The ability to connect electronically with customers, suppliers, and other trading partners is one capability that distinguishes leading-edge supply chains from poor performers. However, many companies have had only modest success in connecting the various internal applications they have invested in building or acquiring over the years. For a company that has made numerous acquisitions, each division may even have its own unique set of applications and infrastructure. Multiple ERP systems, homegrown legacy systems, and best-of-breed supply chain applications that are poorly integrated produce bloated inventories, late deliveries, and difficulty forecasting and matching supply and demand.
Value chain integration is an even more complex matter – one must manage a multiplicity of data formats, document types, and communication protocols, while insuring non-repudiation and data security.
As deep subject matter experts in both supply chain best practices and in analyzing and designing the enterprise IT architectures to best enable those practices, Keough Associates can help executives sort out fact from fiction. In our experience, once executives have an in-depth understanding about the capabilities of their current IT systems and those of their suppliers and customers, they can make intelligent decisions about the investments required to take their capabilities to the next level and deliver the bottom-line returns they require.