Module Brief E2 COLLABORATIVE INVENTORY MANAGEMENT In today s globally distributed manufacturing environments, vendor managed inventory (VMI) is a proven approach to creating highly responsive, demand-driven supply chains. Establishing a well-executed VMI program, however, is challenging. It requires significant multi-enterprise coordination, collaboration, and trust that each of your supply chain partners will do as required to replenish inventories on time, in the right quantities, and at the right locations. Unfortunately, few VMI solutions extend beyond the four walls of the core enterprise. This means that they cannot provide you with the visibility, control, and multi-enterprise process management capabilities you need to develop effective VMI programs. E2 Collaborative Inventory Management is the only solution with the necessary capabilities to implement successful and well-executed VMI programs in partnership with your entire supply base. e2open.com Module Brief
Enable End-to-End Inventory Visibility and Control Key Features Near real-time inventory visibility across sites, hubs, suppliers, and intransit Multiple partner integration options and an any-to-any B2B integration platform Support for all standard VMI and replenishment models Full visibility into all inventory-related metrics Calculation of projected inventory positions and potential supplydemand imbalances Exception-based configurable alerts Audit trails for visibility into transaction history for liability management and dispute resolution E2 Collaborative Inventory Management enables your enterprise to implement VMI programs in order to drive demand-supply network efficiencies. It assures a high level of product availability while maintaining lower inventory levels. The module enables and automates the execution of VMI programs supporting standard VMI and consigned inventory models. E2 Collaborative Inventory Management also provides near real-time visibility to inventory (including in-transit) at all of your sites, 3PL hubs, and suppliers. E2 Collaborative Inventory Management allows you to maintain minimum, maximum, and target inventory levels at hubs. It also enables and automates your consumption (pull) and replenishment cycles with suppliers. The dynamically-generated replenishment schedule ensures that suppliers replenish 3PL hubs to maintain inventory within the pre-defined levels. Consumption-based replenishment ensures lean operations and lower inventory levels. Key Benefits Improved supply assurance through increased visibility, automated information exchange, and closedloop processes with suppliers Lower inventory levels with consumption-based replenishment Scalability of VMI processes across all suppliers Quick resolution of errors via alerts and collaborative exception management Reduction in VMI process operational costs Minimal IT investment Fast time to value in creating competitive advantage and ROI Figure 1: E2 Collaborative Inventory Management provides a common platform to manage multiparty and multi-factory VMI replenishment processes. Scale VMI to All Trading Partners Successful VMI programs require robust electronic connection to all of your suppliers so that demand, supply, and inventory information can be seamlessly exchanged. Traditionally, however, capable electronic connections have only been established with the minority of suppliers who support EDI. This significantly restricts the timeliness and quality of information exchange that OEMs have with the majority of suppliers they would like to bring onto VMI. E2 Collaborative Inventory Management includes a set of rich B2B integration options that allows you to integrate with all trading partners regardless of their native communication protocol be it EDI, RosettaNet, Excel, or Web portals. All that is required is communication with the E2open application, which in turn converts information into the right format for each supplier. The module does all the necessary data transformation, normalization, and validation. Using preferred formats, each trading partner has a single point of connection to the E2open module. The result is rapid, error-free information exchange across your entire supply base, a necessary prerequisite for well-executed VMI programs. Page 2
Reduce Errors through Structured Multi-Enterprise VMI Processes A key shortcoming of the traditional spreadsheet, legacy ERP, and people-intensive approaches to managing VMI programs is the proliferation of disconnected and ill-defined processes. These often lead to errors and dropped balls that are costly in terms of resources (used to fire fight when issues arise) and supply disruptions. 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 performancebased, pay-as-you-go model to assure customer success. E2 Collaborative Inventory Management solves this issue by including turnkey multi-enterprise VMI process management templates. These not only make it easy and efficient for all participants to follow predefined, structured processes, but also ensure that errors are minimized. Monitor Performance and Reduce Liabilities E2 Collaborative Inventory Management, in combination with the E2 Collaboration Center, includes a rich set of reports and decision analytics that provide a 360-degree view of your entire inventory management process. This ensures that you have the visibility and control you need to guarantee that suppliers are replenishing inventories at required levels to meet your demand. 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. Key reports include Execution versus plan report. This report tracks how well the actual pulls compare with the forecast Trend reports. This set of reports tracks your inventory trends, and calculates how closely they stay within defined minimum-maximum levels Performance metrics. These reports track key metrics (e.g., inventory turns, aging, inventory valuation) that are necessary for effective inventory management With the business intelligence reports provided by E2open, you can successfully eliminate the risk of supply shortages or liabilities from unused inventory. Figure 2: E2 Collaborative Inventory Management report captures the latest inventory information to enable inventory tracking. Page 3
Increase the Operational Efficiency of Your VMI Process E2 Collaborative Inventory Management increases operational efficiency of the VMI process by providing rich alerts, reporting, and analytics infrastructure that enable you to manage by exception. This ensures that your time and resources are efficiently used to manage only the critical issues that require your immediate attention to ensure proactive issue resolution. E2 Collaborative Inventory Management s exception management framework includes immediate notification of potential issues (deviations from plan or forecast), projected inventory violations, and collaborative end-to-end resolution capabilities that allow VMI participants to track events and resolve issues quickly and efficiently. Lower Your Total Cost of Ownership E2 Collaborative Inventory Management 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 Inventory Management comes with pre-built, configured, and tested adapters for your ERP system, enabling rapid integration with your backend ERP systems. Page 4
For More Information For more information on how E2 Collaborative Inventory Management can increase your profitability, 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 e2open_us@e2open.com 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. MMVIII E2open, Inc. E2open and the E2open logo are registered trademarks of E2open, Inc. All other marks are trademarks, service marks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. All rights reserved. Page 5