Using cloud partnerships to improve supply chain resilience

His­tor­i­cal­ly, how have busi­ness­es man­aged and gained vis­i­bil­i­ty of their sup­ply chains?

ERP solu­tions have been around for decades, but many com­pa­nies still use spread­sheets to gain vis­i­bil­i­ty. This is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing if the data in the spread­sheets is live, accu­rate and valid, but this data is often siloed and stale. At Epi­cor we are unlock­ing the siloed data and mak­ing it fric­tion­less to con­nect. We do this using the lat­est elec­tron­ic data inter­change (EDI) capa­bil­i­ties. EDI allows indus­tries to decrease delays in busi­ness process­es and increase sup­ply chain vis­i­bil­i­ty.

Have the events of the last two years accel­er­at­ed the demand and need for cloud tech­nol­o­gy?

Covid-19, fluc­tu­at­ing vari­ables such as sup­ply chain and dis­tri­b­u­tion chal­lenges, height­ened demand and labour short­ages, as well as the soar­ing cost of ener­gy and raw mate­ri­als have dra­mat­i­cal­ly accel­er­at­ed the demand and need for real time data, and this is enabled by cloud tech­nol­o­gy.

In 2020, Epi­cor found that 25% of busi­ness­es saw cloud as a strate­gic pri­or­i­ty for the year, with this num­ber rock­et­ing to 94% in 2021. Cloud tech­nol­o­gy allows busi­ness­es to gain insights into the future sup­ply chain to future-proof and stress test sup­ply chain resilien­cy. Addi­tion­al­ly, in a post-pan­dem­ic, hybrid-work­ing world, cloud-based tech­nolo­gies are enabling staff to work more effi­cient­ly, when­ev­er and wher­ev­er they’re based.

Why is cloud tech­nol­o­gy a bet­ter solu­tion for busi­ness­es and is it essen­tial for the long-term suc­cess of busi­ness­es with com­plex sup­ply chains?

Cloud ERP enables busi­ness­es to focus on their spe­cif­ic needs and not the nur­tur­ing of the sys­tem to run the dig­i­tal core of their busi­ness. Our team of experts and devel­op­ers takes care of main­tain­ing secu­ri­ty updates, back­ups, and upgrades and also mod­i­fy the solu­tion on an ongo­ing basis. While your inter­nal team may have done this a few times, ERP ven­dors typ­i­cal­ly have hun­dreds of thou­sands of cus­tomers deployed across geo­gra­phies and teams on rota­tion 24/7. Cloud tech also enables busi­ness­es to close­ly track a prod­uct through­out its life­cy­cle, allow­ing employ­ees to access real-time infor­ma­tion at any time and any place for more accu­rate deci­sion mak­ing, ulti­mate­ly result­ing in a more resilient busi­ness.

Can Epi­cor inte­grate its cloud tech­nol­o­gy with­in a business’s exist­ing sys­tems?

Yes. Epicor’s Indus­try ERP Cloud solu­tions are tai­lored to make inte­gra­tion as seam­less as pos­si­ble. Key to this is Epi­cor Automa­tion Stu­dio, a pio­neer­ing low-code inte­gra­tion plat­form-as-a-ser­vice which allows com­pa­nies to inte­grate and auto­mate activ­i­ties and process­es between pre­vi­ous­ly siloed appli­ca­tions data and plat­forms. Automa­tion Stu­dio empow­ers work­ers to effort­less­ly inte­grate and auto­mate sched­uled or event trig­gered work­flows, offer­ing a flex­i­ble solu­tion with access to a mar­ket­place of over 1,000 pop­u­lar appli­ca­tion con­nec­tors where busi­ness­es can mod­i­fy and imple­ment the work­flow inte­gra­tions that they need.

How does ERP tech­nol­o­gy help to facil­i­tate busi­ness­es’ dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in the sup­ply chain?

Cloud-based ERP solu­tions are fun­da­men­tal to sup­ply chain dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion as they act as the ‘dig­i­tal core’ that forms a basis from which more and more parts of a busi­ness can be digi­tised and inte­grat­ed. For­mu­la One rac­ing team Scud­e­ria AlphaTau­ri uses Epi­cor Kinet­ic to cen­tral­ly man­age all process­es and data across its oper­a­tions, opti­mis­ing every aspect of the team’s pro­duc­tion, inven­to­ry, com­po­nent test­ing and finan­cials with greater speed, accu­ra­cy, and vis­i­bil­i­ty. As a rac­ing car is made up of more than 14,000 pre­ci­sion com­po­nents that are cus­tom-made onsite, Kinet­ic allows Scud­e­ria AlphaTau­ri to auto­mate the job cre­ation process for every part, min­imis­ing data entry, speed­ing up pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and man­ag­ing and under­stand­ing the lifes­pan of every unique part in the sup­ply chain.

For more, please vis­it epicor.com/IIR

Pro­mot­ed by Epi­cor