Software as a Service (SaaS) applications from Microsoft that combine artificial intelligence,
collaboration, low-code, security, and supply chain management have been launched as the
Microsoft Supply Chain Platform.
Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams, Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps, Azure Machine Learning,
Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure IoT, the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform, Azure Active Directory,
Defender for IoT and Microsoft Security Services for Enterprise are among the Microsoft
applications and platforms in this group.
Microsoft's PowerApps low-code development platform is intended to let users create a connected supply chain. It enables supply chain information, supply and demand insights, performance tracking, supplier management, real-time collaboration, and demand management to lessen risk.
Additionally, it addresses order tracking and traceability, pricing management, warehouse
management, and inventory optimization. According to Microsoft, businesses are suffering from an overabundance of petabytes of data that are dispersed among legacy systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and custom solutions, giving them a fragmented view of their supply chain.
The Microsoft Supply Chain Center preview has also been released by Microsoft. It promises to track global events that may impact a customer's supply chain, coordinate actions across a supply chain, and use AI to lessen supply and demand mismatches. According to Microsoft, this constitutes the foundation of the supply chain platform.
"Although supply chain disruption is not new, its complexity and the rate of change are outpacing organizations' ability to address issues at a global scale. Many solutions today are narrowly focused on supply chain execution and management and are not ready to support this new reality," said Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president, of Microsoft Business Applications and Platform, in a press release.
"Businesses are dealing with petabytes of data spread across legacy systems, ERP, supply chain management and point solutions, resulting in a fragmented view of the supply chain," Lamanna stated.
"Supply chain agility and resilience are directly tied to how well organizations connect and orchestrate their data across all relevant systems. The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform and Supply Chain Center enable organizations to make the most of their existing investments to gain insights and act quickly."
Even though it wants to serve as a platform for the entire supply chain, it will continue to collaborate with businesses like Accenture, Avanade, EY, KPMG, PwC, and TCS. Data from standalone supply chain systems, SAP and Oracle ERP systems, Dynamics 365, and other systems will be fed into the Microsoft Supply Chain Center.
Data ingestion for supply chain visibility is made possible via the Supply Chain Center's Data Manager capability. FedEx, FourKites, Overhaul, and C.H. Robinson are some of the partners in the preview launch. The supply and demand insights module, the order management module, the built-in Teams connection, and partner modules within the center are just a few of the prebuilt modules that the Supply Chain Center provides to solve supply chain disruptions.
According to Microsoft, the data remains consistent regardless of the module used because the center runs on a Dataverse common data service environment, eliminating the need to check which reports have the most recent data.
