Mobile intelligence for reporting of supply chain KPI's

A Supply Chain Manager is in the departure lounge at Munich airport waiting for her flight to London to discuss size curves of the latest range of sports shoes with the Retail Manager of the company’s flagship London retail store. The SC Manager opens up an application on her smartphone that displays the stock levels for the season’s top selling shoes. She immediately sees that the stock turnover for this range is much higher at the London store than at other leading stores across Europe. The London Retail Manager wants to change the range profile to better reflect UK customer sizes and tastes. The SCM Manager has a printed version of last year’s size curves (showing how many of each size were shipped and sold to the UK), however, she would like to see what the latest figures are for this quarter. She simply opens the size curve application on her smartphone and calls up the figures she needs. This kind of scenario is increasingly being played out by executives and managers (many of whom spend very little time in the office) as they travel to meetings remote from their colleagues and the company intranet. It is fair to say that in many cases, retrieval of the information that is required is not as easy as the above situation implies. There are many reasons for this including restrictions on data sharing/retrieval, scattering of data across formats/ databases and insufficient specification by the managers of their requirements. Mobile intelligence systems utilise devices such as mobile phones and tablet computers (smartphones, iPad, Playbook, etc.) as handheld workstations for users to access and analyse real time information. Essentially they allow managers to access performance information quickly and in an easy to communicate visual way (e.g. bar charts, pie charts etc. see for example Figure 1). Mobile intelligence in a supply chain management reporting context allows users to access supply chain-related information anywhere and make quick, informed decisions. Supply chain specific examples include delivery performance tracking and alerts for low inventory levels. Mobile phone applications (‘Apps’) can now offer managers more opportunities to connect and share information than, for example, a laptop due to the level of connectivity and network coverage around the world.