How Big Data is Changing Supply Chains October 23, 2018

Today’s blog is written by guest blogger, Lisa C. Dunn a writer for TechnologyAdvice.   She provides some great insights into how big data might be able to be used in supply chains.

Today’s companies face overwhelming reams of endless data flooding in from a broad range of channels.

In spite of this often-daunting aspect of business today, with appropriate use of this data, you can realize a powerful advantage over the competition by boosting efficiencies in your organization’s supply chain.

While it’s been a buzzword for many years now, do you actually understand what big data is, and why it’s so critical for supply chains today?  

In a nutshell, big data is the dynamic, enormous and “disparate volumes of information created by people, tools and machines.” It includes information gathered from internet-enabled devices – think smartphones and tablets – social media, video and voice recordings, and the continued preservation and logging of structured and unstructured data from the company’s internal software like CRM, ERP, and financial software.

In conjunction with the latest analytics technology, big data enables companies to quickly gain useful knowledge from massive volumes of structured and unstructured data from multiple sources.

For supply chain managers, this strategy can help boost visibility and deliver more in-depth insights into the entire supply chain.