Recommendations for Creating Value with BI/Analytics in the Supply Chain

If you are a supply chain professional you probably already know this: Building analytics solutions that produce actual value is usually a very complex endeavor which requires a lot of thought, time and effort.

The main reason is that the data you need to consolidate to get value is typically very fragmented and lives in multiple data sources, both internally, externally (at suppliers/customers) and in between (e.g. forwarders, agents, etc.). Some data might not even be possible to access.

How do you build a complete supply chain analytics solution that lets you access, integrate and analyze all this data at the same time? Based on my 12 years of experience in the Analytics world, I would say you probably shouldn’t try to do that…

Going for a “big bang” complete solution almost always fails, not only in supply chain projects. In most industries it is just too complex to get everything right at the same time. Even if you are very detailed and careful, your project will be so long that during its course things around you will change that will get you into new problems, key people might leave, organizations change, etc. The list of things that can happen along the way is long.

So that begs the question: How should you approach supply chain analytics to ensure you create actual value for your own organization and indirectly for your customers?

Below are my top 5 recommendations based on my own work in the field of Business Intelligence and Analytics: