Control Tower Introduction

Control Tower Introduction CloudLogix 29 October 2012

Introduction According to a KPMG survey [2012], American enterprises strongly believe that business has increased in complexity over the past two years. They say that A total of 77 percent of respondents argue that complexity has increased very or somewhat significantly, while only one in 20 thinks business is simpler than before. An overwhelming majority of their respondents also believe that this complexity will only increase. One of the top two complexity triggers for the businesses in this survey is information management. The causes of this complexity seem obvious. The successful enterprise is rarely homogenous in today s world. There are many global sites that operate differently and many partners to accommodate. There may be segments of the business that are incorporated through merger or acquisition that may have unique business practices. This is the nature of the modern organization. Mirroring the overall complexity of the organizations that they are trying to support, Supply Chains have become distributed. But Supply Chain technology has remained monolithic. Many organizations find themselves hamstrung by these tools inability to rapidly adapt and integrate. On many cases, if you force the organization to fit a constrained set of processes, you may very well be breaking a very successful (profitable) process in one or more corners of the company. Matching supply with demand as rapidly as possible is crucial to running an effective business today. The Harvard Business Review [October 2012] asserts that adopting a culture of business intelligence can produce a powerhouse company. The HBR cites numerous examples of companies who have excelled in the modern economy by incorporating analytics into the overall business. But there is another level that can be achieved to recognize additional improvements. This intelligence should be incorporated into the real time flow of distributed data and should indicate proactive changes to the actions at hand. Companies that can incorporate this intelligence into the real-time supply chain to react and be proactive to changing demand as quickly as possible will dominate their market. Not everyone can immediately adopt these new processes. Supply Chain organizations have a clear linear evolution that is dictated by their current abilities. This evolution defines the needs, requirements and behaviors of the organization at that moment and is a continuum, starting from a completely reactive organization to a completely proactive organization. A reactive organization is built on a fire-fighting model, where the organization prides itself on its ability to adapt, assimilate and overcome. The defining characteristic at this stage of the model is that very little planning is done in this organization, or the planning that is executed is performed in isolation from supply chain operations. Quite often, the organization relies upon a few roving lone rangers who delight in being able to pull the organization s fat out of the fire. But what if the masked men/women are too swamped? What if they leave? In general, this model works for a period of time, but success is difficult to scale or to endure. PAGE 2

The most efficient, effective and scalable supply chain organizations are proactive and deliberate in the business processes and functions that make that organization successful. The processes form the foundation of the operations and are replicable at every site and echelon of an organization. So what does it mean to be proactive? Does this imply that we will achieve the fabled Supply Chain Visibility that so many consultants and software providers are lauding? We believe that simple visibility is not enough. As one noted supply chain manager says Visibility is the baseline that we need to achieve. As another manager said Visibility lets me know where I went wrong, weeks after I needed to know it. A proactive organization needs to incorporate forward-thinking tools and processes to fully take advantage of the opportunities that visibility affords. The novelty and differentiation that we are proposing for this supply chain organization would be to provide this set of processes, procedures and accompanying tools. What are we trying to achieve? At CloudLogix, we are trying to help an organization build a simple notion that is complex in nature which we call the Active Supply Chain. We have built a cloudbased model based on ground-breaking synchronization, analytics and social networking that provides enabling technologies to support the new world of distributed supply chains. Many oldstyle software companies will advise that you toss your existing tools and re-engineer your entire organization around their ERP solutions. These implementations tend to be over-priced, take too long, and quite often do not achieve the promised return on investment. We think there is a better way. The underpinnings of this model are based on cloud-based synchronization services that provide a corporate control tower over local operations. This is a bottom up approach that has less impact on day-to-day operations, versus a top-down approach (such as provided by a traditional Enterprise Resource Planner). We call this the Synchronized Resource Planner (SRP) and is used where you would use an ERP, or to improve an ERP implementation. We built this based on our belief that companies should pick the best-of-breed applications as well as the best available technology and synchronize instead of moving to a monolithic application. We measure the data flow to provide an often ignored treasure trove of information for analysis for a better view of company, carrier, lane, and financial performance. The three critical domains that comprise the Active Supply Chain model are: Data Synchronization, Business Intelligence / Analytics and Business Process Management. CloudLogix provides tools in each of these domains. Clients can use the CloudLogix tools individually to address specific issues or integrate them as a whole with existing business systems to craft enhanced solutions. Our products are a force multiplier for those products already in operation. We provide the leverage for clients to do better business with the tools they already have. This paper explores one of the key elements in developing the Active Supply Chain, and the CloudLogix implementation of that element: Process and Milestone management. Ensuring consistent effectiveness in an organization requires tools that help manage, monitor and enforce the process rules that are defined by the organization. In the supply chain, lack of good information to control orders means longer lead times, lower fill rates, extended receivable cycles and increased incidents of not meeting customer needs. Managing purchase orders with outdated PAGE 3

technologies or manual operations, such as Excel leads to increased labor costs, bad data, poor customer satisfaction, and ultimately limits your ability to quickly respond to changing customer demands. A good milestone management tool will allow users to develop their own business rules for milestones associated with orders and shipments that can be enforced by the application on a per user/site or group basis. The tool should be available via the web and should be brand-able and customizable on a per user level. Because these managed processes need to be communicated with other applications and other organizations, this tool will need to synchronize with other applications to ensure that real-time actions can be executed. To communicate with users world-wide or in other companies, this tool should use social networking to manage milestone communications. Process and Milestone Management: Control Tower The CloudLogix tool is a work-flow/milestone management application called Control Tower. Control Tower can manage processes and milestones in any domain, but Control Tower has significant value when applied to the supply chain. In this domain, Control Tower manages work flow and milestone-based supply chain processes, such as order management and management of customers, vendors, shippers, agents and suppliers. Control Tower enforces business rules of any client organization, provides mechanisms for communication and approval processes of orders and shipments, and integrates with routing management to enforce shipping rules of the business and to find the most cost effective shipping solution. More importantly, Control Tower uses social networking to allow users and customers to create, manage and coordinate milestones, orders, shipments and operations. To completely manage and optimize transportation and order management, CloudLogix offers its Control Tower software in conjunction with its LoadStar software to manage orders and optimize shipments. LoadStar is a carrier-neutral rating, quoting, routing, and booking application and engine, which can be equated to a Transportation Management System. For simplicity, when our customers use these two applications together, we call the resulting operational capability: the CloudLogix Order and Rating Management System (ORMS). Because the ORMS is a secure Software-as-a-service (SaaS) tool, both internal orders (orders and shipments originating with the primary company) and external orders (orders and shipments made by vendors and customers) can be managed to the business rules established by the company. This solution is seamlessly integrated with the warehouse management through the DataDaemon. Shipments can be created, approved, managed, tracked, rated, and booked through the ORMS. External documents can be added to each order. Social networking chats and messages are associated with the order. Order workflow and business rules for each client are enforced to ensure that everyone operated as the customer requires. External users can also send shipment notifications or other notices through the interfaces in a simple fashion that can be set up for that user in as little as an hour. ORMS provides a work flow engine to enable management and visibility of milestone-based supply chain processes, such as order management and management of customers, vendors, shippers and suppliers. A score card and metrics on each constituent user (such as vendors and carriers) of the ORMS enables the company to use the tool to negotiate or guide users to PAGE 4

behaviors that will meet the customer s requirements. ORMS uses social networking to allow users and customers to create, manage and coordinate milestones, orders, shipments and operations in near-real time, while maintaining the continuity and history of those transactions so that management can quickly understand and adapt to changes. Orders and shipments in the ORMS are consolidated and optimized (aggregation and pooling optimization) based on the business rules and the most cost effective shipment method or carrier based on the current price or on pre-negotiated pricing. The ORMS will always suggest the carrier that can provide the service that meets the business requirements at the best price. The user can select the carrier and the shipment will be created with that carrier. The user can then track the shipment through the system. The system maintains history of all shipments for easy reporting and analysis and simple reporting for invoicing and freight audit. Freight Audit uses complex business rules to simplify the audit process and ensure that everyone gets paid faster without complications. The ORMS provides real-time quoting of shipments that may not fit a shipment in the rate tables or through carrier automated interfaces. The system can send automatic quote requests to specified carriers. Until the specified expiration time of the quote, the system will collect the results from each respondent to help complete the process. PAGE 5

ORMS Features By user login, enforce the business rules that apply to a site or project to accomplish milestones, including: Enforcement of milestone completion rules, such as uploading pictures or documents. Automatic approval management for milestones Order workflow and business rules for each client are enforced to ensure that everyone operated as the customer requires. Provides a work flow engine to enable management and visibility of milestonebased supply chain processes, such as order management and management of customers, vendors, shippers and suppliers. Easy identification of tasks that need to be achieved today, tomorrow or the current moment. Both internal orders (orders and shipments originating with the primary company) and external orders (orders and shipments made by vendors and customers) can be managed to the business rules established by the company. Social networking chats and messages are associated with the order. Uses social networking to allow users and customers to create, manage and coordinate milestones, orders, shipments and operations in near-real time, while maintaining the continuity and history of those transactions so that management can quickly understand and adapt to changes. External users can also send shipment notifications or other notices through the interfaces in a simple fashion that can be set up for that user in as little as an hour. Orders and shipments are consolidated and optimized (aggregation and pooling optimization) based on the business rules and the most cost effective shipment method or carrier based on the current price or on pre-negotiated pricing. External documents can be added to each order. A score card and metrics on each constituent user (such as vendors and carriers) enables the company to use the tool to negotiate or guide users to behaviors that will meet the customer s requirements. Tracks shipments and invoices through the entire life cycle Synchronizes with external accounting, ERP or other enterprise systems Personalized help pages Allows rating and comparison of multiple domestic and international carrier tariffs enforcing a company's business rules using multiple mechanisms: Automated tariffs based on carrier electronic interfaces Complex tariff tables based on zone, zip-to-zip, preferred airports with "beyond" tariffs, skip zone tariffs, and lane specific tariffs. Inclusion of accessorial fees, product codes, or exceptions into deriving the tariff Guides users through customs and tax requirements Allows booking of carriers through automated electronic means or through messaging Provides a quoting/bid board capability for complex shipments Provides for simple and complex consolidation based on origin/destination pairs or intermediate consolidation point PAGE 6

Automatic updates of shipment status through electronic updates Integrates with any CloudLogix application or custom applications. Allows a user to develop a quote that can be used for approval or bidding Allows a user to flag a hot shipment, which will allow anyone to be updated as the shipment reaches critical milestones, such as delivery Notifies users of shipments which need attention (are late, are near due date, or have an exception) Allows a user to track any shipment, even shipments not in the system Reports about rating to improve shipment efficiency and effectiveness. Ties shipments and invoices to general ledger codes to improve billability of a shipment Automated audit capability for invoices that automatically identify invoices that must be reviewed (based on your rules) and identify service failures. Allows shipping and accounting personnel to only need to focus on invoices that are questionable. PAGE 7

Control Tower Benefits Control Tower improves the bottom line performance of today s companies. Improving cash flow by positively impacting cash-to-cash and operating cycles, Control Tower delivers comprehensive sales and purchase order management functionality. Equip your enterprise with a milestone management system that delivers continuous benefits including: Visibility into and management of all milestones, orders, shipments and events Capture data down to the line item detail Immediately change and communicate order or shipping data and instructions through social networking Obtain supplier specific KPI reports to improve product flow Automate shipping and tracking from origin to destination regardless of carrier or mode Manage transport processes to optimize and measure landed cost Affordably priced for small to mid-sized business needs Built upon open technologies to integrate with other software solutions Plugs into your infrastructure to empower growth and change with few disruptions Minimize lead-times and tolerance expectations Maximize, automate and standardize supplier discipline and communications Gain full visibility and control of the supply chain beginning with production and ending with landed costing Centralize all communications and activities relating to shipment routing, authorization, tracking, clearance and delivery Provide full visibility and reporting across all shipping, regardless of carrier Centralized database compatible with, and accessible to, enterprise reporting tools Customized reporting functions to provide actionable information within the supply chain Implementation in 30 Days While standard order management implementations can extend for many months, Control Tower is designed for rapid deployment. Customers begin seeing positive effects from our tools quickly. And Control Tower is a complete SaaS model, so there is no IT infrastructure to maintain. Combined with our easy to use Quick Reference user guides, implementation is simple and easy. PAGE 8

Conclusion With CloudLogix Control Tower product you deploy what you need, when you need it. Quickly integrate our basic Milestone Management functionality and then add on other features as needed. Our process insures the most efficient deployment at the lowest cost with the shortest ROI. CloudLogix is a U.S.-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) company developing enabling technology for the supply chain market, focused on allowing customers to synchronize their best-of-breed applications to improve supply chain responsiveness and employ world-class analytics in applications. CloudLogix first generation technologies provide an active marriage of synchronization components, analytical engines and synchronized applications to effectively and efficiently improve the supply chain at a lower cost. CLOUDLOGIX - Keep what you have locally deliver what you need globally PAGE 9