JDA launches powerful new capabilities to enable the seamless supply chain

As companies in every industry seek to integrate the needs of their digital and physical supply chains — bringing them together to seamlessly serve multiple channels — JDA Software Group, Inc. has announced its latest release, version 9.0, aimed at addressing this huge challenge.

By enabling a seamless supply chain that spans the end-to-end customer journey ranging from suppliers to end consumers, this release supports profitable omni-channel, improves visibility to drive intelligent fulfillment decisions, and creates an adaptable manufacturing environment that's risk-aware and highly responsive to ever-changing conditions.

"The emergence of omni-channel selling — coupled with 'me commerce' trends that increase the need for personalised service — have placed companies in an extremely difficult position," said Kelly Thomas, chief product officer at JDA. "Most businesses have made significant investments in manufacturing facilities, distribution networks and technology systems to serve this complex market demand. However, too often, these disparate resources fail to work together, toward the shared goal of profitability. As a result, as demonstrated by a recent JDA study, only 16 percent of companies fulfil omni-channel demand profitably today."

This release is focused on addressing the three biggest challenges facing businesses today:

• Serving multiple channels profitably. The rapid emergence of omni-channel selling has left companies struggling to serve conflicting demand signals, maintain high inventory availability, process orders rapidly and move inventory quickly, while also making a profit. With new capabilities in this release, retailers can profitably serve an end-to-end omni-channel experience by:
• Applying customer insights to create a personalised experience that creates long-term customer loyalty
• Understanding the true source of demand versus from where the demand was fulfilled, therefore locating current and future inventory in the most optimal location within the supply chain
• Making cost-to-serve aware offers and commitments
• Planning and assorting inventory to optimise order fulfilment across channels
• Delivering products and executing returns wherever and whenever the customer wants

• Making intelligent and profitable fulfilment decisions. Increasingly, customers are asking for a "selfie" supply chain that's focused on addressing their own unique product and service needs. In serving this highly specific, 'me commerce' demand, companies are frequently forced to make trade-offs between service level and profit margin. JDA's latest release helps manufacturers, retailers, third-party logistics providers and wholesale distributors make optimal fulfillment decisions that protect margins by:
• Strategically planning and executing the storage and movement of inventory across facilities to minimise transportation costs, maximise service and meet the unique needs of individual customers
• Enabling mission-critical workflows such as Click & Collect, which allows online shoppers to select their preferred pick-up or delivery time and location as part of a streamlined, simplified buying experience
• Improving visibility to both true sources of demand and the location of physical inventory that can satisfy that demand
• Providing profit-, constraint-, and allocation-based available-to-promise capabilities that support both omni-channel selling and manufacturing segmentation
• Establishing new workflows that are destination-driven, leading to rapid delivery execution

• Creating an adaptive manufacturing environment. In today's fast-changing demand landscape, rigid production and delivery schedules are a thing of the past. JDA's next-generation software enables companies to create a seamless, highly adaptive supply chain that spans upstream suppliers and downstream distributors, enabling an agile and profitable response as demand and supply conditions change. With capabilities delivered in this release, manufacturers can now create an agile, risk-aware supply chain by:
• Improved accuracy in demand plans through automatically determining the best level in the hierarchy to forecast
• Proactive scenario planning to minimise supply chain risks and disruptions
• Using highly responsive predictive analytics to orchestrate sales and operations planning (S&OP) process achieving a single, global view of constraint management across the entire manufacturing and distribution network
• Utilizing prescriptive analytics to eliminate "guess and check" simulations through guided response resolution
• Planning and scheduling the deployment of physical and human assets across facilities to maximise return on invested capital and reduce operating expenses
• Collaborating with retailers to create a personalised customer experience through store-specific planograms and maximising category performance via capabilities such as attribute-based transferable demand analysis as well as space and share- aware allocations.

The underpinnings of this latest release leverages JDA FLEX technology, which brings together disparate technology systems and physical resources, to create highly connected, end-to-end workflows that span the entire supply chain. Because JDA FLEX is platform technology agnostic, it seamlessly connects business processes across heterogeneous systems, facilities, enterprises and devices.

JDA FLEX supports new levels of agility and responsiveness by integrating planning with execution in real-time by seamlessly synchronising information across the systems and applications that support supply chain operations. One of the core tenets of JDA FLEX is to allow tailoring of business processes to meet the unique needs of a customer's business while ensuring ease of upgrade and ongoing support. JDA FLEX leverages open industry standards, rather than proprietary technology to adapt to a wide range of supply chain environments, therefore reducing time to value and total cost of ownership.

"Today's retailers, third-party logistics providers and manufacturers are serving a complex global marketplace and leveraging an equally complex set of resources to meet that demand," noted Thomas. "With this software release, JDA is helping to manage that complexity on both the supply and demand sides — creating a seamless supply chain focused on anticipating and serving personalised demand, while still honoring a company's profitability targets. The latest release from JDA represents a powerful new solution that can help forward-looking companies seize leadership in today's incredibly challenging omni-channel landscape."