Cloud as an Enabling Technology in Supply Chain Planning

Respondents to the SAPinsider research survey for Supply Chain Planning in The Cloud highlighted certain business imperatives that they believe are making them evaluate their supply chain planning portfolio. The top three business imperatives were:

• Need to improve supply chain visibility
• End-to-end planning
• Faster response to disruptions

SAPinsider also identified strategies that they believe need to be in place to help address these business drivers.  The top strategies identified to address the business drivers were:

• End-to-end supply chain visibility
• Single-source-of-truth
• Real-time insights

Since 83% of SAPinsiders indicated that they plan to or are currently using some cloud-based planning solution in their planning portfolio, we will explore why and how the cloud plays a critical role in helping execute the strategies identified by SAPinsiders. But before we do that, let us explore the different types of cloud computing services.

Types of Cloud Computing Services/Offerings

• Infrastructure as a service (IaaS): This is the hardware component (like servers, storage etc.)
• Platform as a service (PaaS): This is IaaS plus the operating system and any other core application of the operating environment to enable you to install and run your own applications.
• Software as a service (SaaS): This stack includes hosted applications that fulfill a function.
• Information as a service (INaaS): Provides data and information across the enterprise or to a group of users within the enterprise.
• Business process as a service (BPaaS): Fulfills a business function or replaces a business process in an enterprise.

How Cloud Can Help Execute Planning-Centered Strategies

With the high-level overview of various cloud offerings, let us explore how these offerings can help execute the strategies we highlighted in the previous section. The summary of how each offering can help alleviate supply chain planning pain points have been summarized in figure 1. Figure 1: Addressing supply chain planning pain points through the cloud Strategy: End-to-end supply chain visibility Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) helps Build real-time end-to-end visibility by leveraging the interconnection between edge devices and an IaaS platform. This allows organizations to build the end-to-end visibility they desire, all the way to the farthest corners of their network. Capturing streaming data from these devices also allows organizations to generate real-time insight, and this data can be leveraged in tandem with SaaS and INaaS planning and analytics solutions. Examples of some solutions in these areas are SAP IBP and SAP Analytics Cloud. Strategy: Single-source-of-truth Note that many different offerings need to work in tandem with each to create a true single-source-of truth. PaaS can help build centralized database services but data needs to be captured from many different sources, which can be facilitated by IaaS. INaaS helps disseminate this information across the enterprise. Strategy: Real-time insights Like other elements, multiple cloud offerings are needed to help execute this strategy. Obviously, an underlying single-source-of-truth, primarily facilitated by IaaS and PaaS needs to be in place as foundational elements. The next key offerings that will play roles here are INaaS and SaaS solutions. These are enterprise analytics and planning solutions that leverage the real-time single-source-of-truth data.