Quyntess provides Supply Chain Collaboration and Integration solutions for different industries. The supply chain collaboration processes themselves are a key consideration, however we are also well aware of the industry-specific context in which our customers operate. Every industry or business has specific characteristics, business cycles, vulnerabilities and strategies. As these factors shape collaboration in the supply chain, our projects are managed by business consultants rather than application consultants. Therefore our strategy is to understand the business first before aligning supply chain collaboration to suit. This approach has led to our investment in Industry Templates, which also incorporate best practices. Furthermore, we encourage cross-fertilization of best practices in SCM collaborations between industries in order to achieve continuous improvement.

We have consciously chosen to focus on a limited number of issues here, however our capabilities are almost limitless. If your organization faces challenges that are not adequately addressed in our examples, please do not hesitate to contact us by telephone or send us an e-mail with your specific questions.

If you are in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry, your supply chain certainly requires being lean and responsive. Shorter product life cycles have led to an increase in the number of product variants and increasingly volatile demand patterns, while the number of distribution channels continues to grow. End-customers and distribution channels demand ever higher standards in terms of product availability, product returns and integrated execution of fulfilment processes throughout the supply chain. You continuously have to reconsider and adapt your outsourcing and sub-contract policies; not just as part of your focus on core competences, but also as a way of responding to demand fluctuations in the supply chain. At the same time, you require firm control of your inbound supply chain because your sourcing is increasingly global and exposed to the vulnerabilities of greater supply distances. Furthermore, quality and traceability are vital factors in your efforts to mitigate and manage supply chain risks.

Typically, you supply to customers that are active in different distribution channels, ranging from direct end-customers to retailers and wholesalers. You are likely to have at least several hundred suppliers, thousands of SKUs across multiple brands and several factories. The performance and quality of your supply chain need to be as 'slick' and professional as your own high-quality products. You understand that your activities are strongly demand-driven and are aware that your end-to-end supply chain strategy needs to consider the forms of collaboration with all of your partners even more closely.

Key supply chain challenges in the CPG industry

• Transforming tactical S&OP plans into synchronized operational plans.
• Streamline processes with partners, in spite of their trade volumes or IT capabilities.
• Improve collaboration between planning, procurement, warehousing, finance etc.
• Manage accurate collaboration processes in a single and accessible interface.
• Lean paperless collaboration processes with internal and external trading partners.
• Reduce (safety) stock levels and improve end-to-end material traceability.
• Cope with complexity caused by seasonality, lead times and fast turnaround times.
• Create synergy and generate buying power with extended supply chain processes.
• Improve Return on Net Assets (RONA) by initiating end-to-end supply chain visibility.
• Manage disruptions or changes in planned activities on product availability.

Forecast-Driven, VMI, Consignment Stock

The normal practice in your industry is to work with purchase orders addressed to your suppliers and direct product deliveries to customers from your own warehouses after production. However, you are also accustomed to a mix of other scenarios. These may include working to call-off schedules based on Forecast, Vendor Managed Inventories (VMI) and Supplier Managed Inventories (SMI), and holding Consignment Stock at inventory locations managed by other parties: suppliers in the case of outsourced production and LSPs in the case of managed warehouses. This requires close cooperation with your partners; full inventory visibility and full accountability on the part of all of the parties involved in the production and distribution chain are also indispensable. In the case of outsourced operations, your partners may even order raw materials directly from suppliers on your behalf. Achieving end-to-end visibility of time-phased inventory is key to ensuring good performance. This is only possible if collaborative information from sources other than your own Warehouse Management System (WMS) is available. We provide this level of end-to-end inventory visibility throughout the supply chain, regardless of location and legal ownership of the goods.

Outsourced Manufacturing, VAL, Warehousing and Distribution

Outsourced activities rely heavily on a responsive and collaborative trading partner base; certainly in the case of partners that participate in closed-loop data communication with you. They act as an extension of your internal organization rather than a fully independent third party that works with you based on outsourced relationship. Sophisticated collaboration options that are capable of satisfying the collaboration needs of all of the parties involved, including stakeholders in your own company, require an integrated way of working. Agreeing such arrangements contractually is not enough: the support of a powerful collaboration solution is also required. Quyntess implemented best practices for collaboration, visibility, business process management (BPM) and workflow for leading businesses in the diary, food and beverage and various CGP industries. These best practices are continuously integrated in our solutions, offering organizations the opportunity to leverage this expertise and achieve the shortest possible time to value.

Procure to Pay landscape

CPG companies typically rely heavily on supplier collaboration if they are not vertically integrated. Some of the ingredients or materials may be commodities that can be bought on the open market, but the more critical ones tend to be directly sourced. Especially in food and food-related businesses, traceability of ingredients and additives is essential for supply chain safety and security. Problems in this area can potentially damage your company's reputation and expose you to liability claims.

Our customers typically operate multiple plants, communicate with hundreds of suppliers, use thousands of different ingredients or parts and apply either order-based or call-off based replenishment processes. They need an efficient collaboration platform between their internal systems and external processes and systems that may differ by individual supplier/factory combination due to acquisition legacies and specialization. However their suppliers' capabilities, order volumes and order frequencies are very diverse. Companies of this type use our Procure to Pay solution to decouple their internal processes from the processes operated by external partners and create a common denominator.

The benefits of our Procure to Pay solution:

• Create forecasts and orders for shared corporate contract-based material demand.
• Generate purchase orders for individually sourced materials by procurement.
• Manage changes to Orders (e.g. delivery time, quantity, price, specification).
• Handle order confirmations, changes and approval workflows with business rules.
• Generate goods despatch notices, e.g. labels, barcodes and packaging information.
• Ability to collaborate with LSPs for transport orders and track & trace activities.
• Automated goods receipt and efficient self-billing processes.
• Availability of visual VMI tools to manage fulfilment objectives.
• Accurate supplier scorecards to measure KPIs against target and the peer group.

Contract Manufacturing Collaboration

Because flexibility and agility are so important, CPG companies commonly outsource operations such as manufacturing and packaging these days. While S&OP plans drive these allocations at a tactical level, actual implementation is only possible if sophisticated and real-time collaboration processes are in place with these partners. The scope of these collaboration processes includes capacity planning, work orders, raw materials supply, inventory and returns management. Typically, MS Excel spreadsheets, e-mails and many paper documents are still prevalent in this environment and a real-time, demand-driven supply chain is not yet in place.

Quyntess has extensive experience with supply chains of this type, as our customers typically operate multiple plants, communicate with multiple co-makers or subcontractors and deal with third party warehouses for subcontract services and value-added logistics, including reverse logistics. Our customers require an efficient collaboration platform between their internal systems and external processes and systems that may differ by individual contract manufacturer/factory combination due to specialization and specific arrangements. Furthermore, these contract manufacturers have very diverse IT capabilities, order and inventory management processes and relationships with these partners can change over time. They typically use our Procure to Pay solution to decouple these internal processes from their external partners' processes and create a common denominator.

Our solution addresses the following collaboration needs:

• Define standard workflows for internal and external collaboration processes.
• Exchange essential data for recipes, ingredients, manufacturing instructions etc.
• Purchase from internal or external suppliers, based on real-time information.
• B2B automation and traceability of material consumption, demurrage charges, etc.
• Inventory management functionality, e.g. stock takes, inventory control and returns.
• Despatch functionality with pack-and-stack, barcodes and notifications for LSP.
• e-Billing for payment status, reverse billing and reconciliation against contracts.
• VMI tool and stock visibility for manufacturers to manage fulfilment objectives.
• Contractor scorecards to measure KPIs against target and the peer group.

Order to Cash Landscape

From a supply chain perspective, your customer is often a retailer or wholesaler that distributes your products to consumers. Unless you operate a direct web channel with home delivery through either your own network or a third party's network, the retailer or wholesaler is generally an important customer or, at the very least, a link between you and your end-customer. A delicate balance always exists in the collaborative relationship between CPG companies and their distribution channel. While the various parties sometimes share common interests, the individual players frequently have different objectives.

The key here is to use a customer collaboration platform that allows effective management of sophisticated relationships of this type in addition to simply handling purchase orders, despatch advices and invoices. By providing a single portal with a single connection to your internal processes and systems, our Order to Cash solution decouples your IT and systems from multiple external collaboration scenarios with your customers. These scenarios vary dependent on trading volume and frequency, sophistication, the power balance and many other factors. Pre-configuring these processes on our platform avoids creating a proliferation of customer-specific connection and procedure variations within your internal processes and systems. Our platform supports all communication channels: EDI (system to system), Portal and (electronic) paper-based collaboration in the communication flow from your customer. Obviously we also manage collaboration with all of the other partners involved in your customer collaboration such as Logistic Service Providers, Contract Manufacturers, or other parties such as customs agents.

The benefits of our Order to Cash solution:

• Availability of end-to-end inventory visibility throughout the supply chain.
• Streamline sales-, forecast- , production/replenishment orders and inventory.
• Manage order changes and confirmations regarding price, quantity, delivery etc.
• Availability of pro-active alerts for customers based on management by exception.
• Manage events triggered by customer impacts on your performance evaluation.
• Support flexible B2B automation with multiple partners in multiple formats.
• Become "easy to work with" and maintain cost leadership efficiency.
• Ability to manage returns processes including re-usable packaging and containers.
• e-Logistics processes either managed by yourself, your customer or a 4PL.

e-Logistics Landscape

If you are in CPG manufacturing, transportation and warehousing are typically not part of your core business, however you are heavily dependent on these activities. End-to-end supply chain logistic costs may amount to as much as 20% of the value of the goods. These processes are typically subcontracted to logistic service providers and, depending on the business characteristics and Incoterms, are managed by your suppliers, your own organization or your customer. Consequently, this industry is characterised by multiple logistic collaboration scenarios, all of which involve their own individual challenges.

Your suppliers can arrange transport and deliver duty-paid, however you face the challenge of tracking the materials. Identifying a realistic delivery date to your site after the goods have left the supplier's factory becomes a difficulty. Another scenario is when Manufacturers buy on ex-works delivery terms and instruct global or regional LSPs to collect the goods from suppliers, possible carry out value-added activities on their behalf and then deliver on a JIT basis to your plants or to your contract manufacturers.

Additionally, customers can also request manufacturers to arrange shipping, but at the same time require detailed ASN information and impose slot booking. In other physical distribution scenario's, CPG companies require product delivery to customers from managed warehouses and may need to send an IWT message to their LSP and receive an ASN and POD in return.

Carrier performance needs to be managed and monitored at all times. Flexibility and closed-loop collaboration are therefore key requirements: you need to avoid becoming dependent on a Logistic Service Provider for your collaboration information and integration needs in the supply chain. Our e-Logistics solution offer this degree of flexibility.

Benefits of our e-logistics solution:

• Ability to label goods with your barcodes for both inbound and outbound processes.
• Forward supplier shipping notices to a 3PL for pick-up and create Transport Orders.
• Transport allocation to 3PLs based on contract terms, capacity agreements etc.
• Evaluate transportation in terms of its impact on production and delivery schedules.
• Manage trading partner KPIs against SLA and peer performance.
• Ability to interface to customs brokers and any other third parties.
• Send despatch advice details and track & trace information to trading partners.
• Manage slot booking processes with both customers and internal shipping docks.
• Generate proactive alerts for on-time delivery and fill rates for your customers.
• Easily validate carrier invoices relative to the activities they have performed.

As a Logistics Service Provider you probably consider supply chain collaboration and integration as core competences and key capabilities for your business. Not only do you invest in assets such as trailers and warehouses to physically store and move the goods, you also invest in IT equipment, processes and people to ensure information availability and flow. Unfortunately your customers are unwilling to pay for this information sharing capability separately and it generally has to be incorporated in a price per km or per package handled, or some other physical measure agreed in a contract. Moreover, customers generally tender 3PL services for 3 years or less, making investments in optimized customer collaboration and integration difficult to justify. At the same time, your customers' integration and collaboration requirements have become more and more sophisticated. The key question is how do you support these conflicting demands and priorities in what is probably one of the most competitive industries in the world?

Key supply chain challenges for Logistic Service Providers

• Come as you are approach to match any customer integration requirement.
• Efficient and cost-effective customer on boarding in your systems and processes.
• Eliminate high investments, complex solutions and specialized IT staff.
• Display accurate and real-time information in a single holistic overview.
• Harmonize internal information flows after acquisitions and divestures.
• Connect to supply chains where sophisticated labels, scanners etc. are adopted.
• Real-time dashboards and KPIs linked to drill-down information sources.
• Adopt sophisticated tools to cope with any business partner's capability.
• Offer same visibility level to customers with shorter contract durations.
• Improve collaboration with trading partners to deliver according to the contract.

Compared to other business types like OEMs, CPG companies and Life Science companies, LSPs are underrepresented in terms of their use of cloud-based software products. Perhaps because, prior to the general breakthrough of cloud computing, they were the prime movers in developing web-based track & trace and order management tools, and acquired and nurtured the appropriate competences internally. Or perhaps because they see the ability to provide supply chain integration and collaboration as a unique selling point, which they want to control by using their own delivery resources.

Quyntess can help - not only by supplying an IT solution and expertise, but also by offering a business model that builds bridges between your business goals and those of your customers and their other partners in the supply chain.

The benefits of our e-Logistics platform:

• Full integration with your back-end ERP, WMS, TMS etc. systems.
• Flexible on-demand and pay-per-use subscriptions.
• Fully branded to your company's look and feel: your e-logistics platform!
• Ready-to-go collaboration and integration platform to fit any business requirement.
• Re-usable industry templates enable fast adoption and roll-out.
• One single platform for web, mobile, EDI and form-based collaboration.
• Platform as a service: no investments in software, hardware and specialized staff.

e-Logistics meets customer requirements

Depending on your specific situation and the supply chain configuration, your customer could be either an OEM for which you handle inbound material flows, or a CPG company for which you manage outbound flows to retailers. Alternately, you may be involved in a scenario where you work for a retailer and its inbound flows. Multiple combinations and variations are possible. In this particular case, we will use the term "customer" to refer to your customer: the party that pays your bills at the end of the month.

In general, your customers require a certain level of electronic integration to handle transport orders, goods receipt, confirmations etc. To establish 100% transparent processes it is also crucial for your customers to access information on alerts, generate approvals and monitor flows or performance of third parties, including your own performance. Quyntess offers B2B integration and Web-EDI integration services, which allows you to control costs and manage on-boarding time-efficiently while freeing up internal IT resources. You can manage all of your integration and collaboration needs via a single platform - your private cloud. Exactly aligned to the scope of service the customer requires for the contract duration that has been agreed with you.

The benefits of our e-logistics solution:

• B2B connectivity for high volume customers, using their own data formats.
• Web Portal connectivity to provide accessibility to non-EDI partners.
• Accurate performance monitoring and real-time alerts for all partners.
• Supports transportation, warehousing and other data flows, including customs.
• Customer-specific workflows decoupled from your internal processes and systems.
• End-to-end inventory monitoring: at suppliers, on trucks or in your DC.
• Ability to book slots at customer unloading docks and your own DCs.

e-Logistics meets supplier requirements

If you are involved in an inbound scenario for a retailer, wholesaler or an OEM, you will typically need to provide information on behalf of your customer. Depending on your customer's specific supply chain, you may either receive ASNs from your customer's suppliers through your customer's system, or receive them directly from those suppliers via EDI, via a portal or via some other communication channel. The ASNs may contain different levels of detail. For example, they may be based on Purchase Orders or they only state the number of pallets or loading metres.

Typically your internal systems will build shipments and routes, either based on direct delivery to the customer, or based on consolidation or cross-docking processes in your facilities. This is where the activity becomes highly complex: business rules are required for weight, cubing, stacking, notifying shipment and determining cut-off points for routes. Some of your customers may require planned shipment approvals in order to generate transport orders and some of their suppliers may need reconfirmation of pick-up times or apply slot booking. You face the challenge of providing effective support for all of these processes and need to consider whether you can justify the associated expense in the light of the contract duration with your customer. This is where our e-Logistics platform can help.

The benefits of our e-logistics solution:

• Manage POs on behalf customers and accommodate changes from both sides.
• Capture detailed Advance Ship Notice or Despatch Advice in different forms.
• Manage supplier barcode/label printing for warehousing, distribution etc.
• Create shipments, build routes and manage consolidation via milk runs.
• Ability to manage the relationship between orders, shipment and inventory.
• Ability to collaborate based on available time slots for docks at suppliers' facilities.
• Manage subcontractors, customs and VAL providers operating on your behalf.
• Ability to handle supplier packing lists in different forms.
• Availability of information on return flows to suppliers.
• Ability to merge return flows with pick-up flows for returnable containers or articles.

e-Logistics meets end-customer requirements

If you are involved in an outbound scenario for either an OEM, CPG company or a wholesaler, you typically operate in a situation where you deal with your customer's end-customer. As such, you are often the end-point in their logistic fulfilment process. You are primarily responsible for what the end-customer perceives as your customer's performance. We live in a customer-driven world, so your customers will scrutinize your performance more closely than ever before. They will also demand that you provide customer-friendly information services, state-of-the-art alerts and exception management, and suitable exception workflows. Obviously competitive pricing and high-quality service are also indispensable.

LSPs require advanced e-Logistics technology that acts as their customer's fulfilment centre in order to deliver this high-value end-customer user experience. This technology also offers integration with their customer's IT system for handling transport orders, proof of delivery, etc.

The benefits of our e-logistics solution:

• Accessibility to sales orders from end-customers: via EDI or via a portal.
• Create shipments directly based on available customer transport order information.
• Ability to collaborate on dock schedules and pick-up slots at your customers' sites.
• Ability to re-format packing lists and documentation as required by end-customers.
• Notify scheduled deliveries and provide real-time track and trace information.
• Ability to collaborate on return logistics and packaging from end-customers.
• Record and manage proof of delivery information provided by end-customers.
• End-to-end inventory visibility warehouse for goods in transit at each stage.
• Ability to generate transport documents, manifests and invoices.

e-Logistics meets Third Party requirements

As an LSP you seldom provide all of the logistic services required by your customers using your own assets. Modern supply chains are subject to continuous reconfiguration. The following are examples of other third parties that may be involved:

• Customer warehouses managed by other third parties.
• Subcontractors for transportation using different transport modes.
• Forwarding agents that consolidate material flows in other geographical areas.
• Collaboration in "cross chain control centres" to enable consolidated shipments.
• Customs brokers and agents.

All of these partners require a certain level of integration with your customer processes for defined areas within the workflow. Tasks need to be expedited, confirmed, monitored and synchronized within the overall flow. The ability to structure this end-to-end collaboration flexibly by leveraging content that is available on our platform is a door opener and business enabler.

If you are an OEM or Tier 1 manufacturer, your supply chain is almost certainly becoming leaner and must adapt to a much faster pace. At the same time, your products are growing more complex and business considerations force you to focus increasingly on core competences and outsource non-core activities. Typically you have hundreds of suppliers, manage thousands of parts and operate several global factories. In order to deliver high-quality products, your supply chain requires to be well-engineered and professionally constructed. Regardless of whether you are an OEM or Tier 1 manufacturer, you understand that your operations need to be demand-driven and that you must increasingly take supply chain collaboration into account in your end-to-end collaboration strategy.

Key supply chain challenges in Discrete Manufacturing

• Control the balance between inbound, production and outbound processes.
• Streamline processes with suppliers in spite of different volumes and IT maturity.
• Improve collaboration between engineering, procurement, operations and finance.
• Manage impact of disruptions or changes in parts distribution.
• Lean supply chain collaboration with automated B2B processes.
• Reduce (safety) stock and manage supply chain risks with better visibility.
• Improve Return on Net Assets (RONA) and initiate early supplier collaboration.
• Provide full tracking and tracing for all critical parts in the Bill of Materials.
• Integrate transport requirements into your production schedules.
• Manage accurate collaboration processes in a single and accessible interface.

Engineer to Order, Make to Order, Make to Stock

Engineer to Order and Make to Order supply chains rely heavily on a responsive and collaborative trading partner base, particularly in the case of key suppliers. They act more like supply networks than "command-and-control" supply chains. Sophisticated collaboration options that adequately respond to the collaboration requirements of both your suppliers and your own company in a "give-to-get" way of working are more important than contracts, terms and prices. Your organization can benefit from our experience here as we have implemented and adopted the best supply chain collaboration practices used by leading sectors in this area such as aerospace, defence and high-tech.

In Make to Stock supply chains there is typically more volume, a greater velocity and an emphasis on flawless execution and early detection of disruptions. Performance is often managed via a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with penalties and deadlines. The best practices in this area are more mature and we offer proven techniques, scorecards and dashboards that allow you to effectively manage your make to stock process.

Procure to Pay landscape

Discrete Manufacturing Industries typically rely heavily on effective collaboration within their procure to pay environment. Our customers generally operate multiple plants, trade with hundreds of suppliers, manage thousands of different part numbers and apply either order-based or call-off based replenishment processes. They need an efficient collaboration platform between their internal systems and external processes and systems that may differ by individual supplier/factory combination due to acquisition legacies and specialization. However their suppliers' capabilities, order volumes and order frequencies are very diverse. Companies of this type use our Procure to Pay SaaS solution to decouple their internal processes from the processes operated by external partners and create a common denominator.

The benefits of our Procure to Pay solution:

• Engineering and manufacturing specifications for Purchase Orders.
• Change management for Orders (delivery time, quantity, price, specification).
• Share forecast information to identify expected demand and capacity requirements.
• Just in time/ sequence parts delivery with goods dispatch, labels and barcodes.
• Efficient self-billing processes.
• Visual VMI tools to enable suppliers to manage fulfilment objectives.
• Supplier scorecards to measure performance against target and the peer group.

Order to Cash Landscape

If you are an OEM, you will probably define collaboration in your order to cash landscape differently to a tier 1 manufacturer. As an OEM, you are responsible for supply chain orchestration and you initiate and manage coordination processes. Collaborating with customers is important: you need to align your supply chain to changes in demand from wholesalers and distributors or your direct sales organization. Depending on the forms of partnership, you may need to deploy a wide range of collaboration and integration techniques. Our Order to Cash SaaS solution allows you to support all of these channels from a single collaboration platform.

If you are a Tier 1 manufacturer, you probably serve a number of OEM customers that typically manage a supply chain as described above. Instead of orchestrating the process, you need to be able to react flexibly and adapt seamlessly to dynamic production schedules and changes in demand from your customers while ensuring efficient internal processes. Our Order to Cash SaaS solution allows you to link demand and supply effectively on a single collaboration platform.

The benefits of our Order to Cash solution:

• End-to-end inventory visibility throughout the supply chain.
• Improved sales with accurate forecasts, production orders and purchase orders.
• Ability to alert customers proactively on a management-by-exception basis.
• Improved responsiveness with Supply Chain Event Management capabilities.
• Electronic collaboration and integration with multiple customers in multiple formats.
• Improved cost leadership, efficiency and become "easy to work with".

e-Logistics Landscape

If you are active in discrete manufacturing, transportation and warehousing is typically not your core business. These processes are generally outsourced to logistic service providers. Even so, this industry is characterized by multiple collaboration scenarios:

1. Suppliers arrange transport and deliver duty-paid, however you face the challenge of tracking your parts and identifying a realistic delivery date to your site after the goods have left the supplier's factory.
2. Manufacturers buy on ex-works delivery terms and instruct regional or global LSPs to collect the goods, possibly carry out value-added activities on their behalf and then deliver on a JIT basis.
3. Customers request manufacturers to arrange shipping, but at the same time require detailed ASN information and impose slot booking.

Flexibility is therefore crucial: you need to avoid dependency on a Logistic Service Provider for your collaboration information and integration needs in the supply chain. Our e-Logistics solution offer this degree of flexibility.

The benefits of our e-Logistics solution:

• Inbound goods are labelled with your bar codes.
• Send shipping notices to 3PL to initiate pick-up and create Transport Orders.
• Improved tracking and tracing to identify possible impacts on production schedules.
• Generate LSP scorecards and dashboards based on the SLA and KPIs.
• Ability to interface with customs brokers and other third parties.
• Ability to easily match carriers' invoices to the services they have supplied.