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Why Enterprise Resource Planning Systems Fall Short with Rebate Management

rebate management
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Software

Why Enterprise Resource Planning Systems Fall Short with Rebate Management

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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems allow companies to integrate many disparate elements of their business on a single centralized platform – from human resources to supply chain logistics to financial data. While this level of centralization can create operational efficiencies, the breadth of functionality offered by ERP systems also make them less effective when it comes to handling more specialized aspects of your business.

For example, when companies need to design, track, and execute rebate agreements, ERP systems come up short. This is because rebates can be highly complex and dynamic – to manage them productively, companies need purpose-built software that will help them maintain transparency internally and with trading partners, identify where rebate programs can be improved, and react to changes in markets and distribution dynamics. ERP systems allow companies to record the rebates they’re owed, but not much else.

Although many companies get by with the rudimentary rebate management tools offered by ERP systems, supported in parallel by spreadsheets and other off-system tracking, the usefulness of these tools breaks down with complex incentive-based rebate programs and an ever-increasing drive for rebates to stimulate the business growth they were implemented for in the first place. Dedicated rebate management systems, on the other hand, are designed around the needs of complex and dynamic rebate programs, helping companies build more sustainable relationships with one another by giving them a wider range of options and the resources they need to communicate and collaborate in real-time.

How to manage complexity

Global supply chains have never been more complex than they are today – they’re more interconnected, they serve larger and increasingly diverse markets, and they often require vast logistical infrastructure to function. A 2020 survey found that 91 percent of businesses say they “can’t stay ahead of their supply chain complexities.” As if this task wasn’t already difficult enough, COVID-19 threw the global economy into chaos overnight, snapping crucial links in supply chains, straining relationships between manufacturers and distributors, and forcing consumers to deal with delays and unpredictable cost fluctuations.

One of the reasons rebates exist is to account for uncertainty – from economic shocks to shifting consumer demands. They retroactively bring volume, pricing and payments into line with projections, incentivizing trading partners to continue investing in one another. The more contingencies rebates can account for, the easier it will be for companies to predict future conditions and adapt when they change. This is why there are hundreds of different types of rebate agreements – they can be based on seasonality, sales targets, marketing commitments, the performance of specific product lines, and a range of other variables.

Many rebate agreements also change annually (or more frequently) to spur growth and react to market changes as they arise. These are all reasons why these agreements can be surprisingly intricate, which makes ERP systems blunt instruments for managing them.

Increasing efficiency and agility

ERP systems are all about efficiency – by bringing a wide range of business processes (from workflow solutions to communication tools) together on a single platform, these systems are designed to consolidate information, facilitate cooperation, and streamline a company’s processes across the board. This sounds particularly attractive to company leaders in the supply chain sector, who are hyper-cognizant of any opportunity to increase efficiency. An EY survey found that 55 percent of companies expect digitization to improve operational supply chain efficiency (the second-most-cited option) over the next three years.

But can ERP systems really increase the efficiency and effectiveness of B2B rebate programs? By failing to account for a wide enough range of variables and providing little in the way of real-time flexibility, these systems aren’t the drivers of business growth that companies need. According to Gartner, 89 percent of supply chain professionals want to invest in agility. This is what specialized rebate management solutions provide by giving companies the chance to get creative with the negotiation and implementation of deals, adjust those deals as circumstances change, and track every stage of the process on a platform that was built specifically for handling rebates.

When companies rely on ERP systems that can’t accommodate their rebate needs, they’re forced to use other forms of documentation and manual logistics management, such as spreadsheets. This can lead to costly errors and wasted time – hardly the efficiency companies are after.

Building stronger relationships between supply chain partners

Rebates help companies forge stronger relationships by allowing them to negotiate deals that satisfy both parties and giving them the freedom to alter the provisions of those deals as circumstances dictate. Dedicated rebate management platforms provide mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability, more robust contract management, and the ability to manage hundreds of different types of rebates.

According to a recent Enable survey, more than one-third of companies say they still use spreadsheets to document, share, and sign off on deals. This doesn’t just lead to mistakes, backtracking, delays, and a series of other logistical problems – it can also be detrimental to relationships, as it requires partners to dig through scattered documents and search records that haven’t been properly systematized whenever a dispute or any other issue arises. ERP systems are typically transaction-centric, while rebate management systems make the process of creating, approving, and tracking deals an ongoing collaborative process with dedicated workflow and communication tools.

ERP systems have a clear role to play in helping companies become more productive, which is why rebate management solutions can be directly integrated with them. But rebate management is a highly specialized field – it requires digital tools that are specifically designed to manage complexity, improve supply chain flexibility, and build healthy and sustainable relationships between partners.

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AUTHOR BIO:

Andy James is the Director of Product Strategy at Enable, a cloud-based SaaS solution for B2B rebate management. The software is used by procurement and finance professionals in distribution, wholesale and manufacturing across over 50 industries so that they can have an easy, seamless solution to execute and track their full range of trading programs.

visibility
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Software

Supply Chain Visibility in Agriculture

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Agriculture companies are facing a major challenge of supply chain visibility as of recently when crops treated with pesticides have been sold as organic products. Because of a lack of traceability, farmers are not getting their worth and retailers are losing their credibility too.

Supply chain visibility has been a buzzword for several years and it is not hard to imagine why. With the advent of globalization and the internet in the 90s, the world became a lot more connected and consequently, supply chains became intricately networked and complex.

As companies grappled with this complexity, the need for better visibility was felt acutely. It has been more than two decades since globalization and the internet has now become mainstream, but it is harder than ever to maintain visibility over supply chains.

A survey of 623 supply chain professionals by GEOIDS indicated that visibility is still one of the top 3 priorities, while only 6% of them confessed having complete visibility over their supply chain. It is obvious that maintaining supply chain visibility is a very complex challenge facing agriculture companies today.

One way to look at this issue is through the “people, process, and technology” lens. Often, teams managing different points of the supply chain operate in siloes. To be fair, a lot of agriculture companies do understand this and have put in place processes that enable better collaboration between teams. But unfortunately, supply chains have a habit of being impacted by unexpected events – what if an important supplier collapsed? Or perhaps there was a political change or unexpected weather patterns squeezed supply? The truth is no one can anticipate these events. Even the best teams and the most well-designed processes will find it hard to adapt when the “unexpected” happens within a supply chain.

The challenge then lies with technology – specifically due to the fragmented nature of the technology being used. Teams in agriculture companies often use multiple software solutions to manage different activities of their supply chain, such as contract management, logistics, hedging & risk management, automation & task scheduling, etc. While this software does make it easy to carry out specific tasks, often they do not talk to each other. So someone has to manually collect information from these systems, put it in a spreadsheet, and apply specific algorithms to analyze data to get some visibility – which often takes days and weeks. This severely affects the company’s ability to respond rapidly to changes in the marketplace.

In today’s connected world, it is very important for agriculture companies to have a platform that can connect multiple systems to gather and analyze data, using algorithms specific to commodity supply chains. Such a platform would reliably support collaboration between teams and help supply chain executives adapt to unexpected events, providing a distinct advantage to agriculture firms.

Eka Software Solutions is a global leader in providing digital commodity management solutions, driven by cloud, blockchain, machine learning, and analytics.

To talk to Eka experts please write to info@eka1.com

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Archives, Global Trade Daily, Software

Benefits of using HMI for Industrial Purposes

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HMI stands for Human Machine Interface. We use HMIs to control and monitor machines in any industry. It is mainly used in the manufacturing sector. Process industries massively use HMIs, such as in oil and gas and mining processes in which many operations are managed remotely from a control room. Industries have implemented HMI software where human interference with a machine or automated equipment is needed. This could be in a system, plant, building, or even a vehicle. The level of assimilation and refinement may vary, but we can use HMI for just about any application type.

Let’s come to the point and see the benefits of using hmi for industrial purposes:

Improved Productivity

A human-machine interface, i.e. HMI, improves the performance of the given task. Even if a person can perform that same task, this kind of software/device increases productivity in an enormous amount. Using an HMI facilitates more work in any industry in a short time.

 Troubleshooting with old data

The HMI system detects, have the systems inspected based on past data feed. The entire evaluation, isolation, and correction of the alarm took less time to do it manually. HMI’s makes it troubleshoot the problems in early stage.

Report generation

The creation of a perfect report and save it for data analysis is one of the crucial tasks. As a human, we can make many mistakes while recording such things. Maintenance and feeding the data for future use is something that should be done on time.

Comfort

With the ability to control a device easily, their use in production and ease systems has dramatically improved people’s lives by increasing comfortability. The machine should be accessible from a long distance so that the operator can be at more ease.

Keeping Records

They have high abilities to keep records. By inserting instructions into an HMI, the system to which it is connected can automatically store the data. Such data can be utilized later for other researches, for example, troubleshooting future analysis.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of things refers to a combination of devices that are all coupled to the internet. HMIs can also connect to the internet since they are devices too. This enables remote access to the devices.

Reduce the Cost of Hardware

An HMI reduces the expense that an industry acquires in terms of devices like consoles, connections, and control panels. An HMI can replace them, thus saving on costs.

Asset management

Accuracy in real-time data and reports gives managers the ability to be more efficient and make just the right maintenance plans for businesses. The drilling and fracking industries have to handle some of the most challenging circumstances in managing and observing large numbers of regularly moving assets.

Data availability

Data is an essential input when making decisions. How users utilize these records will discover the value applied to the process. The power is in the availability of data and relying on people’s abilities and skills to get insight and make enhancements. This data is available for other analysis too.

costs
Archives, Global Trade Daily, Software, Special Reports

The Pandemic’s Impact on the Shift to Reduce Operational Costs and Improve IT Ops Productivity

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The COVID-19 pandemic caused an upheaval in IT operations worldwide and forced businesses to reevaluate ways to cut down expenses, the most significant being operational costs. Leaders were challenged with having to operate with skeletal staff and remote teams, while also needing to keep enterprises running 24×7 with virtually no downtime. Let’s look at how the pandemic impacted IT operations and what needs to be done to ensure that enterprises can continue to operate cost-effectively.

Leaner Team Structures to Scale Down Non-Discretionary Costs

The first step organizations took in 2020 was to downsize the contractual resources and variable talent pool deployed in network operations centers to cut back on non-discretionary costs. Leaner teams were expected to perform a similar quantum of work, which in turn emphasized the need to move to greater automation in IT operations management (ITOM).

Going forward, the challenge will be to attract the right talent, do more with less, and introduce automation in business processes to make do with smaller teams. To help reduce the operations workforce, there is growing interest in intelligent tools for notification and escalation, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) solutions that minimize alert fatigue and automation of ticketing workflows via IT service management (ITSM) integrations. Further, some amount of in-house work can be shifted to consultants and contractors on an as-needed basis, so the resource is no longer on the payroll after the project completes.

Remote Management and the Rise of DaaS
With COVID-19 forcing businesses to give up leased and rented office spaces to reduce capital expenditure, skeletal staff were deployed onsite with others moving to a work-from-home mode of operation abruptly. This heightened the need for greater security, availability of the right talent with the required software and hardware resources and the need for collaboration among geographically dispersed teams.

Desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) was one of the largest areas of the cloud to experience an increase in demand because of this shift. DaaS is an inexpensive option for organizations looking to support their workers by providing secure access to enterprise applications remotely. Tool integrations for notifications like Slack as well as remote collaboration tools and meeting solutions like Teams, Trello and Zoom also rose to prominence.

The Rise of DevOps and Agile Practices for Deployment Automation

Organizations needed mechanisms for remote and automated deployments due to staff shortages and the absence of a centrally located workforce. This necessitated agile practices for breaking down organizational silos between software developers and IT operations personnel. In 2021, we expect to see increased adoption and continued use of DevOps and agile practices as well as automation in the application deployment and maintenance process.

Data center automation replaces labor costs with software and configuration costs. Dedicated automation architects can ensure that DevOps and agile practices are implemented across the enterprise, thereby reducing the need for manual configuration, monitoring and maintenance tasks.

Revamping Application Infrastructure and Moving to IaaS for Intelligent Scaling

Organizations chose to review their expenditure on dedicated hardware and software solutions to see if a switch to cloud and open source was possible. Virtualization i.e., moving to cloud (microservice and container-based architectures) emerged as a solution to the conundrum, since it reduces the number of physical servers required in the enterprise and the cost of maintaining applications can be significantly brought down.

Cost savings in cloud services have a real, immediate and perceptible cash impact, as moving to the cloud reduces capital expenditures for servers and related network equipment, transforming one-time capital costs to monthly operating expenses. The deployment of virtual management systems enables faster adoption of cloud platforms. Co-sourcing environment management functions provides the added advantage of having the right talent managing the environment with technical know-how and service guarantees in place.

Cloud providers can also provision additional resources like disk space, CPU, memory and communication lines faster and cheaper than on-premise servers and infrastructure. Intelligent workload trend-based capacity forecasting can help deliver resources accurately and avoid unnecessary expenditure.

Software licenses for new and existing tools can be re-examined to ensure that the cost of onboarding and integration with the existing toolset does not include hidden expenses or jeopardize existing investments in the ITOM infrastructure in any way. Eliminating unnecessary tools will also reduce the annual maintenance bills and staff time required to keep systems up and running.

Preventive Healing and Automation for Maximum Uptime

As businesses moved to more digital transactions and saw a marked increase in online traffic due to storefronts being shut, the primary challenge was to provide close to 24x7x365 uptime with reduced IT operations personnel, something made possible by automation. Enterprises adopted artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) solutions providing proactive incident detection and autonomous resolution capabilities coupled with ITSM integrations, so the entire ticketing process was completely automated without the need for human intervention.

Traditional AIOps solutions suffer from certain shortcomings, including the inability to predict issues before they occur and initiate preemptive measures to avert outages. However, preventive healing solutions use patented techniques providing predictive detection of issues and allowing for remedial steps to be put in place so the issue can be averted. Some modes of preventive healing include dynamically optimizing or shaping the workload so the underlying system behavior remains unaffected, provisioning additional resources in cloud environments so the system can handle workload surges or projecting resource requirements based on a what-if analysis of future workload trends so businesses can perform app-aware scaling. Automation of ticketing workflows can be achieved by integrating notification and ITSM platforms.

Despite predictive alerting, some issues may still occur due to sudden network or storage outages, hardware glitches or third-party dependencies being unavailable. In such cases, accelerated root cause analysis with event correlations and suggestions on where the error originated can significantly reduce mean time to repair (MTTR). In the hands of a skilled IT operations analyst, time-synchronized contextual data comprising logs, diagnostic data, business error codes and code-level traces prove invaluable in establishing the chain of causation and closing the incident with minimal time and effort spent, thus leading to a more cost- and resource-efficient data center.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Girish Muckai is the chief sales and marketing officer at Heal Software Inc., the innovator of the game-changing preventive healing software for enterprises known as HEAL, which fixes problems before they happen. To learn more, visit http://www.healsoftware.ai/.

trucking
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Trucking

Digital Trends for the Trucking Industry in 2021

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The first quarter of a new year is a great time for fleet leaders to reflect on how their current plans for the year are going and then adjust accordingly if needed. What’s working for you? What should you stop doing? What should you start doing?

For the trucking industry, one trend for 2021 is clear. Digital is the way forward. While fleet management software has been on the scene for a few years, some parts of the supply chain still rely on analog processes and clunky, legacy solutions. The pandemic added additional stress in the logistics industry, largely due to volume fluctuations, and highlighted the need for better technology that will help drive more efficient logistics operations.

Automation

A specific growth area of trucking technology is the adoption of solutions that use AI and ML for automation. AI-powered, cloud-based solutions for route optimization will take some of the headache out of a route planner’s job by helping planners match the right driver and load with the best route. Route optimization tech can deliver an optimized route for the driver in just a few clicks.

By adopting automated route planning and optimization software, planners will then be able to focus on exceptional cases, while still being able to adjust routes manually if needed.

Data and analytics

A positive byproduct of digital transformation and technology adoption is increased access to data. Despite data making its way into nearly every industry to optimize workflow, improve business processes, and increase revenue, only 23 percent of fleets use data to inform decision-making. Because of the heavy demand for drivers and fleets, especially due to the current qualified driver shortage, fleets need to leverage AI, driver-specific metrics, and cloud management software to create more informed and productive drivers and plans.

Fleets have not always utilized data and analytics to their advantage. Fleets can now leverage real-time, cloud-based software and data to decrease planning time and optimize operations so that drivers can make more deliveries in less time. The demand for real-time visibility and on-time pickups and deliveries by shippers and receivers is only increasing, and the bar for fleets to compete successfully is getting higher.

Digital transformation

Fleets across the spectrum, from truckload to LTL and final mile, need technology solutions to work as efficiently as possible to empower their planners, drivers, and managers, from anywhere, at any time. They need to move to the cloud for enhanced communication, security, and access to data. As a result, fleets can rise above the competition if they optimize fleet management and workflow solutions and implement software to improve decision-making.

Automation, data visibility, and cloud-based digitization in the trucking industry wouldn’t be possible without a strategic decision by fleet leadership to prioritize digital transformation solutions. Digital solutions are required to best enable all parties in the supply chain, and fleet leaders need to pave the way with tech adoption. With the power of AI, machine learning, and cloud-based software, fleets will run faster, more efficiently, and more profitably than ever before.

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Avi Geller is the founder and CEO of Maven Machines. Since 2014, Avi has led Maven’s growth as an IoT platform that serves the transportation industry through real-time, mobile cloud enterprise software. Avi originally hails from Palo Alto, California, but started Maven in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania due to the city’s impressive innovation and technology resources. Prior to founding Maven, he held international positions with SAP and contributed to the growth of several successful software companies and startups. Avi also has an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Northwestern University.

Commodity Management global
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

The Need for Commodity Analytics in Commodity Management Software

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The management of commodities and the risks associated with this activity have evolved since the introduction of Energy Trading and Risk Management (ETRM) software in the 1990s. Over time, the type and quantity of data to be managed changed and these solutions later evolved to Commodity Trading and Risk Management (CTRM) software in the mid-2000s that grew in scope to include support for commodities other than energy. In addition to support for additional commodity types, ETRM and CTRM software has grown further into the supply chain and the functional footprint of these systems has dramatically increased. Now, we are seeing another generational shift from what were primarily transaction-based systems to solutions that provide sophisticated, real-time, analytics along with transaction management.

Commodity Management is a Big Data Business

Inherently, the commodities industry has always been a big data business. Physical trades that are hedged with financial derivatives create thousands of individual data points. And each of those data points represent multiple decisions to be made and perhaps reconsidered before the trade is eventually closed. Prices move, markets change, and regulations are updated. For example, as a market data provider, GlobalView is constantly adding new data sources to meet the needs of commodity market participants. Today’s focus on analytics is driven by the need for more data.

All of this data drives complexity in decision making. Those companies who are best equipped to leverage the data available to them to make the best decisions will gain a competitive advantage. It’s a whole new world. No longer is the typical CTRM software system adequate for companies exposed to commodity market risk. While the ability to capture the data that surrounds each transaction or engagement is still required in CTRM software, that functionality alone is not enough. As margins tighten and conditions get tougher, commodities companies need systems that do more.

A Generational Shift from Data Capture to Data Analytics

To remain competitive, today’s commodities companies need next-generation systems that support real-time decision making to move beyond data capture to data analytics. The ability to analyze information to create predictive models allows firms to develop accurate, repeatable formulas that take into account market conditions to identify optimal scenarios. Using advanced visualization techniques coupled with user-controlled, predictive analytics, commodities companies can optimize operations.

Commodities companies can no longer afford to wait days and weeks to understand market changes, analyze the alternatives, and make decisions. Instead, all business users need the power to analyze data the way they want. The solution that will enable real-time decision making requires two components: the right technology to handle the large volume of data generated by the commodities industry and built-in commodity specific intelligence to analyze the data. In addition, the most useful analytics solutions will enable business users to start using the solution immediately without an extended and costly implementation project.

Today’s Next-Generation Commodity Management Solution is Smart Commodity Management

Smart Commodity Management includes Commodity Analytics Cloud, an advanced data aggregation and analytics tool, and InSight CM, an integrated system for managing commodity transactions end-to-end. These two solutions together provide the analytical and operational solutions that commodities companies need to manage in today’s complex and volatile markets.

Analytics are the future of commodity management. Commodities companies need to look at advanced analytics solutions to ensure future success. Geared specifically for commodities companies in the agriculture, manufacturing, energy, and metals industries, Commodity Analytics Cloud provides traders, risk managers, analysts, supply chain/logistics managers, IT specialists, back office personnel, and executives with previously unavailable insights into key business areas.

Commodity Analytics Cloud brings together data from multiple internal and external sources including ETRM, CTRM, ERP, CRM, spreadsheets, and market data, including GlobalView’s MarketView data, which is available in a special bundled package price.

Eka Software Solutions is a global leader in providing digital commodity management solutions, driven by cloud, blockchain, machine learning and analytics.

To talk to Eka experts please write to info@eka1.com

commodities
Archives, Global Trade Daily, International Trade

5 Business Issues Facing Agricultural Commodities Companies

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Let’s learn more about 5 frequently asked questions on common issues that affect not only agri-commodities companies but span almost all commodities: managing complex supply chains, over-use of spreadsheets, growing amounts of data, analytics, and mobility.

1) Is there a better way to solve critical business problems than relying on multiple systems and spreadsheets?

Most commodities companies have multiple software systems in place to manage commodity trading, risk, procurement, and supply chains. This could be due to an accumulation of systems from mergers and acquisitions, especially in agriculture as many of the large ags traders are looking to gain more control over their supply chains by expanding their global footprint.

They may also have a separate solution for each product, department, or geographic region. However, when data is kept in multiple siloed systems, companies often turn to spreadsheets to connect the dots. Manually entering data into excel is not timely, accurate, or auditable, and it forces companies to base critical decisions on the hope that an individual didn’t make any errors. Not to mention it can be expensive, like when an employee at Deutsche Bank reportedly sent a hedge fund client $6 billion on accident due to a ‘fat-finger’ mistake.

Luckily the company was able to recover the money, but these types of errors can be easily avoided. Rather than take the risk of costing your company millions, or billions, of dollars, commodities companies should adopt an integrated solution that covers the entire value chain and allows users to focus on data analysis instead of data collection. By aggregating and analyzing data all in one system, users can optimize decision making and gain a competitive advantage.

2) How can we get more analytics and reporting from our existing systems?

Commodities companies need to be able to perform predictive analytics in addition to slicing and dicing their data. In order to make better business decisions in today’s complex and volatile markets, analytics need to be in the hands of business users, not the domain of IT and specialists. Using an advanced analytics tool along with an existing solution, such as CTRM software, ERP, or other transaction systems, allows you to bring together all of your data from different sources, discover new insights, and investigate hidden risks faster.

3) Is there a Business Intelligence tool specific to the commodities markets?

Generic business intelligence (BI) tools typically require too much customization to be useful for commodity-specific issues. It can be very costly, both in dollars and time, to add all the functionality needed to manage commodities to a generic system, and in the end, you will probably still need to use another system to handle certain tasks.

There are solutions built specifically for the commodities markets that agriculture, energy, metals, and manufacturing companies should consider instead of a generic BI tool. This will enable them to get the relevant information they need to solve the most important business issues without having to hunt down the answers from separate departments or solutions.

4) How can we better understand and identify commodity risk and opportunities across the supply chain?

Having visual representations of your business makes it much easier to recognize risks and opportunities. For an agriculture company, having a transparent view from farmer to stockyard to processor to producer, all the way to the end-user, will allow you to make the best decisions for buying, transporting, storing, and selling commodities. For other commodity trading companies, it is critical to be able to view the entire transaction life cycle, from trading, risk management, and processing, to scheduling, logistics, accounting, and settlement. Using sophisticated visualization tools to get an accurate view across an entire deal lifecycle, users can identify commodity risk and exposures as well as gain insights into opportunities to improve efficiencies and profit margins.

5) Are there CTRM systems built for mobile?

As more people are conducting business on the go, traveling to customer or supplier sites, or working from a remote location, it is no longer acceptable to have to wait until you are in the office to access data and make decisions. To get the most value out of a CTRM software solution it needs to have all the functionality of a desktop system built in.

Traders, risk managers, and executives can maximize productivity with the ability to perform key functions anytime, anywhere. With mobile apps, traders can enter deals and hedge effectively, even while out of the office. Risk managers can manage risk across the organization and executives can monitor key performance indicators at any time. The ability to react quickly to new deal information and communicate this information to the relevant people in an organization rapidly, accurately, and conveniently, provides companies with a competitive advantage. Using mobile apps eliminates the need for multiple follow-up emails and telephone communications that can be inaccurate and delay contract settlement.

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Eka Software Solutions is a global leader in providing digital commodity management solutions, driven by cloud, blockchain, machine learning and analytics.

To talk to Eka experts please write to info@eka1.com

procurement
Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

4 Procurement Analysis Issues Facing Manufacturing Companies

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The procurement process at manufacturing companies such as consumer products (CP), food and beverage, and industrial can be very complex. It involves the sourcing of hundreds, if not thousands, of commodities and raw material ingredients from many different suppliers worldwide. Budgets, standards-setting, and forecasting need to be completed up to 12-18 months in advance. Often there are several systems in place to manage this process including ERP, MRP, and siloed spreadsheets, making it challenging to track coverage and spending.

Let’s explore 4 common issues in procurement as well as the business benefits of implementing an advanced analytics solution built specifically for managing the procurement process in manufacturing companies.

Issue #1: Managing commodity price risk

Business Challenges

Companies that are procuring commodities, raw materials, energy, or packaging to produce finished goods are exposed to increasingly volatile commodity prices. With market prices constantly changing, it is difficult for buyers to plan and budget, and is impossible to know the future spend for any given commodity. Often procurement groups are required to budget and forecast costs for thousands of items at a time, for months or years in advance. Without a commodity procurement system in place, this is a time consuming, manual process and there is no way to get a comprehensive view of price risk.

The Solution

Manufacturing companies need a system that automates and consolidates procurement data into one central location that allows you to track, monitor, and manage commodity price risk. The solution should integrate market price curves with data from ERP, MRP, accounting, spreadsheets, and other systems to provide accurate forecasting and budgeting capabilities.

Business Benefits

Procurement solution leverages predictive analytics to react to the market faster and gain a competitive advantage. The solution enables business users to view real-time coverage as well as the plan and maintain coverage within corporate governance policies. Users can also create additional insights that address specific questions without the help of IT, leading to better, faster decision making.

Issue #2: Lack of real-time information

Business Challenges

It is difficult for manufacturers to get true visibility into their exposures and risk when data is being stored in multiple systems. Coverage and pricing are usually managed in individual buyers’ spreadsheets and is time-consuming to manually combine the impact of physicals, futures, and FX.

The Solution

Manufacturers need a solution that manages planning, coverage, financial hedges, and risk in a single platform. They need to be able to manage cost models, consolidate exposure, have integrated derivatives and FX modules, and run complex forecasting scenarios.

Business Benefits

Procurement solution allows you to uncover hidden risks, make better, more informed decisions, and promptly take corrective actions. With the ability to run advanced simulations on market changes, coverage, spend, and variance, you can better evaluate how projected changes will affect the bottom line, as well as predict the impact to coverage before taking action.

Issue #3: The “spread out” spreadsheet

Business Challenges

It is widely known that spreadsheets are prone to manual errors and significantly increase operational work, yet most manufacturing firms still use a large number of custom spreadsheets to manage commodity risk and procurement. It can take weeks of effort to consolidate plans, monitor rates, and check for anomalies every time new forecasts come in.

Additionally, spreadsheet usage in procurement creates a lot of risk to the business due to the inevitable lack of data integration, auditability, and process controls. They provide no history of why changes were made and are dependent on the individuals who own the spreadsheets and write their own macros. This makes it very challenging to consolidate information for accurate forecasting and planning while also keeping the company’s data secure.

The Solution

These companies require a solution that maintains data in a structured form with the ability to trace and audit every transaction within the system. Role-based access should be set up as well as alerts, warnings, and exception tracking to highlight discrepancies in real-time. Workflows in the system will help create more process efficiencies and increased collaboration.

Business Benefits

Procurement Analysis solution enables procurement teams to reduce the time spent on operational tasks by up to 50%. This frees up valuable time to focus more on business strategy instead of collecting data and preparing reports. Updated volume forecasts can be accessed on-demand, rather than having to wait for a monthly or quarterly update, enabling teams to take corrective actions immediately.

Issue #4: No standards for cost models

Business Challenges

Manufacturers that have multiple business units within the procurement department usually do not have standardized cost models across buyers. Individual buyers will maintain their own spreadsheets, making it impossible to derive any insights or analysis. Because of the sheer volume and complexity of the models, maintaining and updating them takes a significant amount of time. Even with this manual effort, spreadsheets do not provide any visibility on the secondary cost components that make up total costs. These cost components may have a huge impact on spend and play a key role when negotiating contracts with suppliers.

The Solution

These companies need a flexible cost model framework that makes it easy to standardize and capture information in a structured manner to enable deeper analysis. The system should automatically update the components of each cost model and take minimal effort to maintain.

Business Benefits

Procurement solution allows you to establish organization-wide standards to enable the use of cost models to set budgets, learn individual cost contributors, and make automatic corrections to coverage. It also provides the ability to analyze how individual components of a cost model have performed relative to each other or to the market.

Start making the most profitable business decisions

Today’s modern manufacturing companies are benefiting from advanced analytics software. By integrating all of your procurement data and performing real-time analysis, you can start making the most profitable, fact-based business decisions.

Eka Software Solutions is a global leader in providing digital commodity management solutions, driven by cloud, blockchain, machine learning and analytics.

To talk to Eka experts please write to info@eka1.com

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Is Microsoft Office Proficiency Still Needed Nowadays?

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Most of us have found that we need to have at least some basic understanding of MS Office Suite to cope in the real world. Microsoft Office tools have countless applications to assist in our everyday activities. 

These Office tools help to streamline our professional and personal lives. Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, however, is not a must-have skill in many professions. For instance, a college professor or accountant needs a higher MS Office proficiency than an actor or bus driver. 

In learning institutions, students are introduced to MS Office tools as early as third grade and must meet a basic level of MS Office Suite proficiency before graduation from high school.  

And in the same way, these students will have used PowerPoint for their college presentations, they will then use this program for their boardroom presentations. Their career paths will influence their decision on whether they choose to upgrade their Office Suite skills. 

If you’re eyeing managerial, accounting or other professional career paths, proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite can be an asset to your professional resume. Be sure to indicate your Excel, Word, Publisher, and PowerPoint capabilities when applying for these types of positions.

Your cover letter can present an opportunity to highlight your MS Office Suite skills too. Make sure to mention how well you understand the tool and how you’ve previously made good use of it. For example, if you’re applying for a data entry and analysis gig, mention how you’ve used MS Excel to sort or analyze big data.

And employees with well-rounded MS Office skills often get paid more than their counterparts!

From storekeeper to CEO, every employee will benefit when familiar with MS Word and Excel sheets, if not additional MS Office productivity tools. The data derived is essential in everyday business functions from the monitoring of staff productivity to enabling remote workers to collaborate.

Proficiency in MS Office Suite facilitates basic supply chain operations such as transportation, inventory management, warehousing, and even payroll management. These skills also allow supply chain executives to become better planners and negotiators. 

Using Cloud computing technology, and with MS Outlook know-how, these experts can seamlessly collaborate with remote teams. MS Excel in particular, will give you an edge for efficient management and coordination of logistics for your organization. 

Read on to learn the exact MS office skills you’re required to own to earn the title of being “Proficient in MS Office.” This post will enlighten you on how to upgrade your MS Office skills and, in the process, make yourself more marketable. 

Proficiency Levels in MS Office

Proficiency in Microsoft skills means that you are adept at making powerful presentations, organizing information, and data handling. These MS skills enhance teamwork in an organization and improve the overall workplace productivity. 

There are five main levels of mastery in Microsoft Office Suite: fundamental, basic, proficient, intermediate, and finally, the advanced level. The following is a listing of required skills needed in order to claim true proficiency in MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, QuickBooks, and Email processing:

MS Office Suite Proficiency

MS Word

People with MS Word know-how are skilled in creating spreadsheets, Pivot Tables, data analysis, validating data, creating documents, creating slideshows, and embedding videos and images. Unless you have a solid grasp of the MS Office tools, don’t claim to be Office proficient. You don’t want to come up short later on when it matters.  

MS Excel

To become MS Excel proficient, you need to be conversant with text formatting, SmartArt, spellcheck, page setup, textboxes, grammar check, title and ribbon bar, editing, quick access. Excel gurus have data validation skills and are versed in IF statements, macros, automatization (VBA), charts, Pivot Tables, formulas, data linking, workbooks, and spreadsheets. 

MS Powerpoint 

To become a skilled PowerPoint expert, you need to know how to do animations, manuscripts, charts and graphs, presentations troubleshooting, custom slides, and presentation design.

MS Outlook 

Microsoft Outlook or MS Outlook plays an important role in fostering employee communication. Employees and organizations often rely on MS Outlook for email management for both their inter-office communication as well as with contacts outside the company. To be considered proficient in this particular Office documentation utility, you’ll need to be fully conversant with skills such as: 

-Email settings configurations 

-Auto replies and Email filtering

-Creating, planning and assigning tasks

-Scheduling meetings via emails 

-Sharing workplace calendars 

Other Office Skills

In addition to those MS Office skills, you should know how to write documents, collaborate with others, and share documents. 

Other MS Office Suite productivity tools you need to know include:

Microsoft Access 

Candidates with advanced MS Access capabilities are always in huge demand. MS Access allows seamless data organization and manipulation.

QuickBooks

A mastery of QuickBooks improves your likelihood of scoring accounting-related gigs. Include QuickBooks as a skill if you’re applying for an opening that involves payroll, accounting, reporting, and invoicing functions. These skills ensure your resume stands out and increase your odds of getting hired. 

Email 

Everyone is expected to know how to access, compose, and reply to work emails. Emails enhance collaboration, and they improve staff productivity. Go for the various certifications in MS Outlook to get the upper hand with future employers. 

Improving Your MS Office Skills 

Enhance your marketability by continually refining your MS Office Suite skills. Keep on learning to improve your grasp of the productivity tools provided by MS Office. Take full advantage of the MS Office Suite introductory, intermediate, and expert courses to improve your resumes.

Getting Microsoft Office training can help you become productive at work, giving you the confidence to tackle problems and new opportunities when using the platform. To top it off, you may be able to boost your earning potential, thanks to the certification you receive.  

In Conclusion

Possessing basic know-how of Microsoft Office Suite is a must for students, tutors, and professionals. Nowadays, it’s impossible to function without productivity tools that help you to run your business, promote your brand, or manage your personal affairs.  

MS Office will continue to be a highly sought-after office productivity skill set for many years. Attaining proficiency in MS Office is a long-term quest; your skills will only improve with repeated practice.

If you choose to mention particular MS Office skills, ensure you include only those that apply to your future position. Prove your mastery of these MS Office skills by demonstrating how you’ll apply your MS Office capabilities in your everyday tasks. Always remember to be truthful about your proficiency levels as you never know when you’ll be tested. 

Keep your MS Office skills relevant to the marketplace by continually upgrading; boosting your hiring chances or opportunities for promotion. Therefore, it’s safe to say that proficiency in MS Office is still a marketable skill now and in the foreseeable future. 

GEODIS
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Dispatches: GEP and GEODIS Make Big Moves

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GEP wins the prestigious Asia Pacific Procurement Success Awards…

GEP, a Clark, New Jersey-based leading provider of supply chain software and services to Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises worldwide, announced that it has won Asia’s prestigious Procurement Consultancy Project Award at the Asia Pacific Procurement Success Awards 2020, held recently in Shanghai.

“This award is an important acknowledgment of GEP’s ability to integrate consulting, managed services and technology to significantly improve the financial performance of global companies on a sustainable basis throughout Asia,” says Michael Seitz, vice president, GEP Consulting, China. “We are even more excited about the third year of this program, as we apply demand management, the total cost of ownership management, and strategic supplier partnerships to drive additional cost reduction, user satisfaction, and compliance for our client.” 


Meanwhile, GEODIS in Americas links 3PL Services with Amazon and Shopify… 

Geodis is a division of SNCF, which is based in France, but the Geodis in Americas is among the top 3PLs in the United States. The American subsidiary of Geodis recently announced two major marketplace integrations with Shopify and Amazon Drop Shipping. Geodis in Americas is now integrated directly with Shopify to fulfill online orders and ensure seamless data flow between Shopify’s digital storefront and supply chain. Geodis is also now fully integrated with Amazon’s third-party marketplace that enables brands to sell products through Amazon while continuing to utilize Geodis as its logistics partner to fulfill orders and ship directly to the end consumer.  

“As online shopping has accelerated, Geodis is constantly strengthening and evolving our IT solutions to provide the brands we serve with easy, efficient and effective ways to get their products to consumers,” says Pal Narayanan, executive vice president, chief information officer with Geodis in Americas.