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ROLE OF BIG DATA IN S&OP DATA SHEET Page 1 of 2 | © 2012 Steelwedge Software, Inc. All rights reserved. – [email protected] – 925.460.1700 Based on a survey of 160 supply chain leaders in a recent webinar conducted by Steelwedge, we found that companies have captured a whopping 70% more data (product, supply, demand and finance) to manage their organizations this year. Yet, 77% of these businesses are not actually leveraging this data in their S&OP processes, thereby leaving “blind spots” in their decision making processes around critical supply/demand tradeoffs. The term "Big Data" is not just an IT buzzword that supply chain folks can choose to ignore. It is becoming more and more of a reality—and valuable leveraging point-- in their own organizations. What do we mean by Big Data? There are three attributes to Big Data: Volume, Velocity and Variability. An example of volume in Retail is the number of SKU-Ship To combinations -- which can run into millions then translate to billions of planning relations (SKU-ShipTo-Customer). An example of variability is the demand pattern shifts that happen across a set of low-volume but high-value products which becomes difficult to forecast. This is common in industrial equipment and high-technology industries. An example of velocity is the rapid addition of new products in organizations and the need to plan for those products from a demand as well as supply perspective. These three factors combined have become critical for organizations to manage as part of their S&OP process. When companies have a basic S&OP process, it is easier for them to create the plans at a monthly level and at an aggregate level of granularity such as product families or categories (Level 1 “reacting” on the Gartner Maturity model). However, when companies mature to higher levels such as Level 2 “balancing” or 3 “collaborating” or 4 “orchestrating”, then it is critical for them to be able to plan at a monthly level and also re-plan at ad-hoc frequencies to plan at a much more granular level (SKU, ship-to or customer level). Without the nuances of big data volume, velocity and variability, they can’t reliably power ad-hoc decision making required by today’s volatile business environments. Big Data is becoming a Big Deal for Agile S&OP The Best S&OP is Powered by Big Data • Single unified data model for supply, demand and finance • Ability to do global scenario management across the supply, demand and finance • Extremely rich collaborative capabilities supported by Enterprise Enabled Excel Demand Supply Finance Real-Time Processing for Huge Datasets S&OP S&OP Variety & ? ! + Velocity Volume
