Revealed: 6 Must-Know Tips for Evaluating Supply Chain Design Solutions

• Time-intensive IT integration
• Myopic analytics that don't give you the full picture
• Steep learning curve
• Rigid modeling environment
• Lack of responsive, expert support
• Long cycles to get an answer to the business

While many supply chain design solutions promote their comprehensive capabilities, it's important to understand where their strengths and limitations lie. Before making a final decision, keep these six key factors in mind to ensure you choose a solution that truly meets your design solution needs and will grow with your company.

1. Integration

  One of the most challenging aspects of implementing a new supply chain design solution is the considerable time and effort it will take to integrate the new system with your current business processes, data, and IT infrastructure.  

Without seamless integration, you might face issues such as long waiting times to transfer data between tools, increased manual data entry errors, delays in decision-making due to inefficient processes, poor communication of changes within the organization, decreased team morale, and high turnover among staff spending time on data tasks that don’t add value to decision-making.

The right software will be able to easily merge with your organizational processes, ensuring data uniformity, automating workflows, minimizing errors, and reducing the need for manual input—all while increasing the speed to value. 

Look for a solution with a low to no IT footprint. Optilogic’s cloud-native technology, pre-built APIs, and Open Database Connectors (ODBC) enable seamless integration with your existing business and data tools so you can:

• Save time by removing the need to upload and download large data files
• Simplify collaboration across teams
• Accelerate time to value
• Eliminate high IT infrastructure expenses

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2. Advanced Analytics

 Making supply chain decisions without the right algorithms, can lead to increased risk, inefficiency, and missed opportunities due to incomplete or inaccurate information

For example, relocating a distribution center without fully comprehending the effects on your customers and how to serve them now, can trigger widespread operational disruptions and result in escalating costs and reduced efficiencies.

Specialized analytics should be a cornerstone of your team's decision-making process and a fundamental capability of your supply chain design software.  Optilogic supply chain design software – Cosmic Frog - combines multiple decision engines so that you can identify strategies that are not only cost-effective, but also sustainable and resilient to provide the best service to your customers. Multifaceted analytics are essential for:

• Network optimization
• Transportation optimization
• CapEx planning
• Greenfield analysis
• Risk and resiliency analysis
• Cost to serve
• ...and many other decisions

3. Customization and Scalability

  In a constantly evolving landscape, having a flexible, comprehensive, yet straightforward supply chain design process is essential. To support that type of process you need a design solution that:

• Adapts to unique aspects of your supply chain design
• Offers customization and scalability
• Models at the level of detail you need - even if it is SKU!
• Enables you to execute strategic design decisions at the speed of change
• Enables different stakeholders’ participation in an interface that’s familiar to them   

Cosmic Frog provides a flexible infrastructure to fit your unique needs while equipping you to address the most complex supply chain design questions with cloud-native architecture and the Atlas Python-based design studio.

Plus, you can take advantage of our Cosmic Frog companion apps: 

Cosmic Frog for Excel – This is for new modelers or other stakeholders who want to answer design questions with the power of optimization or run basic scenarios such as Greenfield analysis in a more familiar Excel interface – taking the worry out of “breaking” the model.

Cosmic Frog Mobile Apps – This collection of streamlined mobile front ends enhances modelers' productivity by delivering designs to stakeholders in a clear, easy-to-read format that highlights only the information they need to be effective. 

4. Modeling Tools 

 Whether you want to see the effects of changing a distribution center (DC) location or test sensitivy of results when any assumption changes, Optilogic empowers supply chain designers to confidently make data-driven decisions and reduce the complexity of the modeling process with helpful tools like:

• Example models 
• Model building and automation 
• Data gap identifiers
• Benchmark data comparisons 

Plus, using Leapfrog AI assistant, you can create scenarios using natural language by asking questions like, “what would happen if demand for product X increased by 10%?”or “Help me build a new scenario with change of capacity in this location.”  This feature allows your modelers to enhance productivity by allowing them to perform technical tasks using human language. 

5. Transparency

One of the biggest challenges designers run into with the wrong supply chain design solution is black box data. Lacking insight into how a system generates output data can be problematic for several reasons: 

• Lack of transparency – Not understanding how to validate the results can make it difficult to trust them

• Inflexibility – How do you modify, adapt, or optimize the design to match your company’s needs if its underlying mechanisms aren’t clear? 

• Risk management – Identifying or mitigating risks within the design is increasingly difficult when the processes that lead to certain outcomes are confusing

• Troubleshooting – Forecasting and fixing problems in your design is complicated when the internal process of the solution is inaccessible or difficult to understand

 Optilogic’s visualization tools provide “clear box” transparency into how decisions are made, allowing users to understand the entire solution curve and pinpoint exactly when they need to adjust their strategy.

Predefined dashboards provide a comprehensive graphical view of your supply chain's operations. Additionally, the embedded SQL feature allows you to dive deeper into the data structure, making it easier to analyze complex data sets and make informed decisions. 

6. Collaboration and Support

 You’ve selected a vendor that has all the technical capabilities you need. But before you sign on the dotted line, consider the support, expertise, and responsiveness of the supply chain design partner to go with you through the journey.

Optilogic offers more than just a supply chain modeling team. We provide:

• Expert and experienced team
• Coaching services—from just a little help to full project delivery
• Full library of how-to videos and on-demand and live training
• Continuous stream of new features at a lightning-fast pace
• Global Consulting partner community
• Fastest growing supply chain design pond

When it comes to your supply chain design solution, there is no room for compromise on quality or key capabilities. Cosmic Frog is the best supply chain design solution in the industry, meeting all your company’s current and future needs and ensuring your supply chain is optimized to its fullest potential.