Successive waves of Supply Chain Management (SCM) theory and technologies have promised greater efficiency, lower costs and less latency. However, companies embarking on supply chain initiatives have often struggled to achieve these benefits or the expected return on investment (ROI).

At Atos Origin, we believe the reason for this failure is simple: too many projects concentrate on the design and build of solutions but don’t consider or carry through into ongoing operations. The move towards endlessly flexible networks of partners who each contribute their particular expertise to the supply chain means that, more than ever, companies need processes and systems which can easily be adapted and maintained over the longer term. These solutions also need to support users outside the traditional planning function, making attention to cultural, business process and collaboration issues as central to success as technological ones.

The range of SCM Services offered by Atos Origin takes account of these factors. They also take organisations beyond the traditional consult and build stages through to running their SCM ecosystems following initial go live. This approach means we consider operational issues and ongoing maintenance to support changing needs from the moment we start working with customers. Our many satisfied customers, such as Philips Semiconductors and Brother International Corporation, are a testament to the success of our approach to SCM.

The need to manage the supply chain goes back to earliest days of trading, but the last ten years have seen an explosion of interest in supply chain management (SCM). Vendors have promoted successive waves of new SCM theories and technology solutions which have held out the promise of greater efficiency, lower costs and less latency. However, not all companies who have made significant investments in change programmes and new IT systems have seen the expected business value or return on investment for their efforts.

Each new SCM theory or technology – internet- based trading, for example – claims it will tackle the deficiencies of the past, yet this usually proves true for only a proportion of companies or projects.

At Atos Origin, we believe the reason for this failure is simple: too many projects concentrate on the design and build of solutions but don’t consider or carry through into ongoing operations. Companies are now responding to the demands of customers for products which are designed to look beyond the initial investment and support the long-term use of the product. In the same way, they need to adopt a full lifecycle management approach to introducing SCM processes and solutionswithin their own organisation.

With this philosophy, long-term operational issues are taken into account during the initial consultancy and design phase, so that the build phase generates systems and processes which can not only be maintained but also driven forward in a process of continuous improvement during the run phase.

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