In this guest blog post, David Millman, Partner Solution Engineer at Fivetran and Hemant Yadav, Data Modernization and Generative AI Center of Excellence Leader at Capgemini, explain how autonomous supply chain analytics combining the power of Fivetran, Capgemini, and Microsoft Fabric can redefine the landscape of supply chain management.
The ongoing digital transformation across industries has significantly heightened the demand for more sophisticated and autonomous supply chain analytics. The integration of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics into supply chain management (SCM) is revolutionizing the way companies oversee their logistics, inventory, and customer requirements.
Future proofing a solution that provides resilience to external factors such as new legislation around ESG (environmental, social, and governance) benchmarks and changing technology such as big-data, cloud, and generative AI is an ongoing challenge. These come with big financial implications, as supply chains with higher ESG scores increase market capitalization by attracting new investors. Better AI strategies unlock the promise of faster and more complete decision making.
Business challenges in supply chain management
The constant optimization of any reasonable supply chain is federated across many sub- and third-party organizations, meaning that full 360-degree, real-time insight is nearly impossible. Organizational friction is further compounded by technical diversity. Very quickly the data representation is hidden in numerous files, spreadsheets, transactional databases, and platforms for customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP). Larger organizations even have multiple ERP instances on different software versions, further compounding technical challenges.
Orthogonal to this is the business need to deliver continuous supply chain efficiencies that meet both strategic vision and shorter-term changes. For an example of this put yourself in the position of a fabless IDM (integrated device manufacturer), i.e., a company that designs its own semiconductors but outsources all the manufacturing. Likely, predictive models define the quantity of devices that need to be manufactured each day against a known pool of manufacturing resources. In an instant this balance can be toppled if this manufacturing plant suffers a fire, putting at risk hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. It is now the supply chain solution that needs to adjust and react quickly to this adversity.
Strategic influences on the supply chain, such as legislative and financial changes like ESG, typically require a wider range of data sources than pure operational use cases. All of a sudden, index data from sources like Bloomberg, MSCI, and S&P are required to understand how investors may increase or decrease their investments based on relative scores. In short, the supply chain gains yet another influence on shareholder value.
A powerful solution combining Capgemini, Fivetran, and Microsoft Fabric
Leading this transformation is a powerful solution combining Capgemini’s extensive industry expertise, Fivetran’s real-time data integration capabilities, and the robust analytical power of Microsoft Fabric. The synergy of these products is redefining the landscape of supply chain management by enabling truly autonomous analytics.
Strategic supply chain investments such as multiple SAP/ERP instances, on different versions, deployed across multiple countries, with a mix of on-premises and cloud, continually have their data replicated to OneLake in Microsoft Fabric. All internal data encoding is transformed and transported, without violating existing license agreements. This helps mitigate challenging situations that often arise from external negative events, such as an unexpected drop in manufacturing capacity because of a fire or crucial deliveries being delayed because of incidents like the Ever Given container ship being stuck in the Suez Canal.
These situations can significantly alter timelines. Suddenly more diverse data is required, sometimes in hours, often in minutes. In such cases, data sources can be swiftly uploaded into OneLake, making them accessible in any analytics-ready format. This rapid data integration allows your crisis management team to respond more quickly than competitors. It can mitigate reduced manufacturing or supply chain stoppages with rapid organization and procurement of alternative resources, giving your business a significant advantage.
Logic and the associated data of an organization’s supply chain is scattered across hundreds of different data sources, implemented in many technologies. Pulling all this data together in a uniform manner is technically challenging and time-consuming. Add a short timeline due to managing a critical business issue, and these issues compound.
High-volume data ingestion and replication for real-time insights
Fivetran is built from the ground up to make ingesting new data sources as simple as possible, like plugging in a new network or electricity cable. As a result, 500+ pipelines, including SaaS platforms, files, and databases with full security, scalability, and reliability can be configured in a few minutes.
More demanding sources such as the many varieties of SAP take a little longer but are significantly quicker and more robust than other solutions. Where a connector is not available, data can be consumed by webhooks, database or file access, and connectors by request. The most challenging sources can be connected in a significantly shorter timeframe, while ensuring all the enterprise capabilities are built in.
Autonomous supply chain analytics brings together the best in technology and business best practices to create a unified, data-driven representation of the real-world supply chain. Building on a core set of data patterns, it brings together data cornerstones such as the many ERP/CRM systems and is designed to easily and constantly extend and react to market and physical interruptions.
Capgemini provides the business and technical knowledge, while Fivetran automates the rapid ingestion of over 600 different types of data source into a single platform. Microsoft Fabric is the platform providing a current set of data tools and continual improvement that all come together to deliver a unique advantage for your supply chain.
Current and historic data that can impact any and all seven areas of the supply chain are combined and available to business users. Automatically refined across three zones (raw, curated, and consumption, it can be made available through various serving layers, like a traditional dashboard or an AI-driven copilot. Supply chain and related professionals (depicted on the right in the above graphic) can consume and derive new insights seamlessly as part of their everyday activities.
Using tools like AI-driven copilots, data experts can now ask questions from the full fidelity raw data and fully curated information and combine, slice, and dice as needed. Similarly, data innovators can constantly challenge steady state and test new ideas quickly and cheaply. As the amount of supply chain data over time increases, the actual time to resolve should decrease for data products in the same cohort.
Shock external events, such as fires in factories and ships running aground in the Suez Canal, that immediately distress any well-run supply chain can now be addressed quicker than before. More important is the ability to react and implement a contingency plan that will undoubtedly require obtaining faster access to limited resources than the competition.
This solution combining the power of Capgemini, Microsoft, and Fivetran allows data to be applied across the whole supply chain. With an ever-increasing amount of data and functionality, incremental benefits will be achieved, instituting the best practice of data and supply chain. These best practices also empower a new level of agility when the unexpected happens, creating a data competitive organization.
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