BI Architecture for CPFR Implementations
While Business Intelligence can bring significant value to trading partners implementing Collaborative, Planning and Forecasting supply chains it is also important to understand how a scalable BI Architecture can help trading partners in leveraging BI solutions to maximize business performance and take timely decisions based on analytics. The architecture is generic and can be applied to both Manufacturer as well as Retailer.
Figure 4 – Architecture for Operational and Analytical Reporting
The key components of the Architecture are ODS which can be used for Operational Analytics and Reporting while the Data Mart/Reporting Layer is involved in Analytical reporting. This represents the different components of the Technical Architecture but it is also important to understand the collaboration aspects in the BI Architecture which is represented below in terms of the trading partners (Retailer and Manufacturer).
Figure 5 – BI Collaboration Architecture (assuming Microsoft as the BI Suite)
BI vendors that provide end to end capabilities can serve as good implementation choices for collaboration architectures as in CPFR. This helps in technology standardization between the trading partners as well as ensures the total cost of ownership is manageable.
Collaboration BI Architecture needs to have a de-militarized zone to ensure that users accessing across the internet and outside the company network are authenticated and authorized before accessing information.
Conclusions
In concluding we observe the following trends
- With global supply chains Collaborative, Planning and Forecasting is fast catching up among Retailers and Manufacturers.
- Business Intelligence can bring about significant benefits in every part of the supply chain in a CPFR model and can help both trading partners (Retailers and Manufacturers) in analyzing information and deriving process efficiencies and cost optimization.
- Business Intelligence implementations in CPFR implementations need to take care of data security issues as both partners would need access to common data stores and BI implementation architecture has to take into account the points of collaboration.
References:
VICS CPFR – Committee http://www.vics.org/committees/cpfr/
]]>