by Hemanta Banerjee, Vice President of Public Cloud Data Services, Rackspace Technology

With the sheer amount of data being generated today, businesses need highly scalable technologies to meet demand in an extremely complex business and trade environment. With supply chain issues continuing to disrupt operations, there’s a concerning amount of essential data holed up in silos or being lost altogether.
 
Overcoming these obstacles hinges on fostering collaboration across the supply chain ecosystem. As a tech and financial hub, Singapore is leading the region’s charge to improve information exchange transparency, security and inclusivity across supply chains. In June this year, Singapore officially launched the Singapore Trade Data Exchange (SGTraDex), a centralised data platform that it says will streamline information flows across a fragmented global supply chain.
 
Acting as a central gateway to integrate and securely share trade data, this so-called common data highway will improve the alignment of trade information with actual cargo movements. The promise of facilitating verification of key trade data and increased transparency in trade finance has seen at least 70 participants, that range from logistics operators to banks and energy companies, signing up as participants of SGTraDex.
 
Local companies in the ecosystem have indeed been impacted by global supply chain disruptions such as rising costs, according to Minister for Trade and Industry. Other issues, such as delays in shipments, higher freight costs, and unprecedented levels of port congestion have also left their mark.
 
However, truly leveraging this pioneering platform requires not just skill but business intelligence coming from a rich data set and reliable analytics.
 
Leveraging interconnectivity
As trade networks develop and interconnectivity flourishes, supply chain management is under greater scrutiny as businesses strive to provide higher quality products at the lowest possible cost. Take for instance the fact that consumers in Southeast Asia are more sophisticated than ever; Bain & Co. reports that between the discovery and evaluation stages to the purchasing stage, consumers across the region overwhelmingly want more seamless and integrated experiences.
 
While innovation is the key to unlocking the business potential to take advantage of these opportunities, it intrinsically relies on being data-driven.
 
When done right, analytics plays a crucial role in this equation, as it essentially enables businesses to delight customers or end-users at the least possible cost. For supply chain managers, this could look like getting more from their value chain faster by allocating resources more efficiently and cost-effectively. Enhanced real-time data, through machine monitoring and decision-making, will mean less downtime and enhanced effectiveness to deliver better customer experiences.
 
In an integrated business planning environment, data insights can be harnessed quickly and with minimal fuss, regardless of volume, variety or source. This empowers planning over activities of the different functional areas of the organisation which includes finance, production and supply chain management.
 
By improving teams' ability to analyse data sets and present analytical findings in summaries, reports, and visualisations, organisations arm themselves with the ability to analyse customer behaviour, market trends, and business activity. This, in turn, transforms a purchasing organisation from the traditional reactive form to a more forward-looking anticipative function.
 
However, deeper, more substantial spend analysis relies on integrating data across multiple enterprise resource planning (ERP) and other operational systems. This ensures disciplined category management, delivering a holistic view of spend management. Doing this requires a systematic understanding of where data is produced, how it is classified and how it is used.
 
Unfortunately, most ERPs used by companies are not configured to provide this kind of data, clouding visibility over business operations and diverting focus from mission-critical functions.
 
Be strategic to differentiate
Analytics is like a shot in the arm for spend analysis; helping with the development of a "roadmap" that organises commodities based on priority. This is a key competitive differentiator, enabling category managers to reduce the risk of supplier dependency, remove supply chain bottlenecks and a good mix of suppliers to ensure quality and timely delivery.
 
Investing in best-fit technology is one area where companies in Singapore can drive their businesses forward, particularly the computerisation of processes in supply management thus ensuring that data is accurate and available. The availability of the data would be the basis of optimised decisions.
 
The most important lesson that we have learned is that supply chain management is a dynamic and evolving subject. It cannot be taught, but rather needs to be constantly developed.
 
This being the case, bringing together data across ERP and supply chain systems is critical to positioning the business for continual improvement and innovation. When businesses are fundamentally data driven, they are primed to make incremental process changes by measuring the impact of the business as it grows and changes.
 
The financial impact of an improved supply chain will not only make rapid innovation infinitely more realistic and achievable, but it also makes the business more efficient. For instance, a business can integrate procurement processes and help expand the ecosystem to increase the accuracy of cost estimation, budgeting, and financial management. Leveraging the right technology to transform supply chain management is, indeed, a powerful strategic enabler; and it is up to businesses to raise their agility and transform or get left behind in the dust.