Tying all planning and execution systems together tears down silos and enhances operations, says Mahesh Rajasekharan, CEO of Cleo.

The list of risks and disruptions that bedevil the supply chain today is long and, unfortunately, well-known. In Rajasekharan’s opinion, only companies nimble enough to make immediate operations changes will take leadership and grab market share. The years-long shift of systems, applications and workloads to the cloud has accelerated due to the uncertainties all supply chains face today.

“They’re shifting ERP [enterprise resource planning] and e-commerce systems, and primarily it's because they want to get closer to the customer,” he says. “They want the agility and nimbleness to make sure they are transparent and have control over the supply chain.”

Rajasekharan emphasizes that data analytics is extremely important to decision making. “To me, it's all about closing the loop. Whenever there is any leading indicator flashing yellow or red, how do you make course corrections, and how do you make the information available to the various decision-makers and stakeholders so you can get back to the plan?” 

Business processes must be fluid and transparent in order to have control over the supply chain, he says, and silos often defeat that. “People are focused on the demand, supply, fulfillment and inventory side. What's important is to have the customer first, and look through the entire supply chain from the view of the customer. There must be convergence across the various functions, like inbound logistics, outbound logistics, manufacturing.

“The leading companies are taking a supply chain-convergent view to look across the silos,” Rajasekharan says. “That's where the biggest lift is going to happen. And to do that, you need to move applications to the cloud, look at the right data, and be able to orchestrate the systems so you can quickly make data-driven decisions.”