New Customer Capture enabled by End-to-End Value Chain Collaboration
Scenario Name: End to End Supply Chain Collaboration
Department(s): Supply Chain, Procurement, Planning, IT, Account Managers
User: Buyers, Supply Managers, Operations and Fulfillment Planners, Sales Managers, Marketing Managers
Economic Buyer: VP of Fulfillment
Technical Buyer: IT Manager for Operations Systems & Applications
Industry Segment: Pharmaceuticals, Life Sciences, Medical Devices
Company Size: $Any
Example Company in this segment: Merck, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Phibro Animal Health, Medtronic
A Day in the Life (Before)
Scene or Situation #1: Today is Wednesday and the Yucatan Sales Manager was asked by a major Cancun Pharmacy he has been trying to convert into a house account, if he can deliver an extra 1000 cases of over-the-counter medicine in special sized containers (20% of his current quota) within 1 week for a special promotional opportunity. The target competitor has failed to deliver on their commitment, and the company can also obtain premier brand advertising in the Pharmacy’s advertising flyers for no extra cost if they can complete the delivery in time. Typical order lead time for that size special order is 1 month. If he can’t deliver, the business will go to another rival. He must provide an answer by tomorrow.
Desired Outcome: Commit to the delivery, with confidence and supporting material, book the order and actually deliver on time. Convert a rival’s House account to the Company’s own brand of that medicine. Get great promotional positioning a major event with coverage in a target market.
Attempted Approach: Southern Region sales manager sends an email and phones his sales support person in Mexico City. He also leaves a message for the Director of Manufacturing and marks it urgent.
Interfering Factors:
- Sales Manager isn’t able to get reliable lead time information for the product
- Sales Manager doesn’t have any visibility into current pipeline of supply. He himself has no way to do any horse trading with other account executives or regional managers to tap into some of their supply. He knows about some of the planned deliveries to Guatemalan customers, but he doesn’t know the up-to-date status.
- Director of Manufacturing doesn’t have solid dates from his manufacturing plants or capacity information from his key can supplier.
- Director of Manufacturing doesn’t have visibility into his supply, alternate demand (that he could trade with or other shipments he could push out), and he doesn’t have a good handle on his real lead times.
Result:
- No firm commitment available from manufacturing
- No firm commitment from distribution
- No firm commitment from other Sales Managers
- No order
Economic Consequences:
- Lost order & revenue (20% of quota on 1 deal)
- Lost promotional opportunity
- Competitor gains entry into what was previously a target account.
A Day in the Life (After)
New Approach: Sales coordinator logs into Vecco visibility portal and sees how many special d cases are currently scheduled to ship into the Southern Region next week. She identifies 750 cases in inventory reserved for an event scheduled one month from now that could be re-allocated. The Vecco portal recalculates if the reserved inventory could be replenished in time for its target customer’s delivery date. It checks the production schedule, packaging schedule, and special container inventory delivery schedule posted by the container vendor. The inventory can be replenished in time, so the transfer is automatically authorized, and the correct production orders and materials releases are scheduled automatically.
She then messages the supply manager in Guatemala, using the Vecco message app and asks her if the remaining demand could be met from their inventory. That manager is on vacation, so the message is automatically escalated to the manager covering her absence. The Manager evaluates the demand forecast and looks at the projected replacement delivery time. He sees no issue for his fulfillment requirements and agrees to transfer the inventory within 24 hours if he can help meet the new customer demand.
Result:
- Firm commitment available from manufacturing
- Firm commitment from distribution
- Firm commitment from Sales Manager to Key new customer
Enabling Factors:
- Vecco E2E Conductor
- Daily file exchange between existing operations’ ERP, distribution inventory system and demand forecast systems and Vecco
- Daily file exchange between container supplier and Vecco
- Business Procedures configured by company team using Vecco process visual workflow tool
- Vecco process alert escalation tool.
Resources Not Required:
- No changes to existing enterprise systems at the company or its suppliers
- No new IT hardware
- No increase to Company data center workload, after set up of daily file exchanges.
Economic Rewards:
- New house account
- Great promotional coverage
- Market share gain in key location with demand implications for both local market and in home markets for global tourists visiting the major resort.