Supply Chain ERP

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems serve as the backbone that enables the management of staff, equipment, and budget to facilitate business operations. Depending on the type of industry and the specific needs of an organization, there are a variety of ERP solutions to enable the following functions:

Financials
Human Resources
Manufacturing Management
Inventory Management
Purchasing Management
Quality Management
Sales Management
Supply Chain Management

The trend recently has been towards more modular ERP systems that allow organizations to only purchase and leverage the functions that they require. The Supply Chain Management module allows companies to plan and execute inbound supply, production, and logistics activities. An ERP solution enables efficiencies for handling the physical aspects of supply by looking across material masters, batch scheduling of constrained resources, organizing storage and transportation, and reducing fulfillment lead times to consistently meet customer orders. Example functions managed by SCM systems include:

Strategic Planning
Demand Planning
Supply Planning
Procurement
Manufacturing
Warehousing
Order Fulfillment
Transportation

Supply Chain Management software developed as an extension of its predecessor: Material Requirements Planning (MRP). Traditionally, MRP’s focused on managing manufacturing processes. As the system grew, it began to add additional functionality such as warehousing and delivery. Today, many of the top providers offer web-based and mobile-based solutions that can be accessed anywhere at any time. Major players in the SCM ERP space include: Oracle, SAP, JDA. Many of these solutions are built to be configurable and flexible to meet most organization’s needs. There are also several SCM ERP vendors that have developed platforms that target specific functions within the spectrum of Supply Chain, such as procurement or warehousing.

Finding the right ERP SCM Solution

Jabian uses capability and process-based analysis to identify and prioritize solution requirements. We leverage our capability framework which spans the supply chain management process, beginning with planning and purchasing through fulfillment and transportation. Depending on an organization’s specific needs, requirements can be captured and evaluated along these key dimensions.

Finding the right Solution Implementation Partner

A critical aspect to finding the right solution for your organization is that you must account for how to implement the solution. Most vendors will provide implementation services for their solutions to perform configurations, develop any required enhancements, and integrate to your enterprise architecture. High costs of quoted implementation services or concerns over delivery capabilities can lead to a need for identifying a 3rd party implementation partner. Most ERP solution providers will have a list of qualified implementation partners. Jabian can help you identify which 3rd party partner has the best mix of technical expertise, industry expertise, resources, and cost that fit your needs.

Finding the right Application Managed Services Provider

When solutions increase in complexity and require increasing levels of customization to meet business needs, then IT services are needed for support and maintenance. Outsourcing is often leveraged as a cost-effective means to have on-demand access to highly specialized technical resources to solution break fix or enhancement request needs. Jabian can help you identify an Application Managed Services vendor with the right blend of service level responsiveness, technical knowledge, ability to innovate, and cost structure that fit your needs.