The Future of Supply Chain Orchestration:
Increase Agility and Resiliency
with Low-Code Automation
1 2 4 6
Introduction. Sourcing and procurement. Logistics. Asset management.
8 10 12
Demand and supply planning. Quote-to-cash process. Conclusion.
Introduction.
In today’s market, supply chain operations
are under more pressure than ever.
Traditional supply chains are struggling
to keep up with heightened customer
expectations, increased regulations,
and outside influences on the market
— including how to pivot operations in
response to global pandemics.
To ensure effective
Discover how
response, agility, and
resilience, organizations hyperautomation
must look to the future of creates value across
supply chain innovation. a unified end-to-end
supply chain.
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Innovate sourcing and procurement.
The sourcing and procurement process is
growing more complex due to increased Digital procurement automates
demand for accelerated timelines, heightened
sustainability concerns, and the need to reduce
repeatable tasks to boost efficiency
risk with trusted suppliers.
and reduce costs; it equips stakeholders
Looking forward, sourcing across the business with real-time
and procurement insights and analytics through artificial
professionals will need intelligence (AI) and easy-to-use online
to turn to automation
tools; it deploys new and smarter ways
capabilities to help them
improve productivity and to infuse data models to enrich day-to-
streamline critical processes. day operations and decision making.
Accenture
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Sourcing and procurement automation.
Sourcing and procurement are well-suited to the addition of
A top food distribution
automation capabilities. All aspects of the procurement process
can benefit from automation in key areas: company used Appian to
Procure-to-pay: Automation streamlines and accelerates the
entire process, allowing organizations to increase productivity and
improve vendor management
efficiency while saving costs. Robotic process automation (RPA) across contracting, onboarding,
removes redundant steps while enhanced workflow leads to more
accurate decisions and greater process transparency. and program delivery.
Vendor management: By automating the vendor management
Standardized onboarding
process, organizations can eliminate manual steps, easily spot and
resolve grievances, and enhance relationships with vendors. processes enhanced the vendor
Contract lifecycle management: Automation capabilities can help
transform contract management by allowing for standardized
experience while increased
processes, better visibility for negotiations, and improved visibility and auditability of
contracting cycle times.
The Appian Low-Code Automation Platform can drive these step-
all request types improved
change improvements across the procurement process.
SLA performance.
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Optimize logistics.
Automation can help logistics companies better
manage customers, customer requests, and
operations all from one place to ensure meeting
deadlines. Logistics professionals can also use
automation to streamline shipment workflows
and gain more transparency into operations, Many trends are thrusting automation
something many organizations currently lack.
toward the top of the logistics CEO’s
As a result, workers agenda, not least these three: a
can perform tasks more
efficiently, accelerating
growing shortage of labor, an explosion
timelines and reducing in demand from online retailers, and
waste, which helps some intriguing technical advances.
sustainability initiatives.
McKinsey
For example, automating the shipment lifecycle
across estimation, scheduling, shipping, billing,
and payment collection.
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Logistics automation.
Logistics teams often handle a wide range
of complex but repeatable tasks that require
large amounts of data. Automation can
help transform all aspects of logistics
management, including:
Ryder used the Appian platform to create
Fleet management: Automation capabilities
give organizations the ability to track fleet
multiple synergistic applications unifying
utilization & costs, trip & maintenance activity, systems and processes across fleet
and vehicle checkin/checkout processes - all
from mobile devices. management. The apps eliminate the need
Product and lot release: Automation helps for paper-based processes and mobilize all
orchestrate different information sources into
an end-to-end release process, increasing
document management, escalations, incident
safety and efficiency by eliminating manual records, and end-to-end process management,
work and mistakes.
from incident creation to invoicing. Since
Track and trace: A digital control tower
allows users to track geographic location, deploying this series of applications, Ryder
control cold-chain distribution, and ensure the
accuracy, authenticity, and safety of products
has experienced a 50% reduction in rental
in transit. This helps organizations protect transaction times and a 10X increase in
against fraud and counterfeiting and ensure
corporate responsibility. Customer Satisfaction Index responses.
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Transform asset management.
To improve supply chain operations,
organizations must improve asset
performance and reliability. Yet they often
deal with manual processes, inflexible
systems, and spreadsheet-tracking for asset
management, creating silos and limiting
visibility into the performance of key assets
such as equipment, machinery, vehicles,
factories, etc. This lack of control and visibility
impacts performance, production, service
delivery, and ultimately customer satisfaction.
For stronger business
outcomes, organizations
need better asset
management across
the complete lifecycle:
automated workflows,
more effectively
leveraged asset data,
and improved operations.
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Asset management automation.
By automating critical workflows and better A large oil company implemented an
leveraging asset data, organizations are improving
frontline operations and decisioning and realizing Appian application to help users apply for
more value at every phase of the asset lifecycle:
and receive government licensing for oil
Asset tracking: Automation gives organizations
an intelligent 360 view of assets, with insight into
and gas drilling. The application lowered
location, history, utilization, project status, revenue,
costs by up to $100,000 per day and
and more.
Field service management: Intelligent automation
generated total annual cost savings of
enables users to more effectively respond to $15 million. Reduced cycle times, from an
customer requests, streamline project delivery
and give managers better visibility and control of average of 192 days to an average of 50
field operations.
days, led to faster time-to-production and
Maintenance and repair operations: With
automation capabilities, companies are better able increased capacity to drill more wells. The
to adopt predictive maintenance programs and
Appian app also significantly improved
prevent costly machine repairs and replacements.
Additionally, they can automate repair processes the company’s ability to proactively meet
such as order entry, inspection, quotes, reviews and
approvals, part shipment and invoice of repairs. regulatory requirements.
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Orchestrate demand and supply planning.
The primary business pressures facing
supply chain leaders, in addition to cost,
A lack of proper demand planning
puts organizations at risk of inventory are demand and volatility and customer
miscalculations and production delays.
mandates for faster, more accurate and
End-to-end automation unique fulfillment...Supply chain planners
of the demand and
are struggling to keep pace with today’s
supply planning process
can help companies stay volatile market and are frustrated with using
agile and succeed in spreadsheets...Having one synchronous
today’s market. model that incorporates these siloed
functions is where companies need to be.
Accenture
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Demand and supply planning automation.
Automation can help organizations streamline
demand and supply planning. With the addition of
A large manufacturing company needed
intelligent automation capabilities, managers can gain
better end-to-end process structure and
more control of key processes:
Inventory and materials management: Automation
visibility of available parts for prototypes
allows users to manage workflow at every stage: across SAP and other systems. With
requests for materials, cataloging and provisioning,
the movement of materials, their use in production, Appian’s cloud platform, the company
and distribution to the end consumer.
rolled out an inventory and materials
Warehouse management: By implementing
automation capabilities, organizations can improve planning solution in just 12 days. The
transparency and productivity of warehouse
operations. Leveraging RPA for manual tasks across
solution now helps 3,000 engineers
order processing, inventory tracking, fulfillment, and and designers manage their material
shipping can increase efficiency and accuracy.
requests with outside suppliers and source
Claims investigation and compliance: Organizations
can use AI to identify potential fraud cases to inventory on hand, saving the company
investigate. Further integrate AI to validate claims,
ensure quality control, and expedite claims processing. $6 million in operation costs.
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Streamline the quote-to-cash process.
Speed is important in the quote-to-cash
process. The faster an organization can get a
product out and billed to a customer, the sooner
money tied up in inventory can be invested
back into the business. However, quote-to-
cash processes can be difficult for growing
companies to manage efficiently. Manual
processes often inhibit effective execution.
Automation can
eliminate manual
and paper-based
processes and
streamline quote-to-
cash management.
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Quote-to-cash automation.
Automation helps organizations manage each
area of the quote-to-cash process as part of an
end-to-end, integrated system.
Dispute management: By directing different
types of disputes and complaints to the correct
Appian connects Flowserve’s ERP and financial
workflow or employee, process automation
streamlines and brings transparency to dispute systems to present a unified view of all data
management, escalation, and resolution.
regarding a specific customer, invoice, or
Order fulfillment: Automation helps
organizations with order execution, service instance. With Appian, Flowserve has
customer invoicing, and notifications to
cut average invoice dispute resolution time by
reduce processing times and improve the
customer service experience. 50 percent and moved millions of dollars out
After-sales service: Intelligent automation of dispute and into revenue. Appian also helps
capabilities aid support agents in providing
more personalized service. Artificial intelligence Flowserve ensure a consistent, high-quality
offers next-best actions for those advising
customer experience across more than 150
customers to deliver the most accurate and
precise guidance. service centers worldwide.
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Conclusion.
The Appian Low-Code Automation Platform
streamlines operations processes across the
supply chain, faster. Paired with intelligent
automation capabilities such as RPA and AI,
Appian delivers the innovation needed to tackle
complex and unique supply chain challenges
and drive impact.
Low-code: Easily build, use, and change
business applications with visual development
tools that feature a simple and fast drag-
and-drop design to launch apps in as little as
8 weeks.
Appian RPA: Appian RPA swiftly, accurately,
Learn more about
and easily automates the manual tasks that
slow down workflow, freeing employees to focus what Appian can do
on innovation and their organization’s
core mission.
for supply chain
Artificial Intelligence: Appian marries the
management at our
best of people, processes, and AI. Easily resource center.
integrate AI into your Appian applications for
seamless assistance in your daily workload.
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Appian helps organizations build
apps and workflows rapidly, with
a low-code automation platform.
Combining people, technologies, and
data in a single workflow, Appian
can help companies maximize their
resources and improve business
results. Many of the world’s
largest organizations use Appian
applications to improve customer
experience, achieve operational
excellence, and simplify global risk
management and compliance. For
more information, visit appian.com.
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