Best Practices to Manage Supply Chain Volatility through AI
Supply chain volatility continues to pose major challenges for businesses, particularly in the middle market. In our recent webinar, we explored how AI-powered solutions like Streamline address these challenges through advanced algorithms, what-if planning, and seamless NetSuite integration.
Our Speakers:
Rob Fredericks is a manager in RSM’s Management Consulting Practice. Rob has experience leading change management in strategic and tactical supply chain functions in complex manufacturing environments.
Natalie Eksi, VP of Partnerships at GMDH Streamline is an experienced business development & communication expert who consolidates supply chain experts around the world.
Dustin Livingstone is a supply chain professional with 5+ years of experience in supply chain SaaS companies. Dustin has developed a deep expertise in addressing core business challenges and transforming S&OP processes into powerful growth engines.
Why Supply Chain Resilience Matters?
Today’s unpredictable global economy and volatile market requires resilience to:
Minimize disruptions to customer service and businessAdaptability to market changes and evolving consumer behavior
Financial stability to protect revenue and margin
Manage operational costs and inventory levels
Risk mitigation and regulatory compliance
Building a resilient supply chain is essential for maintaining operational continuity, minimizing risks, adapting to demand changes, and ensuring seamless delivery to customers—all while protecting your organization’s bottom line.
Navigating Supply Chain Volatility
Supply chain volatility is a pressing challenge for businesses today. Here are the external factors driving this complexity:
Unpredictable Demand: Sudden shifts in customer preferences and market trends make accurate forecasting more difficult than ever.
Supply Chain Disruptions: From global events to transportation delays, disruptions can quickly impact operations and profitability.
Increased Competition: Businesses must stay agile and efficient to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving marketplace.
Effectively addressing these challenges requires innovative strategies and robust planning tools to build resilience and drive success.
Many challenges within the supply chain arise from internal inefficiencies, such as:
Limited Visibility: A lack of real-time insights into inventory, demand, and operations makes it harder to respond quickly to changes.
Siloed Data: Disconnected systems and departments hinder collaboration and lead to inefficiencies in decision-making.
Manual Processes: Reliance on outdated methods increases errors, wastes time, and limits scalability in an increasingly dynamic market.
Addressing these internal factors is critical to building a more agile and efficient supply chain.
Business Challenges Impacting Planning Efficiency
Organizations today face three key challenges that hinder their ability to plan efficiently and accurately:
Demand Uncertainty
Seasonality disrupts consistent demand patterns.
Changing consumer preferences make forecasting difficult.
Economic trends, such as tariffs and market fluctuations, create unpredictability.
Siloed Systems
Disparate technology ecosystems limit collaboration.
Lack of integration capabilities prevents seamless data flow.
Missing data governance leads to incomplete and unreliable insights.
Manual Processes
Limited data availability restricts decision-making.
Legacy systems and outdated technology slow operations.
Manual reports and dashboards reduce efficiency and increase the risk of errors.
Taking control of your planning
Modern demand forecasting and inventory planning solutions empower businesses
to proactively manage inventory and build a more resilience supply chain.
To overcome supply chain challenges, organizations should begin by enhancing and optimizing their existing ERP systems. Many ERP platforms, such as NetSuite, are underutilized in the middle market. By ensuring clean data, improving visibility into inventory, and integrating core systems like ERP, WMS, and CRM, businesses can create a strong foundation for supply chain planning. These interconnected systems provide the necessary data flow and visibility to make informed decisions and maintain operational continuity.
Investing in a dedicated planning solution is the next step. While ERP systems excel in financial and accounting functions, they often lack the advanced capabilities required for effective supply chain management. Tools like Streamline offer holistic planning capabilities, including advanced demand modeling, forecasting, and inventory optimization.
Finally, leveraging the power of AI is essential for improving efficiency and accuracy in supply chain planning. AI-powered tools enable businesses to analyze large datasets, detect patterns and anomalies, and respond more effectively to demand fluctuations.
Extending NetSuite with Planning Solutions
Many businesses, especially those using NetSuite, don’t fully leverage its advanced features like real-time inventory tracking and material requirements planning (MRP). These are essential for building a resilient supply chain.
Integrating Streamline with NetSuite takes this further by adding advanced capabilities such as demand modeling, forecasting, and inventory optimization. Streamline also supports scenario planning to help businesses assess the financial impact of various decisions.
Combining Streamline with ERP systems like NetSuite ensures seamless data flow, optimizing forecasting and improving supply chain decision-making.
Solving for Demand Uncertainty
To tackle demand uncertainty, businesses must adopt dynamic forecasting with real-time data, allowing quick adjustments to shifting consumer behavior. Scenario planning is also key, enabling businesses to prepare for unexpected events with multiple plans and understand their financial impacts.
Finally, leveraging AI and machine learning for demand sensing helps detect early shifts, automatically updating plans in real-time, leading to better forecasts, reduced inventory, and improved customer service.
Solving for Siloed Systems
To break down siloed systems, organizations need to integrate technology and processes, starting with a strong Sales and Operations Planning process. Streamline helps consolidate data from various sources into a unified plan, ensuring alignment across functions like sales, marketing, and finance.
Building robust integrations between systems ensures accurate, real-time data flow, reducing errors and eliminating redundant data entry. Data governance is also key to maintaining decision-making accuracy and system reliability.
Integrating systems unlocks better decision-making and collaboration, with Streamline centralizing operational data. This integration enables smooth operations, from creating purchase orders to updating forecasts, across all departments.
Solving for Manual Processes
It is really challenging to manually cleanse sales data, set inventory strategies, and create reports. Streamline automates these tasks, enabling dynamic analysis of stock levels and planning parameters across large numbers of SKUs, which saves time and improves accuracy. The system also provides predictive visibility, helping businesses forecast potential stockouts and overstock situations. A "time machine" feature allows users to test strategies and visualize future scenarios to make informed decisions. The outcome is improved efficiency, with a significant reduction in time spent on forecasting and planning, allowing teams to focus on higher-value activities.
With the ability to instantly test different strategies, you're no longer waiting a year or more to realize a plan missed the mark. The key is getting real-time feedback, so you can course-correct right away—it's like having a time machine for your business.
Summing Up
Whether facing internal or external factors, we can utilize strategies to manage change and build a more resilient supply chain—optimizing ERP performance, implementing key business processes like S&OP, and leveraging advanced AI planning capabilities to unlock significant operational and financial improvements. Streamline’s AI-driven solution can be a cornerstone of your planning success, reducing manual efforts, optimizing operations, and driving revenue growth.