Datasouth

SharePoint and SQL Development - Improving Supply Chain Management

Datasouth Business Solutions discusses the use of SharePoint and SQL Server and the benefits these technologies provide to supply chain management. Datasouth also highlights the uses of these technologies through a solution implemented by Datasouth for a New Zealand organisation, Advanced Feed. The resulting supply chain management solution helped Datasouth to win the Core Infrastructure Solution Award at the 2008 Microsoft New Zealand Partner Awards.

Many supply chains consist of multiple trading partners spread across a region or a number of countries, all of whom need to be kept informed and synchronised with each other. Organisations attempting to gain better insight into their supply chain are often hampered by the disparate nature of the information they are attempting to analyse.

This information can be integrated using the relational database technology SQL Server and when coupled with a SharePoint solution the two technologies can create a powerful and cost effective collaboration platform that benefits key stakeholders within the supply chain. The affect is not only a reduction in data collation and the corresponding gains in efficiencies, but an information delivery platform made available via an intranet, extranet or the internet.

SharePoint provides a unique information delivery platform and when married with integrated data it allows users to review accurate and timely information for proactive decision-making and can help manufacturers to notify key personnel about shortages or spikes in production. Using SharePoint’s Workflow Foundation technology personnel can even receive immediate alerts for exception handling or manual intervention.

One of the most important impacts these technologies can have is to also allow manufacturers to sweat the investment on current line of business applications. Rather than ripping an older ERP system or line of business application and replacing with a new system, SharePoint and SQL Server solutions can be integrated with current systems to enable today’s manufacturers to get the most out of the data they have.

By combining SharePoint and SQL Server solutions organisations can experience large gains in performance as was the case for Advanced Feed.

Advanced Feed was developed as part of a diverse farming business growing a wide range of arable crops and operating a seed processing plant. Advanced Feed utilises feed grains produced in the farming business and from other suppliers to produce formulated feed blends with other products for dairy, sheep and deer farmers in New Zealand’s South Island. The main growth area has been in the supply of precision blends to the booming Canterbury dairy industry.

Through partnering with Datasouth, Advanced Feed were able to produce a customised stock tracking and supply chain management business intelligence solution using SharePoint and SQL Server.

The solution allowed Advanced Feed to continue to use a line of business application to keep track of both manufactured and raw material stock. SQL Server was used to pull data through from the line of business application database into a SQL Database. This allowed SQL reports to be created specific to the particular broker running the stock information report.

SQL Reporting Services provided Advanced Feed with stock tracking and supply chain management intelligence that can then be delivered within a reports site on the Advanced Feed’s SharePoint web portal.

“SQL’s reporting services has greatly reduced report collation and compilation time”. - John Wright, Director, Advanced Feed.

The SharePoint solution provides an information delivery platform for viewing the stock and sales reports created using SQL reporting services.Advanced Feed staff upload important documents to the SharePoint site where they can be viewed by staff with remote access or those in the office connected to the network. Users have the ability to check out documents before editing, view documents changes, restore documents to previous versions if necessary, and administer document control and security.

Team workspaces were created with document storage and retrieval features, giving users the ability to organise documents, coordinate calendars and receive important notifications and updates. SharePoint’s integrated security features allowed Advanced Feed to provide internal and external users with the correct permission levels to access approved content.

Through establishing an extranet Advanced Feed can provide for more collaborative customer relationships. The extranet will support a new inventory management and reporting structure providing better communication at a new level of detail, with more efficient customer service. The extranet will be used to automate manual processes providing a new productivity boost and allowing for an expansion of customer services.

“SharePoint has given Advanced Feed the ability to interact with the supply chain as well as enabling our employees to easily share documents and schedule delivery through SharePoint’s calendars”. - John Wright, Director, Advanced Feed.

Advanced Feed now have centralised access to customer and business data as well as scheduling and inventory information. By providing salespeople with this information when they are with a client the solution helps Advanced Feed to serve customers more efficiently and helps to shorten the sales cycle. Through the provision of key stock data to the Supply Chain, the understanding of stock levels is plain to see meaning that data is pulled from the system rather than Advanced Feed staff having to push the data to the supply chain. This results in an increase in efficiency and productivity.

You can read more about Advanced Feeds and the solution Datasouth provided here.

To create a successful SharePoint and SQL Server solution, the organisation implementing the solution must involve its key business decision makers from the very outset. The solution’s provider and the client must have a symbiotic understanding of the businesses requirements. Time must be spent during the analysis of these requirements and even more time to make sure the design for the solution meets the business’s requirements. Alongside this the business must have a key member of staff willing to champion the solutions implementation. With these important prerequisites for a successful SharePoint and SQL Server solution a business will see a reduction in the cost of supply chain management and gain higher productivity and Customers, suppliers, and partners work together efficiently and seamlessly across the entire supply chain.