In today’s complex global supply networks, the only way to
accurately synchronize demand with supply is to implement
a collaborative supply planning process—a daunting task
given the rapid fluctuations in supply and demand signals.
The process is complicated further because companies must
coordinate and collaborate with hundreds of suppliers across
the supply network, each of which may have different tools
and technological capabilities. Unfortunately, not many
solutions extend beyond the four walls of your enterprise.
E2 Collaborative Supply Planning is a proven module that
enables forecast collaboration between buyers/planners
and suppliers, helping to match supply and demand across
the network. E2 Collaborative Supply Planning provides a
collaborative multi-enterprise platform for you to publish mid
to long-term forecasts, and to receive suppliers’ commits and
potential upside capabilities.
E2 COLLABORATIVE
SUPPLY PLANNING
Synchronize Supply and Demand
Demand-supply synchronization is achieved via a forecast-commit process—a capability that has proven difficult to automate. E2 Collaborative Supply Planning provides a forecast-collaboration platform that enables you to publish mid to long-term (52 weeks or more) forecasts in daily, weekly, and monthly buckets, and to receive commits from suppliers. With the E2open module, suppliers also have the ability to provide their potential upside capabilities, enabling you to respond more effectively to surges in demand.
E2 Collaborative Supply Planning includes a rich set of alert and exception capabilities that immediately inform you and your trading partners about any supply-demand disconnects. In the case of exceptions (such as forecast-commit mismatches), the alerts are dynamically triggered to help users proactively resolve and avoid potential supply issues. The module also supports configurable email alerts to notify users about any such exceptions.
Figure 1: E2 Collaborative Supply Planning provides a common platform for forecast-collaboration processes between enterprises and their suppliers.
Automate and Streamline Your Forecast-Collaboration Process
To communicate demand forecasts with their trading partners, many companies continue to use manual, paper-based processes such as Excel spreadsheets, emails, faxes, and phone calls. This unstructured, disconnected method of communication between buyers/planners and suppliers often leads to human errors and data latency, making it difficult to get an accurate, comprehensive picture of the demand-supply situation. Due to constant fluctuations in demand, supply and demand rarely meet up in a manually-orchestrated supply chain. The result is excess inventory when supply exceeds demand, and lost revenues when supply is less than demand. E2 Collaborative Supply Planning automates the forecast-collaboration process between you and your trading partners. After each planning run in your system, a new forecast is loaded into the E2open module so that suppliers can view and respond. Suppliers can commit via Web UI entry, Excel UI upload, or B2B. Commits are automatically downloaded to your backend system. The module also provides the ability to roll up data by various predefined groupings (suppliers, items, regions/sites, hierarchies) in order to view the aggregated demand-supply picture.
Key Features
• Automates the forecast-collaboration process between you and your trading partners
• Allows all partners to track demand and supply events using exception management capabilities
• Supports multiple B2B integration options with any-to-any B2B transformation support
• Integrates performance management and decision support by monitoring KPIs
• Enables role-based configurable work flows
• Provides unified views and forecast-commit work flows to the entire supply base and all trading partners
Key Benefits
• Streamlined and automated forecast-commit process across the entire supply base • Reduced data latency • Improved supply assurance • Dynamic alerts and exception management • Improved productivity with reduced supply chain operational costs • Continuous performance
improvement via KPI tracking • Minimal IT investment
• Rapid time to value and significant ROI
Figure 2: E2 Collaborative Supply Planning provides a collaborative platform to manage forecast-collaboration processes with real-time visibility to business process exceptions, supporting proactive resolution.
Scale Your Forecast Collaboration to All Trading Partners
E2 Collaborative Supply Planning provides the ability to seamlessly and rapidly connect to suppliers and trading partners, regardless of their technological capabilities. Traditionally, companies have established connectivity with only a handful of trading partners using EDI. Most still rely on manual processes to manage forecast information and supplier commits. E2open provides multiple integration options with trading partners, regardless of the formats and protocols they use. The robust integration layer enables any-to-any B2B transformation of the documents between you and your trading partners, effectively leveraging any B2B investments you (or your trading partners) already have.
E2 Collaborative Supply Planning supports rapid connectivity with your multiple backend planning systems to automate and streamline the process. In addition to B2B, the module also provides a user interface for buyers/planners and suppliers to enable the forecast-commit process.
Forecast Collaboration Performance Monitoring
To improve overall execution of the forecast-collaboration process, E2 Collaborative Supply Planning—together with the E2 Collaboration Center—provides a rich set of key performance indicators (KPIs) and business analytics that enable continuous performance measurement and monitoring. As soon as a new version of forecast is uploaded, the previous version and associated commits are rolled over and stored for data analysis and reporting. The ad hoc workbench provides an easy-to-use interface to quickly generate custom BI reports from the transactional business data available in the module, or to modify the pre-built KPI reports included in the workbench. Some examples of reports include the following:
•
Forecast Waterfall – generates demand forecast waterfall reports to show how demand has changed week over week (an indicator of forecast volatility)•
Commit Waterfall – measures the change in supplier commits for each planning cycle•
Forecast Versus Commit – tracks supplier performance by measuring the percentage•
Forecast Versus Actual Pull – tracks the actual consumption of material against demand forecasts•
Forecast-Commit Cycle Performance – tracks supplier responsiveness to provide commit against the forecastLower Total Cost of Ownership
E2 Collaborative Supply Planning is designed to minimize the total cost of ownership (TCO) by providing the application via a cloud-based model. Deployed as an on-demand, managed service, E2open is responsible for software, solution configuration, trading partner onboarding, and system operations. This means the module is deployed rapidly, resulting in faster time to value with minimal IT investment. E2 Collaborative Supply Planning comes with pre-built, configured, and tested adapters for your ERP system, enabling rapid integration with your backend ERP systems.
E2open, headquartered in Foster City, California, is the leading provider of on-demand solutions for collaborative execution of multi-enterprise business processes across today’s global trading networks.
The company delivers a complete business process, including software, deployment, operations, services, and community management, representing the industry’s first collaborative execution solution for the extended demand-supply ecosystem. This approach helps global enterprises improve visibility, control, responsiveness, and collaboration across multiple tiers of customers, partners, and suppliers, resulting in major improvements across all key operational and financial performance metrics. Deployed as an on-demand, managed service, E2open easily connects with SAP, Oracle, and other ERP systems of record to extend the value of these investments beyond internal company processes. The company also features a performance-based, pay-as-you-go model to assure customer success.
For More Information
For more information on E2 Collaborative Supply Planning, please visit E2open at www.e2open. com or call us at +1.650.645.6500.
E2open
Corporate Headquarters
4100 East Third Avenue, Suite 400 Foster City, CA 94404 P: 1.650.645.6500 F: 1.650.645.6555 [email protected] www.e2open.com Offices E2open U.S.A. Foster City, CA Dallas, TX Austin, TX E2open Europe Reading, UK E2open Malaysia
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
E2open Taiwan
Taipei, Taiwan
E2open China
Shanghai, China
E2open maintains locations in Malaysia, Taiwan, China, the United Kingdom and the United States.
