optimize all supply chain processes and streamline planning and production strategies. It also gives a company the ability to communicate with each other digitally and finds a way to swap outdated technology with the latest innovations. Most importantly, it gives you visibility.

How to Digitize Supply Chain?
There is a lot that goes into digitizing supply chain processes from procurement through vendor’s catalog to raising purchase orders, tracking shipments, and vendor management. It needs a combination of automated demand forecasting and technology-enabled replenishment planning solutions. The question now is how will you get all of this? The answer is simple, through Supplymint.

From its diverse set of modules, each one is programmed to cater to specific problems in digitizing supply chains.

Demand Planning
Understanding what users will need in the coming days or months is not an easy task. But we anyways have to work around predictions in order to know what to sell to customers to ensure maximum satisfaction and production efficiency. This is where Supplymint’s demand planning module works to strike a balance between having sufficient inventory levels to meet customer needs without actually having a surplus or insufficient stock. Its AI-based forecasting technology ensures that your demand planning never goes wrong and that a companies forecast accuracy increases rigorously.

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Procurement
Once you have the right prediction, the next step is picking the right vendors. Once you know what’s going to sell, you want someone reliable working on your product in order to get you and your consumer the right amount of satisfaction. For this result, Supplymint has the perfect tool that helps you project the list of all your best vendors and their specialties after analyzing their past performances, lead time, OTB balance, etc.

With such crisp and accurate information just a click away, it becomes easier to select the right vendors who are fit for the job. Now that you know who, you can digitally create an indent through Supplymint for your buying team to approve. Buyers can approve the same digitally and raising purchase orders becomes even easier from thereon.

Vendor Management and Collaboration
Assuming you raised purchase orders to 5 vendors, managing the processes of each vendor without digitization becomes very tough. You require more personnel and more effort to keep tabs on inspections, advance shipment notices, invoices, and logistics. With Supplymint, these problems cease to exist. That’s because you get real-time visibility of all your orders, right from processing to inspection, shipment tracking, gate entry, and GRC.

Inventory Planning and Replenishment
Once the order reaches your warehouse, next on your schedule is inventory planning. With the use of Supplymint that also becomes simple. All the calculations based on the present, past sales, item master, stock master, site master, stock turnover ratios, details of the warehouse are done automatically, and accordingly, replenishment and scheduling are taken forward. After calculations of barcode ranking on the basis of sell-through of old and new barcodes, a practical allocation planning is processed.

Conclusion: For a company looking to digitize its supply chain, starting at relying on intelligent and integrated solutions seems like the best idea. The goal should also be ambitious like to build a new kind of supply network that is both resilient and responsive. Supplymint is that solution.

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