The BCN Podcast

Harnessing Supply Chain Analytics

• BCN

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Unlock the potential of your supply chain with data-driven insights. Our discussion explores the significance of data analytics in enhancing decision-making and meeting business goals.

• Importance of data quality in driving business improvements 
• Strategies for implementing effective data analytics 
• Real-world success stories highlighting analytics benefits 

If you're looking to elevate your data capabilities, don't hesitate to get in touch for our free data assessments! 


Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to the BCN podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about a really interesting and relevant topic in the wholesale and distribution sector forecasting with supply chain analytics. With me today, I've got the pleasure of Fraser Deer, our Head of Data and AI Innovation here at BCN, and Andy Langthorne, one of our Data Sales Specialists. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. Why don't we start with a quick introduction for our audience, just to give them an overview in terms of who you are and what your role is? Let's start with you, Fraser.

Speaker 3:

Hi there everyone. It's Fraser Deer here, as usual. I'm kind of coming at this with the heads-up AI and big data aspect. My background is many, many years of working with large datasets through various different industry sectors, so lots and lots of insight and lots and lots of knowledge with regards to this specialization of supply chain analytics.

Speaker 2:

Excellent. Thanks so much for joining us, Fraser. As always, a pleasure having you, Ryan, over to you.

Speaker 1:

Andy. Thanks, pete. So I'm Andy Langthorne. I'm a data specialist at BCN and I've spent the last 10 years or so in this space effectively helping clients get the most value from their data and, ultimately, from their technology investments. So helping clients with things around data strategy, data advisory, data roadmap, through to things around consolidating all the data in a central space, building reporting capabilities off that through to then more advanced analytical capabilities and, more recently, help with them implement AI.

Speaker 2:

Excellent, eddie, thanks so much for having you on today's conversation. Well, I think it's fair to say, as we see more and more, everything starts with data, the quality of the data and in order to drive any sort of efficiencies or improvements in businesses, you need those data insights, and the purpose of today's conversation is really to drive more awareness around the importance of data and the analytics. So, with that being said, andy, obviously you've had some experience in working with organizations and businesses in the wholesale and distribution sector. What is data and analytics useful for and what does it sort of encompass Set the scene for us?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sure, so the wholesale sector. They like any sector there. They're going to have so much data within their businesses, so much data for every part of their business, every part of their supply chain and a lot of businesses. Currently they're going to be spending a lot of time trying to understand that data or figure out what it is that's showing them and, ultimately, what decisions they need to make off the back of that. Where analytics comes into play, and the more modern technology that allows these capabilities, is that it effectively lets businesses spend less time trying to understand that data and less time looking back and more time being able to look forward and look at what the data is showing is going to happen and what decisions they effectively should be making off the back of that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so true. It's only once you know where you've come from, you know where you're going essentially, and having that insight it really does give you, and having that insight it really does give you how can I say a great sort of view of how to approach things. Moving forward Now. I guess a pressing question that most businesses will have who are looking to embark on this journey is how do they get started?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and it's because every business is going to have data and every business is going to have challenges with their data and places they could start. It's got to be. You've got to take a step back and really look at what the business case is, what the use case is, and make sure it stacks up in terms of the potential ROI, Because there's so many different things you can do with data. It's critical to make sure that starting point is one that's going to deliver value, but it's going to deliver value in a relatively short space of time. Every business is going to have horror stories where they've started some project that takes 18 months and doesn't deliver anything, and that cannot be the way that they approach things with data. It's got to be a short, sharp, useful use case that is going to deliver that value in a reasonable amount of time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, makes sense. And am I right in saying obviously the choice of platform where they look to start this data journey on is also obviously really important, because if you're looking to scale from this initial first step, then there are certain limitations around some of these data storage platforms and we often see clients making that mistake where they're not necessarily properly advised.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think one of the things that we see with our clients is they kind of come from one of a number of different positions. If an organization is looking to achieve some analytics on one application, cool, no problem at all. But actually what you tend to find is the use case starts to shift a little bit and you end up with businesses that have actually got multiple different data sets, all of which update on different frequencies, all of which are required to be integrated together to come up with some form of insight, especially when it comes to supply chain analysis. We're talking about multiple different data streams and invariably the client, a person that wants the output, isn't actually in control of many of those data streams, because they'll be coming from shippers or third-party manufacturers or all sorts of other data streams, and actually bringing all of that together can be advantageous from an analytics perspective.

Speaker 3:

But when you want to start to get into forecasting, that's when you really want to start to move whether it be a strategic move to consolidate all of your transactional data into one environment, because then it's real and it's live and you can actually start to get analytics but also then live forecasting, live predictive analytics, because all of your data is in one place, and that's ultimately the goal for many of these kind of organizations Either starting again awesome with one central data set, but more often than not, that's not necessarily realistic, because you're always going to have data streams coming from somewhere else. So how do you create that central source of truth, that golden record that you're then going to be then basing all of your decisions against and the outcomes against?

Speaker 2:

So true? Well, let's start digging into the fundamentals. I think what a lot of businesses want to understand is you know, why is this so important and what are the real benefits? I know, andy, you've obviously touched on some of them, but it might be worthwhile just let's elaborate in a little more detail around what they can get from this yeah, of course.

Speaker 1:

So, um, because there's so many different places to to start, it's hard to say this is the the best one.

Speaker 1:

But, um, that said, one area that we typically start with without with our clients and what I've seen in the past, is around improving how they're creating their reports.

Speaker 1:

So, um, most legacy companies, it's going to be a very manual process with people of having to go into systems, pull bits of data out and do some sort of wrangling to it to then turn it into the end result. When they then share that, other people are then going to be maybe changing things in it and it can very quickly snowball or get out of hand where there's not just that single source of the truth. So one area of benefit we see is that you're able to effectively automate quite a lot of steps of that report creation. So you're removing that time sink of the team, but you're also making sure that the process is always followed. You know how those reports are created and then, in modern platforms, when you share it out there, it limits the people able to then make their own tweaks, make their own changes and maintain that single source of the truth effectively. That's one area that we typically see as a solid starting point for these types of engagements.

Speaker 2:

Great and just sort of elaborating a little further on the benefits I know, optimizing supply chain, managing stock levels. You know, managing stock levels. There's a whole raft of benefits that businesses can glean essentially from these insights. What are some of the success stories we've seen in this space? Maybe one for you, fraser, based on past experience, what have you seen? Or, andy, I'll put it out to either of you, and it's always good to draw on those real life examples of where we've seen success.

Speaker 3:

Let me start, then I can give you a couple of examples where we've done similar sorts of analytics. If we think specifically around safety stock forecasting, there's a number of different ways that businesses can do this. Sometimes it could be just based on a number. I'm sitting in a room at the moment and there are some pens on the table. Therefore, in stores there must always be 10 bags of pens. Awesome, that's how some organizations do safety stock.

Speaker 3:

But, actually, what you could do is actually look at and join that information with what your forecast sales and orders and manufacturing if it's a manufacturing organization require. So safety stock could be a variable value and that would be based on predictive analytics, of saying, well, actually we know that you're going to have 50 orders of creating wall boards that require pens. Therefore, we know what the safety stock needs to be and the sequence of scheduling that they need to be against. So safety stock doesn't need to be dead money on the shelf because somebody and somewhere has put a number 10 in there. It can be variable and dynamic so you don't waste money stocking items that you simply don't need. That would be one example that we've implemented really well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and just to add to that as well, when businesses typically look at setting their safety stock levels, it's easy enough if they don't sell a huge number of SKUs and different number of products. If it's an enterprise, multinational company, they're going to have thousands of product lines and thousands of different SKUs. When it's at that scale, it's nigh on impossible for a person to set SKU level, safety stock levels across all those products, as there's just not enough time and not enough ability of the knowledge of those different SKUs to set that accurately. So each different SKU's got a different level for different shop, different location, whatever it may be. It just lets you get a lot more granular with those predictions and those forecasts effectively.

Speaker 3:

And I think one of the things to further add on to that is it might sound surprising, but any organisation that's got multiple warehouses and this is really kind of at the more simple end of the analytics piece it might seem like a bit of a leap for some organizations, but knowing what stock you have, if you've got distributed warehousing, is actually not necessarily a straightforward challenge, and if you can bring all of that data together, overlay it with analytics and then predict what stock needs to be where, again that can be saving you money because you can be moving stock dynamically around your warehouses based on the demand forecast coming through from each of then the operations within each of those locations.

Speaker 3:

So that might sound simple, but actually we see time and time again where that is not done and individual silos are operating where we say, well, no, this is my stock, sorry. There's an absolute replica just further down the road with exactly the same stock that's doing exactly the same thing, which at the moment is absolutely nothing. But yet further up the road there's another warehouse that's churning the same stock over and over and over again and you've got dead stocks that do nothing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so ultimately, driving more efficiency, better ability to manage what you're investing in product and, by leveraging that, key efficiency savings. I mean it's also from a CO2 emissions perspective across the supply chain, a huge green credit to these wholesaling distribution businesses to be able to show that they are taking things like that seriously. By leveraging these technologies and services because that's a hot topic, everyone's talking about emissions and being carbon neutral Using data and the technology we now have available at our disposal, we can be more efficient. Thanks, gentlemen. I think that was a great discussion around the positives and essentially, the key reasons for businesses looking at how they can use data and analytics to be more efficient. Moving on, I think you know, obviously we talked about how they can get started, but from a BCN perspective, andy, do you want to go into a little more detail around how BCN, in partnership with Microsoft, are helping businesses embark on this journey?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, of course. So BCN. We're one of the top Microsoft partners in the UK and as part of that, we have various accreditations. They give us specifically solution partners for different business areas within Microsoft. What that means is that we work very closely with the Microsoft account teams, but also with the Microsoft product teams, to understand more about what's coming and how we can use effectively Microsoft technology to help customers solve these problems using the Microsoft tech.

Speaker 1:

As part of this, there are various funding pots that Microsoft make available to partners such as BCN, where, effectively, microsoft invest in the solution for that customer. So there's various ways of doing it, but they stretch things, including workshops, to effectively decide and settle on if this technology is the right one to help solve this problem through then to Microsoft funding things around proof of concepts, proof of values and ultimately then moving on to funding and building that solution in a production environment. When it comes to working out which of these funding pots are available for which customer, there's various criteria that the customer would need to hit, but we can work out if that's the case and work closely with Microsoft to determine that and ultimately work out what funding is available to help businesses get started on this journey.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic, and just sort of following on from that, I know that we as a business, bcn are at the moment, in accordance with, obviously, yourself and the data team, currently offering any new prospects free data assessments just to help understand what their data journey might look like. Do you want to talk a little bit about what that offering looks like?

Speaker 1:

yeah, absolutely so. Um, as you said, it's a free data assessment where we effectively take a look at your, your current data environment, um current reporting process, really trying to understand as a, as a business area, how you're using your data, what you're using it to do, in terms of what decisions you're helping to to make off the back of it. It ultimately goes back to my point earlier around identifying that that first use case has to be a killer one, that's, that's really going to deliver value in a short space of time. So the data assessment effectively helps us to look and try to identify that first use case for you to get started on this journey. The output of the assessment is effectively a short, medium, long-term use cases that we can address to help you make better use of your data and, ultimately, better use your Microsoft investment.

Speaker 2:

Andy. So if you're a business in the wholesale and distribution space looking to start a data journey, or even if you're on it and want a second opinion or some advice on how to move things forward, then don't hesitate to get in touch with us here at BCN. Andy and the team are here to help. So if you would like to find out some more information about these assessments and the other services and products that BCN are working on in conjunction with Microsoft, then don't hesitate to get in touch. Feel free to visit our website. That's wwwbcncouk. There you'll find a wealth of information, as well as contact details for people who you can reach out to to get you started on your journey. Andy Fraser, as always, a pleasure having you guys on the conversation. Look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for having us Pete Appreciate it. Cheers.