SAP Supplier InfoNet enables new supply chain visibility

Jason Yotopoulos, senior vice president and head of the global business incubator at SAP, explains that the cloud-based solution enables companies to be part of an open business network. That, he says, helps participants to improve the performance of their supply base and proactively manage both risks and opportunities in an extended value chain. The system – which is available initially in North America following a pilot with companies including Powell Electronics and Dresser-Rand – opens up information in companies' business applications and enables sensible collaboration with others on the site network. For example, it can collect historical and current operational performance metrics and combine them with both structured and unstructured external content that might indicate impending disruption. Hence, users get a view of their suppliers, together with benchmarks on their performance, so that they can compare them with their peers. Using proprietary machine learning models on top of this data, users can also view predictions of future performance, along with the root causes, so that they can work to mitigate any disruptions. "SAP is committed to bringing forward industry-shifting innovations, and Supplier InfoNet is a strong example of this for supply chain professionals," states Yotopoulos. "By providing a robust view with predictions of future supplier behaviour, we can help our customers deliver the very best to their customers," he adds.