A customer purchasing a carton of eggs rarely considers the journey that the product takes to arrive at their local grocery store. Supply chains aren’t generally top of mind for consumers—until, of course, that supply chain breaks down. Everything from natural disasters to labor disputes to pandemics can throw a supply chain into disarray. For instance, the COVID pandemic highlighted how vulnerable our supply systems can be, as shoppers faced empty shelves and soaring prices.
Strong supply chain management is essential. To deliver goods efficiently across regions, companies need to manage the complexities of global trade, while collaborating and coordinating among suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers. That’s much easier said than done unless they invest in strong information systems.
Information systems and technology can improve visibility, coordination, and communication across the supply chain. Domo is one of these solutions, helping organizations:
- pull together disparate sources of information into a single source of truth
- conduct in-depth analysis
- provide real-time data to important stakeholders throughout the supply chain
How can this data deliver better business results? Let’s explore how Domo helps companies shore up the weaknesses at different points in their supply chains. And, you can watch the replay our June 2024 webinar, From Data to Delivery in the Supply Chain Industry, featuring Jeff McCorstin, former President of Global Freight Forwarding at UPS.
Strategic planning
A supply chain that is well-organized, resilient, and efficient can provide a competitive advantage by enabling companies to quickly identify challenges or opportunities in new markets and adjust their business strategies accordingly.
How Domo supports strategic planning: RWI Logistics specializes in customized refrigerated freight management solutions, ensuring that products like fruits and vegetables arrive unspoiled. Domo provides RWI Logistics with a system that connects different data sources and allows business managers across the company to perform analyses and build visualizations that help inform strategy.
“I can look at a load variance card in two seconds and tell you exactly where our business volume is down and why. It opens the door to some really great conversations.”—Megan Fortenberry, director of technology and continuous improvement at RWI Logistics.
Demand forecasting
Organizations with agile supply chains can ensure consistent product availability, which can lead to higher customer satisfaction.
How Domo supports demand forecasting
Lencore manufactures solutions for sound masking in environments such as open-plan offices, healthcare facilities, and educational institutions. Before working with Domo, sales information was tracked in siloed systems, making timely reporting nearly impossible. With Domo, the company is better able to forecast sales revenue, which can help with inventory management.
“Domo allows us to look at trending information, understand our averages, set more accurate targets, and find new opportunities or markets that maybe we haven’t truly explored in the past.”—David Smith, chief operating officer at Lencore
Production
Companies with a strong supply chain can optimize their assets through well-managed resource utilization and production processes.
How Domo supports production
CAE USA, the largest aviation training company in the world, designs and builds flight simulators for high-tech aircraft. The company uses Domo for multiple purposes, including tracking engineering sprints by teams and projects. The trove of data collected from hundreds of projects over several years provides engineering teams with critical background information to ensure current projects stay on track.
“We watch how the overall plan changes as sprints complete so we can predict what will happen as things progress. When we see a problem, we’re able to call managers and say, ‘We see a problem coming up in the next two weeks with your workload.’ This lets them figure out how to adjust their plan and make it all fit.”—Dave Luna, senior technical specialist for data analytics at CAE USA
Inventory management
A well-optimized supply chain can reduce costs by effectively balancing the costs of holding inventory against the costs of stockouts.
How Domo supports inventory management
Diacto is a business intelligence (BI) solutions provider that enables organizations to turn large data sets into practical insights, driving operational efficiency and growth. The company uses a number of Domo tools when conducting data analysis that can inform business planning and inventory management. By analyzing a sample data set, they were able to identify how different characteristics of a product could affect demand.
“We looked at general regional sales and asked what was our best-selling product in our practice data set…. A lot of [the sales were] impacted by weight affecting shipping costs, which in turn affects delivery time and might lead [customers] to shy away from a heavier product.”—John Jarnagin, consultant at Diacto
We captured this story on the ground at Domopalooza, our annual conference.
Check out more resources on supply chain management.
Facility and equipment maintenance
Companies with well-managed supply chains use lean manufacturing practices to minimize waste and inefficiencies, which can contribute to overall profitability.
How Domo supports facility and equipment maintenance
A leader in the ceramic tile manufacturing industry, Dal-Tile is responsible for selling one out of every three floor tiles in the U.S. The company uses Domo to manage data from three enterprise resource planning systems: its main system of record SAP, its legacy JD Edwards system, and an Oracle system for its operations in Mexico. Insights from the connected systems have enabled the company to make critical spending decisions regarding equipment maintenance.
“Before Domo, we didn’t have a line of sight into where millions of dollars in spend was going compared to the budget until weeks after the month closed. With Domo, we can merge our SAP and JD Edwards data and see our spend on a real-time basis. This helps plant controllers and maintenance managers make smarter decisions about repair spending while allowing everyone to be held more accountable.”— Joshua Stan, director of finance at Dal-Tile
Logistics and transportation
Strong supply chains rely on collaboration and innovation among partners to efficiently move goods from suppliers to manufacturers, between different production stages, and from manufacturers to distributors and customers.
How Domo supports logistics and transportation
Constellium is a global leader in designing and manufacturing innovative and high-value-added aluminum products. To improve communication, coordination, and efficiency, Constellium built a business app in Domo that everyone from facility managers to truck drivers can access. The app shows where the material is in the smelting process so that a truck is available when the material is ready to be transported for casting.
“There was a lot of back and forth looking for the right person, trying to reach coordinators, or tracking down trucks. That’s all been eliminated because now we can see where a truck is, who has the job, and what will happen next, all with a glance at the screen.”—Shawn Chavis, scrap manager at Constellium
Distribution
A well-functioning supply chain relies on timely and efficient delivery processes that ensure a company can meet shifting customer demands.
How Domo supports distribution
The global freight forwarding business unit at UPS® is responsible for organizing and coordinating client shipments across the world. Before Domo, workers struggled to pull information from its many different data sources in order to determine daily priorities, which prevented work from being completed.
“We found that the first 90 minutes of the process was just downloading a bunch of files and sorting data in Excel. Now it’s point and click…Not only does it save time, but it takes the human error out so that we prioritize and dispatch based on what is most important.”—Jeff McCorstin, president of global freight forwarding at UPS®
Relationship management
Working closely with suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and customers, companies can harness their collective knowledge to develop new products, improve processes, and drive continuous improvement throughout the supply chain.
How Domo supports relationship management
A leader in the installation of home goods, Temco Logistics works with retailers to perform thousands of residential, business, job site, and commercial deliveries each day. With Domo, the company has been able to connect its disparate sources of data to improve its understanding of satisfaction levels with its services.
“We just did a sentiment analysis and can see holistically across the enterprise which warehouses are doing better or worse based on data from the person who actually received the package…We can do word clouds, most praised drivers, how many deliveries were made, how many comments were received, and where surveys have been pushed or not. There are so many dimensions in one place—multiple dimensions of visibility.”—Lorenia Jimenez, business intelligence manager at Temco Logistics
We captured this story on the ground at Domopalooza, our annual conference.
Check out more resources on supply chain management.
Invest in the infrastructure for reliable and resilient supply chains
A more efficient, productive working world is right at your fingertips. Explore how Domo can help alleviate the pain points in your supply chain so that you can deliver better service and experiences to your customers.