A perspective from Infor Nexus about why supply chain inefficiencies persist, and what can be done about them.

Despite years of talk about the need for digitizing supply chains, there are still a lot of manual processes and paper being used to manage orders, says John Gularson, general manager of Infor Nexus. Key data is still being shared internally and with outside partners via e-mail, phone and spreadsheets. In addition, the proliferation of information systems that manage a supply chain, including planning and transportation applications, leads to a siloed approach to storing, using and transmitting data. “They’re not talking to each other,” he says.

The siloed nature of today’s supply chains isn’t limited to technology, Gularson says. It’s also a feature of human interaction within organizations. A typical purchase order, therefore, passes through many hands, each time generating another round of paper or manual rekeying. And constant changes in regulations and suppliers make it nearly impossible to achieve a steady state of supply chain management. Today’s solutions give way to a new set of challenges.

The answer would seem to lie in automation. But the goal is to automate in such a way that order data is accessible in one place by all parties, in an end-to-end supply chain, says Heidi Benko, vice president of product marketing and strategy with Infor Nexus. She says it’s crucial to achieve visibility throughout the supply chain, so as to boost overall agility and enable quick responses to changes in the marketplace, regulations and sources of supply. And that requires access to information. “Once you have the data, you can apply machine learning and intelligence,” she says. And the automated system can become more prescriptive in helping companies decide how to adjust to change.

Efficiently managing a purchase order from end to end is possible today. “We are at that place,” says Gularson.