Well-known analytics thought leader Tom Davenport once remarked how the process of developing analytics is a lot like a supply chain. So much in fact, he called it an Analytics Supply Chain.
This should make complete sense if data or analytics work is part of your job. Developing and deploying insights is a multi-step process involving sometimes multiple people and different technologies much like a supply chain.
If you are instead on the receiving end of insights, then you can appreciate that timely and high-quality outputs don’t just magically appear. In fact, I bet there are some important decisions you make today that could be improved a lot over the current state.
That’s the gist of what the Alteryx Analytics Cloud offers supply chains. There are many decisions across the supply chain today that suffer a lack of detail, timeliness, or repeatability. The reason? Too long have the analysts supporting supply chain functions been handcuffed by suboptimal tools like spreadsheets and challenging working conditions with those in IT who hold the keys to data.
Alteryx customers have addressed a variety of use cases within supply chain. Shown below are examples of how they support a customer-centric supply chain that recognizes the needs and wants of customers as well as the capacity of suppliers to meet demand.
A key player in the Analytics Supply Chain for our customers is often a partner, or organization focused on delivering the services necessary to realize a use case and ultimately business value. In practice, many customers desire developing their own Alteryx muscles to take on more of this work themselves over time. To this end, those same partners become essential teachers, educators, and trainers to help when needed.
One of these partners, Keyrus, recently opened the door to enabling Alteryx teams to present real world example technical demonstrations for several high value supply chain use cases. As a trusted advisor to many retailers, brands, and manufacturing organizations, Keyrus has a lot of experience bridging the gap between the art of possible and reality using Alteryx. It’s this expertise both in Alteryx but also in the supply chain domain, that is available to any organization interested in targeting supply chain decisions for significant improvement.
Check out the demonstration use cases below and if you are interested in seeing any live, reach out to your Alteryx sales team or let me know and I will connect you.
Demand Forecasting
Many forecasting processes simply lack the detail or timeliness needed to make critical planning and execution decisions. Such was the case for one Keyrus client in the beverage category that experienced a sudden demand spike during the pandemic. This demonstration features the Alteryx solution, which improved forecasting accuracy by 3 percent – a figure you can be certain mapped to a great deal of monetary value and customer satisfaction.
Logistics and Shipping
The pandemic drove sudden increased demand for delivery services. Like many impacted by spiking demand during the pandemic, a leading meal kit delivery company experienced the challenge of offering cost effective delivery, while meeting customer expectations. This demonstration features the Alteryx solution, which aligned customer orders with shipping capacity to most cost-effectively deploy delivery assets.
Another example comes from a leading auto industry products distribution company. In this case, the challenge was to optimize the cost of inventory across their supply network while meeting demand and flagging when additional capacity is required. A million dollars in cost savings was recognized while still meeting all Service Level Agreements and customer demand.
If your priorities align with these or other use cases where Analytics Automation can improve supply chain decisions, reach out to your Alteryx sales team or let me know.
To benchmark your organization’s analytics maturity, take the Alteryx Analytics Maturity Assessment.
To identify the best use cases to pursue first, complete the Alteryx Business Use Case Discovery Guide.