THE PURSUIT OF THE PERFECT ORDER
No enterprise is an island. Goods and services flow in from suppliers, involve transportation carriers and are driven by the business of the enterprise. When you include suppliers of wares for raw material extractors, along with recyclers that turn consumer and commercial waste into new raw materials and finished goods, it is a supply chain with no beginning and no end — a renewable process dependant on successfully orchestrating business-to-business interactions.
Companies work hard to optimize internal efficiencies, but that does not ensure a successful and profitable business. Doing business is more complex than ever and increasingly, businesses, governments and not-for-profit organizations realize that a seamless and efficient supply chain is a critical factor towards their success. With these realities, how can you design, implement and deliver a supply chain that focuses on demand, supply and service to provide competitive differentiation in the marketplace.
Simply implementing data flow technology is not enough. The myriad of concerns around compliance, effective management of materials handling and general business agility require a business-oriented approach. Understanding the processes, decisions and exceptions that can impact your business should be the first area of focus before a single bit of data is exchanged outside your enterprise. With regulatory compliance concerns and each spoke in the supply chain having its own set of rules for conducting business, not to mention disparate systems, basic data exchange now has layers of business process on top. Retailers are trying to meet demand while avoiding costly errors that affect their bottom line.
Suppliers are striving to meet their SLAs and avoid penalties. Defined as being on-time, complete, damage-free, and with correct documentation, the common paradigm of “the perfect order” is not tangible, but it is an archetype of flawless, optimally efficient, end-to-end interactions among supply chain partners. Those interactions are iterative and two-way: Buyers place orders with suppliers; suppliers send goods, billsof-lading and invoices to customers; and buyers send back payments.
A flaw at any stage results in imperfect order completion. A delay may result in a stock-out for the business and an interruption of cash flow for the supplier. As in any endeavor, perfection is an objective that can rarely be realized, but defining the model of the perfect order allows us to identify its parameters and challenges, measure and index the performance of key Perfect Order attributes, and work toward coming as close as possible to attaining the ultimate goal through increased visibility via business process automation.
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