Enterprise Performance Management

Globalization, increased competition, and savvier customers with growing demands have changed the face of business for manufacturers, who once were able to rely on low prices, quality products and on-time delivery to keep on top.

To remain competitive today, businesses must maintain customer loyalty, attract new customers, keep products with increasingly shorter life cycles up to date, and address both the efficiencies and costs of their organizations all the way out to their trading partners. Processes are being redesigned.  Business cultures are changing.  And technology is being leveraged more than ever to improve overall performance. 

This is where Enterprise Performance Management enters the picture.

Enterprise Performance Management

To improve performance, today’s supply chain enterprise needs to leverage global corporate resources, buying power, and intelligence; improve communication and connectivity with suppliers and customers; provide more employees with real-time monitoring and response capabilities; and, assist managers with active planning and decision-making applications guided by business goals.  

Silvon delivers Enterprise Performance Management software solutions that provide this.  Our Stratum solution enables companies to continually assess customer demand and the drivers behind it and to plan, monitor and manage performance to ensure high service levels in meeting their customers’ needs.  Our customers use our products to help them collaborate enterprise-wide, focus resources, improve operational efficiencies and leverage opportunities for growth.

Stratum complements existing enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and transaction systems by integrating data from multiple sources, providing a common view across the enterprise and enabling an integrated Enterprise Performance Management process that ties execution to strategy.   Plus, it’s designed to leverage and analyze high volumes of customer-centric data from external sources, such as point-of-sale systems and syndicated data.

Silvon’s Value Proposition

Today’s manufacturers, distributors and retailers cannot analyze the performance of their supply chains and of their customers as separate measures.  They need to understand, predict and influence the behavior of their customers, which lays the groundwork for them to plan, evaluate and monitor their supply chains.  In addition, they need to continually address variances that may occur along the way based on actual buying patterns, demand requirements and supply variations.

Stratum allows our customers to accomplish these goals with integrated, collaborative performance management applications that support the customer-centric and operationally-focused areas of their businesses. 

Customer-Centric Analytics

• UNDERSTAND Customer Behavior & Profitability
  Stratum offers numerous analytical capabilities for measuring customer profitability and for ranking and scorecarding customers across a number of areas. The analytics are designed to help our customers ensure that their most profitable customers remain satisfied and their sales and marketing efforts are aimed at retaining and optimizing the right customers and attracting the right prospects.

• PREDICT Customer Demand
  Stratum also helps our customers improve forecast accuracy and the overall Sales & Operations Planning process.  With it, our customers can better predict current and future customer demand at the micro-segment level and align their demand generation, sales operations, and supply chain strategies to maximize revenue.  This is accomplished through collaborative forecasting and demand planning applications, open order analysis, and sales performance measurements.

• INFLUENCE Customer Behavior
  The CRM-focused analytics offered by Stratum can help supply chain businesses more accurately segment their customer bases for cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.  In addition, Stratum’s marketing-focused analytics can assist manufacturers in better allocating and managing their trade funds and promotions in order to influence customer (retail partner) participation and ultimate end-consumer purchases. 

Supply Chain-Centric  (Operational) Analytics

• PLAN What the Supply Chain Should Do
  Stratum offers more accurate forecasting down to the product SKU level to allow our customers to more accurately determine safety stock and re-order points by optimizing customer service levels and measuring supplier variability with inventory optimization as the bottom-line result.  The entire planning process is based on current and historical customer behavior, and supports collaboration both within the enterprise and with supply chain partners.  A collaborative process is essential in building an operational plan where demand from customers drives decisions made in sales, marketing, procurement, manufacturing and other areas throughout the enterprise.

• EVALUATE Supply Chain Performance
  By leveraging Stratum’s operational analytics, supply chain performance can be evaluated in a number of areas such as Inventory, Purchasing and Manufacturing to ensure that customer demand is optimally being met.  Based on industry research conducted by AMR, reductions in inventory, alone, can range from 2% to 25% with a more comprehensive and accurate view of operational dynamics
  
  Stratum allows supply chain businesses to drive cost reductions on the sourcing side, reduce sourcing cycle time and decrease assets on the balance sheet by providing the technology and applications needed to cross-functionally manage spending, aggregate all spending initiatives, and rationalize and manage the supplier network and how well they are meeting customer fill/delivery rates.  According to industry research by the Aberdeen Group and Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies, analytic applications like Stratum can contribute to supplier spend reductions of 5% to 15%.
  
  The analytics offered by Stratum additionally allows our customers to optimize their assets in the areas of cash, inventory and both warehousing and manufacturing capacity.    Plus, it lets them measure and manage equipment and warehouse utilization, as well as Work-in-Process vs. Plan.

• MONITOR Supply Chain Variances
  Since variability will occur within the supply chain network, Stratum’s exception management capabilities ensure that operational performance is monitored in real-time and that any variances that may arise are proactively identified and addressed.  Because of the increased velocity of the supply chain, companies are recognizing that planning and analysis must be tightly integrated.  The growing use of event management (exception management) to spot breakdowns in the process allows businesses to cope with this reality in a very efficient manner.