Empowering Supply Chains: A Journey Beyond Challenges with Business Central

Supply chain is a crucial and volatile element for small and mid-sized businesses. The need to embed supply chains with visibility and agility is imperative and Dynamics 365 Business Central allows them to do so with its exceptional Supply Chain Management (SCM) capabilities.

Due to supply chains being highly susceptible to factors like geo-political or weather-related disruptions, it has become crucial for businesses to adapt to supply chain strategies that incorporate resilience into them. Furthermore, supply chain management is a complex and costly feat with its fair share of challenges. As an element that directly effects business continuity, it becomes imperative for small and mid-sized businesses to elevate their supply chains to achieve the following feats:

• Control costs.
• Maintain inventories.
• Forsee disruptions.
• Optimize business processes.
• Satisfy customers.

As complex as achieving these objectives together is, simply employing a SCM solution does not just cut it anymore. Managing today’s dynamically volatile supply chains requires a competitive mix of strategy and digital tools. It is essential for product-oriented SMBs to learn how to employ the latest tools and technologies with fool-proof supply chain management strategies.

In today’s blog we will discuss some of these strategies and how Dynamics 365 Business Central aids in maintaining lean and resilient supply chains.

Strategies for Supply Chain Resilience

A conundrum in supply chain management is that having alternative factories, backup sourcing facilities and stocks, to ensure supply chain resilience are traits that contradictory to a lean supply chain. Moreover, for SMBs, having such grand contingency plans is impossible as far as their budget capacity is concerned. Hence, SMBs must commit to smart strategies that are cost-effective and mitigate supply chain disruptions. Let us explore some of these smart strategies.

Maintain Inventory Visibility

Gaining intelligent visibility over inventories can enhance visibility into other factors for SMBs, like replenish rates. Having a system which provides intelligent insights regarding inventories keeps them up to date on the count of their most popular items. This saves them the hassle of items running out and the difficulty of stocking them rapidly.

Always be Looking into Alternatives

Due to supply chain unpredictability, it is wise to be prepared supply chain disruptions. SMBs can be prepared by staying connected with alternative suppliers, in different locations, for their product-related needs. Diversifying suppliers is the best contingency plan that is also cost-effective for SMBs.

Monitor Supplier Performance

A key aspect in maintaining a functional supply chain is fostering a favorable relationship with suppliers, which can be done by actively monitoring supplier performance. Establish KPIs like delivery times, product quality and response times to gage suppliers on their performance. This can also empower SMBs to foresee supplier behavior using intelligent tools and analytics.

Measure Organizational Performance

Building and maintain resilient supply chains is not a one-time objective, rather it is a continuous effort, which requires ongoing monitoring. It is important for SMBs to keep evaluating their own progress and gaging if they have the proper skills and resources to maintain resilient supply chains. This can be done by setting SMART goals i.e., goals that are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound.

Moreover, measuring team and individual performance on the grounds of set KPIs and performance metrics also enables organizations in identifying problem areas and improving them against industry benchmarks.

Business Central’s Capabilities to Build Resilient Supply Chains

Dynamics 365 Business Central, as a comprehensive business management solution, empowers small and medium-sized businesses with intelligent and data-driven capabilities that help them in meeting their ever-evolving consumer demands. It effectively unifies data and processes. Data from multiple sales channels and warehouses at various locations can easily be viewed from a single dashboard. Apart from this enterprise-level data unification, there is a lot to Business Central’s ERP capabilities, but in this blog, we will be discussing its stellar Supply Chain Management (SCM) capabilities.

These are some of the SCM capabilities in Business Central that SMBs can employ for supply chain efficiency.

Inventory Intelligence
The built-in inventory intelligence in Business Central allows organizations to keep track of their inventory status in real time. This means that Business Central tells them the number of products in their inventory and at the rate at which they are being depleted. Its intelligent capabilities allow SMBs to know when the right time is to get the next batch to mitigate the items from being out of stock. It also aids in preventing inventories from being over-stocked, which can save businesses significant costs as well.

Warehouse Visibility
Business Central lets its users have a holistic view of their warehouse, from reception to order dispatch. Businesses can track all transactions and movement of their goods from the get-go, which improves visibility into the movement of their goods. Having a clear picture of the position of goods enhances the visibility into the stock quantity.

Automating Processes
Having manual workflows for tasks that are time-consuming and repetitive can hinder a supply chain from being agile. Business Central effectively allows intelligent automation of tasks like order processing, inventory management, and production planning and can save monumental time. It uses aspects like barcode scanning and data from IoT devices which improves overall process efficiency. Automating these tasks also means that data can be stored in a single source in a unified manner, which can optimize data by mitigating data duplicity and siloes.

Data-Driven Insights and Analytics
An important way of building and maintaining resilient supply chains is powering them with AI-enabled insights. Business Central employs topnotch machine learning prediction and analytical models which can read and analyze historical data, like supplier behavior, to predict how reliable it will be in future, in certain circumstances. The unified data capabilities provided by Business Central also allow holistic analysis to drive meaningful insights which can lead future strategies. These also enable organizations to predict their supply chain behavior and take proactive steps to ensure operational continuity.

Order Planning
Business Central provides supply chain managers with data-driven insights regarding sales and demand. This helps them in order planning and provides them with the visibility to effectively plan manufacturing orders in accordance with the demand of specific items. This streamlines the processes from procurement and production to stockkeeping and deliveries. It also automated order processing and fulfillment processes, which can save time and optimize their supply chain.

Optimize Supply Chain with Dynamics Solution and Technology

To get the most of your supply chain management solutions and incorporating strategies discussed above, you can partner with an implementation company like Dynamics Solution and Technology. Our team of trusted functional experts can assess your processes and implement tailor-made Business Central solutions which can maximize your impact while minimizing costs.

As Microsoft’s Gold and Solutions partner, we are well-versed in custom implementations that expedite digital transformations of small or medium-sized businesses. Our range of digitally transformed clientele is a testament to our unwavering commitment to propelling businesses towards digital efficacy with Microsoft’s range of intelligent business management solutions.

Contact us today to optimize your supply chain operations for satisfied customers.