INDUSTRY NEWS

Supply-chain management
Customizing enterprise systems
By Mike Morel
ILOG Marketing Director of Manufacturing Industries
The competitive advantages of controlling and optimizing the supply chain are widely known and appreciated. Manufacturers derive incredible cost savings, improved productivity and greatly reduced inventory levels by applying advanced, flexible supply-chain management (SCM) applications.

In pursuit of these advantages, many companies have adopted wide-ranging enterprise suites that encompass all their operations. The benefits: one vendor for the software used at all the key points in a supply chain, the suite components integrate well with one another, and the vendor typically provides experienced, professional support. But these suites often result in huge cost overruns in implementation and integration. They can also come with significant design limitations that prevent them from being tailored to businesses, rendering deliverables that are inconsistent with customer expectations or vendor projections.

Typically, these suites have narrowly defined areas in which customization can be performed. IT personnel who push a suite beyond what can be changed jeopardize their ability to easily incorporate ongoing vendor enhancements, and complicate the vendor's ability to provide support.

ILOG advantage
ILOG's optimization, business rule and visualization technologies enable companies to take full advantage of their competitive differentiators and achieve a greater return on investment from their enterprise software.

• Supply-chain planning and optimization - ILOG optimization lets suites address companies' specific planning and scheduling challenges.
• Supply-chain visualization - ILOG visualization can completely display a supply-chain network, providing onscreen status information on each element of the network.
• Business process management - ILOG business rules can help companies implement policies and procedures that span applications. A top priority for manufacturers is improving processes such as "quote to cash," which is part of many CRM, ERP, SCM and e-billing systems.