Create a PowerPoint presentation of 10 to 15 slides

Identify any analytics-based assumptions involved in the scope of the project.

Today we stand in a digital where data is available in various forms and these forms include origination of data from normal websites to bigger social media platforms. Online shopping has improvised or expanded the scope of supply chain management SCM into a multi-fold multi-billion-dollar business. Because of this transformation every piece of data makes a bigger impact on how the customer needs are met. Because of digitalization companies are more invested in technology thereby they can the achieve the operational excellency. In this cut-throat competitive market companies are forced to adopt to new technologies in order to survive in the business, there are many supply chain companies that were closed because of lack of technology vision. Now the supply chain has expanded its growth where we can define the whole world as a global village. For example, people across the globe can place orders for the items that are available outside their country are continent, like people in Singapore can place orders for the items that are available in America using online portals. (Yuyan, Wang, 2019).

Identify the specific output measures that would be improved (e.g., profit, retention) as a result of implementing the analytics-based solution.

Amazon is considered as world’s largest supply chain management. If we take a closer look at Amazon retail business model, we can break it down into three groups and they are first mile, middle mile, and last mile. First mile refers to placing an order on online portal and picking up the inventory from the fulfillment center, middle mile refers to traversing of item from fulfillment center to sort center and last mile refers to delivery of item from sort center to customer door step.

In most cases it takes less than 24 hours to deliver an item from the time it’s been ordered. In such situations the data traversing between various processes of a supply chain determines how fast a customer order can be met. For example, if there is a delay in communication from first mile to middle mile or from middle mile to last mile, the customer order can never be met and this costs billions of dollars to company to keep up their reputation.

Identify the cost of not implementing the analytics-based solution.

Amazon generally receives more than one million orders in a month. These orders relate to different categories or different industries. Without the analytics it will be hard for a company like Amazon to predict or plan the inventory to meet the needs of the customers. There are orders that are determined by seasonality and in some cases perishable items are also included in seasonality. Lack of proper analytics will lead to unnecessary expenses or add overhead to the company to maintain these perishable items.

Identify specific inputs and how they relate to the specific output measures.

Concrete, measurable and tangible inputs are required for any business to be successful. In case of SCM these inputs not only determine the output but they also determine the existence of a organization in a long run. Inputs can be categorized into following bands:

Customer segmentation, Product segmentation, Geographical segmentation. The combination of these three will provide a concrete input based upon this companies can plan ahead are determine the expected output. (Samrat, 2019).

Describe the analytics focus area, including justification for selecting the focus area to address the specific analytics problem.

Meeting the customer promise is focus area for any organization. For this the companies have to consider various parameters. Every group in an organization owns a specific portion of the customer promise. In online retail a group may be owning the display catalog on the web portal, another group may be owing design of the brands, and other group may be owning the delivery of the customer items. So, the analytics is important at micro and macro level. Key performing indicator (KPI) gauge the performance of the organization. These KPI’s can be qualitative and quantitative to determine the overall growth or performance.

Include information related to ability to obtain the necessary data for your identified business problem. Be as specific as possible.

In a normal business process when customer places an online order the item will be delivered to the customer within the promise delivery date or time. However, there will be situations where an item will be delivered lately or a effective item will be delivered or an item will never be delivered. Though the occurrence of such issues is less than 10%. However, they make negative impact on company’s reputation. (Madhani, 2021).

The above-mentioned issues can occur at any stage in the supply chain management process. The stages can be quantified into placing an online order, picking up the order from the inventory, and delivering the picked-up item to the customer. It will be difficult for me to explain all the situations that lead to these issues, I will try to provide the most common issues that can occur.

An order has been placed; however, the order confirmation was not reached to the inventory system. This leads to customer confusion since the customer expects that the order has been placed but it never reached to the inventory system and finally these lands to the non-delivery of the item placed.

Another situation is the employees that work in the fulfillment centers may place the item to a truck that routes than the customer zip code or they misplace the item to a different location. This leads to the delay in the delivery to the customer.

In order to solve these issues, the company should come up with a predefined process paths where it clearly articulates how an item will be moved from the time the customer places an order till it is delivered. These process paths will help to alert the respective systems when the planned item did not reach a given state of the process path. (Samrat, 2019).

Document the specific analytics problem statement to be addressed by the project (e.g., perform a multiple regression analysis to predict sales based on number of customers, advertising cost).

In supply chain management, manufacturers are on one end and customers are on the other end. The retailers play the role of connecting the manufacturers to the customers. For retailers to keep ahead of the curve in order to meet the customer needs they need to continuously analyze the sales pattern. In some cases, retailers will have more margins from certain manufactures. In order to tap this opportunity, the retailers may share some of their margins with the customers. (Madhani, 2021). There are two types of business that we can observe at high margin low customers or low margin high customers. Because of the digital world most of the companies are adopting to the latter model.

List at least three references.

Madhani, Pankaj, M. (Jun 5th 2021). Retail Supply Chain Management: Building a Customer-Focused Approach with Competitive Priorities, vol. 18 (2), pp. 7-27.

Samrat, Bharadwaj. (October, 2019). The Engineering Behind a Successful Supply Chain Management Strategy: An Insight into Amazon.Com, 8(10), pp.281-285.

Yuyan, Wang., Zhaoqing, Yu., & Liang, Shen. (2019). Study on the Decision-Making and Coordination of an E-Commerce Supply Chain with Manufacturer Fairness Concerns, 57(9), pp.2788-2808.