Ashutosh Bansal
Intelligent Business Planning
Intelligent Business Planning
Ashutosh Bansal
Digital Supply Chains: How does SAP IBP help?

It is my pleasure to communicate the launch of GitaCloud Digital Learning DL Platform (access it at learning.gitacloud.com). We will provide comprehensive learning on this platform across Digital Supply Chain Fundamentals as well as enabling technology solutions like SAP Leonardo portfolio (of which SAP IBP is a key component). This platform is designed to cater to a wide range of learners: Business Planners and Executives looking to understand why & how to start Digital Supply Chain Transformation programs, IT Analysts and their Managers to understand detailed functional and modeling capabilities of SAP IBP platform, SCM practitioners and independent consultants to learn SAP IBP in a digitally enabled, hands-on, and remote support based comprehensive offering.  

Digital Supply Chains: How does SAP IBP help?
Ashutosh Bansal
Enabling Customers and SCM Practitioners on IBP

At GitaCloud, we are committed to enabling Customers evaluating SAP IBP and SCM Practitioners looking to transition from SAP APO to SAP IBP. We realized early that the best way to learn and stay on top of a rapidly evolving platform is to teach a diverse set of learners and do this on a monthly basis on top of our customer pursuits and engagement workload. We just completed our fourth IBP workshop in 2017 - this one went the best so far as we continue to refine the product and make it more and more relevant to our learners. This blog post covers the S&OP workshop flow in detail as well as feedback from our learners. These workshops are being very well received and in high demand. We will continue to have similar workshops rest of 2017 across Response & Supply, Demand & Inventory, and Control Tower & Integration topics. 

Enabling Customers and SCM Practitioners on IBP
Ashutosh Bansal
Automotive Spare Parts Business: Business ...

This blog post covers business challenges & recommended supply chain excellence strategies to deal with them for Automotive OEM companies, specifically focused on the Automotive Spare Parts Supply Chain.

When we put together the increasing strategic importance of spare part business with the inherent complexity in managing this business, we can appreciate the complex challenges and the large business value of spares supply chain excellence for Auto OEMs. The best in class performers will manage their spare parts business in a forward looking and advanced analytics driven manner when it comes to spare parts demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and integrated business planning across the multi-enterprise landscape.

I will cover the following areas in this post for Automotive Spare Parts Businesses:

1. Growing Strategic Importance of Spares

2. Maturity Stages: Crawl-Walk-Run

3. Organization Structure Choices

4. Multi-tier Distribution Network

5. Forecasting & Planning Challenges

6. Forecasting & Planning Strategies

7. Supply Chain Performance / KPIs

8. Closing Remarks

Automotive Spare Parts Business: Business Challenges and Supply Chain Excellence Strategies
Ashutosh Bansal
Integrated Business Planning in ...

This is Part Two of my two-part blog post to evaluate the Pharmaceutical Industry. In this post, we will review Integrated Business Planning and related Decision Analytics as a strategic response to managing complexity and delivering best-in-class business performance in the Pharmaceutical industry. In Part One, we covered current supply chain performance benchmarks and key issues prevalent in the Pharmaceutical industry.

This post is structured across the following topics:

  • Background
  • Long Range Planning
  • Short / Mid-Range Planning
  • Special Demand Situations: Tenders
  • Demand Sensing & Inventory Optimization: How it helps, Hard Benefits
  • Integrated Business Planning IBP: How it helps, Hard Benefits
  • Sales & Operations Planning S&OP vs. Integrated Business Planning IBP
  • IBP: Solution Capabilities Required
  • IBP in Pharma
  • Closing Remarks
Integrated Business Planning in Pharmaceuticals: Part 2 - Solutions that Deliver Hard Value

How real is big data analytics when it comes to managing supply chains?

This blog is aimed at Supply Chain leaders and their business teams. It is intended to help you understand where supply chain and big data come together as practitioners in these disciplines currently have limited understanding of the other side. 

What is big data?

While the term big data is hyped big time by technology vendors, most supply chain leaders and their business teams do not understand the concepts and opportunities well given the misdirection from technology vendors. Most technology vendors attempt to dazzle their audience with the ever growing data volume and the speed with which they can sift through the volume. What they don't know or forget to tell you is that most supply chains do not have an issue with volume. The real challenge lies with the variety and velocity of data for which you require solution providers that get the supply chain problem and its vertical context, not vendors with a one size fits all approach to big data platforms and solutions. 

This blog is written by Ashutosh Bansal.

You can read the full blog here. 

Modern Supply Chains: How to Disrupt and be Unstoppable

It's a challenging world out there for supply chains in terms of modern business environment they operate in. It's incredibly hard to segment and accurately forecast the Omni-channel Consumer demand. Combine the demand volatility challenge with the complex and fragmented trading partner network that needs to service this volatile demand signal fast and profitably, and you have the recipe for persistent chaos on your hands.

The demand from Main Street Consumer for personalization & speed coupled with the demand from Wall Street Investors for economic profit is posing unique challenges for modern supply chains. It's no longer enough to deliver incremental cost optimization, the Chief Supply Chain Officer needs to do that while enabling new revenue streams and market share capturing capabilities from the supply chain. Digital revolution is upon us in terms of enabling growth oriented new models to deliver what Gartner refers to as Bimodal Supply Chains: ones that can deliver cost efficiency and revenue growth simultaneously.

This blog is written by Ashutosh Bansal. 

You can read the full blog here. 

Drinking Supply Chain Control Tower Kool-aid?

There is much hype about Supply Chain Control Tower in the ISV community as all the big guns race to build their version of the holy grail. As we see it, not all control towers are designed or created equal.   There is a wide range of how software providers understand the idea and their ability to deliver software in the mid term. Sure, it's a big idea that finally has legs. The unprecedented levels of volatility demands a fundamentally more dynamic planning & response management paradigm that is network wide, not within the enterprise four walls. Making course corrections in real time with plans & assets that are in-flight indeed has great potential to cut waste and boost profitability. However, this requires network wide visibility & alignment as well as tightly coupled planning and execution across the entire network - which is a big ask. Read more. 

Still planning with spreadsheets? Next Generation Business Planning is here.

As we review the world of business planning, we see that most organizations are still stuck with planning using offline spreadsheets. The agility and connectedness needed to keep the alignment across the enterprise given the turbulent demand is a huge challenge in the static world of disjointed offline spreadsheets. So, how do we move past budgeting, planning, and forecasting being largely disjointed activities, and enable organizations to reforecast often with minimal effort. This is where next generation business planning in the cloud comes in. Read more.

Omni-channel Commerce: why it is not such good news for supply chains and what you need to win.

Supply chains have survived the last 20 years with an incremental operational efficiency mindset. You were OK so long as you could do it just a bit faster and cheaper this year. The rules of the game have now fundamentally changed with omni-channel and products that go viral overnight thanks to social media. Combine this with ever-increasing customer expectations of product availability and fulfillment speed and improving your game approach will no longer cut it, you need to fundamentally change your game. Read more.