JDA empowers customers to transform their supply chains with new end-to-end capabilities

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: JDA empowers customers to transform their supply chains with new end-to-end capabilities.

JDA Software Group, Inc., has announced key enhancements within its latest release empowering customers across retail, manufacturing, wholesale distribution and third-party logistics (3PL) – to thrive in a fast-paced, high-volume, omni-channel world. The latest release from JDA supports and extends the key tenets of its seamless supply chain vision with end-to-end capabilities across profitable customer commerce, adaptable manufacturing, and intelligent fulfillment.

"Today's supply chains are more complex due to shrinking product lifecycles, market volatility, and thinning margins. This, combined with the culture of 'me commerce' where consumers demand a personalised, consistent and seamless experience across all channels, requires organizations to deliver a unified omni-channel experience that accommodates customers' rapidly changing preferences on pricing, quality, delivery options and service levels, while also meeting the rising expectations around higher revenues, margins and operating income," said Kelly Thomas, chief product officer, JDA. "These new enhancements enable our customers to create a more seamless supply chain which is becoming a strategic mandate for organisations to not only succeed but survive."

Intelligent Fulfillment

JDA Intelligent Fulfilment seamlessly connects supply chain planning and execution processes across factories, warehouses, and stores to profitably satisfy demand according to the unique needs of individual customers. New capabilities - built out leveraging JDA FLEX Technology - provide greater levels of supply chain profitability by breaking down the barriers between operational silos. This allows customers to process complex demands within an integrated constraint-aware, cross discipline environment.

New capabilities include:

• Expanded intelligence via IBM Commerce Order Management integration that uniquely evaluates both scheduled store labor capacity and costs as well as inbound transit inventory to profitably source orders to meet customer demand.
• Real-time omni-channel inventory visibility across order, transportation and warehouse processes to enable organisations to improve order fill rates while minimising inventory investment and decreasing transportation expenses.
• Seamless order prioritisation across distribution, transportation and warehouse operations to deliver customer satisfaction, improved asset utilization and inventory reduction.
• Collaborative forecasting workflows leveraging the junction of enhanced in-memory computing and Excel spreadsheets to maximise user adoption.
• Multi-tier deployment driving increased inventory efficiency and profitability while increasing order fill rates.
• Transportation-specific capabilities including real-time driver dispatch optimisation and visibility as well as SmartBench user interface extensibility.

Adaptable Manufacturing

JDA enables adaptable manufacturing by seamlessly connecting real customer demand to retailers, distributors, manufacturers and suppliers, while optimizing physical inventory and all other assets across the manufacturing supply chain. Adaptable manufacturing allows companies to maximize return on invested capital by staying agile and flexible in the face of high demand volatility, while staying resilient and responsive to supply disruptions.

New capabilities include:

• Enhanced Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) to dramatically improve business planning and execution, connecting and sharing data with Salesforce, Outlook and PowerPoint.
• New in-memory workflows increasing planning agility across all manufacturing functions.
• Flexible what-if scenario analysis, including changes to static network structures across the supply chain.
• Total landed cost and margin aware scenario analysis for more profitable -decision-making.
• Collaborative forecasting workflows leveraging the junction of enhanced in-memory computing and Excel to maximise user adoption.
• Overall advances to JDA Enterprise Supply Chain Planning as the superset of JDA Supply Chain Planner, JDA Scenario Analyser and JDA Master Planning solutions.

Profitable Customer Commerce

JDA supports profitable customer commerce by providing a personalised and seamless response to today's digitally connected customer across all channels in the most profitable way possible. To accomplish this, companies need to connect the digital customer with the physical supply chain, without any latency.

New capabilities include:

• Profitable omni-channel order sourcing, using actual store resource availability and costs through constraint-aware labor planning and forecast scheduling.
• Improved order fulfilment through store-level visibility into incoming replenishment inventory and transfer timing from the warehouse within IBM Commerce Order Management.
• Long-range staff hiring and cross-training planning to have the right workforce with the right skills in the store at the right time.
• Enhanced mobility capabilities enabling retailers to provide employee transparency into, and increased control over, their schedules.
• Improved store operations reporting for tighter coordination and faster decision-making, allowing operations, IT and system administration staff to develop and assign reports to various organisational roles.
• Optimized selling space to support on-site collections and returns with the right assortment, the right layout and the right presentation addressing today's omni-channel shopping environment.