In recent years, supply and demand have faced significant upheavals, with unpredictability peaking this year. This volatility poses major challenges for companies, disrupting business strategies and interfering with operational, demand, and supply plans that businesses depend on for stability.
These disruptions cut both ways—some products experience a surge in demand that outpaces production capacity, while others become obsolete almost overnight, leaving companies scrambling to adjust.
The final week of the NetSuite Now On Air virtual conference is dedicated to advancing supply chain excellence and optimizing operational efficiency. Laura Maready, vertical product manager for retail, apparel, footwear, accessories, and health & beauty, opened the week with a keynote session, introducing new supply chain product enhancements in NetSuite. These tools are designed to help businesses increase agility, streamline operations, and improve collaboration.
The Power of the Autonomous Supply Chain
“Maintaining steady supply for loyal customers, optimizing inventory and supply chains, and quickly identifying alternative vendors or routes is nearly impossible without a robust system that delivers real-time insights,” Maready explained, emphasizing the need for seamless integration.
An autonomous supply chain minimizes human intervention by making data-driven decisions automatically, empowering businesses to respond intelligently and adapt swiftly to changing circumstances. Maready highlighted three core pillars that underpin this approach: unified planning, smart inventory management, and efficient execution.
NetSuite’s latest functionalities further enhance these capabilities by ensuring products are always available at the right place, at the right time, and within the allocated budget—maximizing efficiency and driving smarter operations.
Unified Planning: A Modern Approach to Supply Chain Management
NetSuite has reimagined its supply planning tools to meet the demands of today’s product-driven businesses. By integrating materials requirements planning (MRP) directly into the supply planning platform, companies can now react instantly to supply chain disruptions, moving beyond the outdated, overnight batch processes.
This unified approach offers a comprehensive view of financial, sales, product, services, and workforce planning, enabling businesses to perform advanced modeling and assess the ripple effects of proposed changes across departments. With MRP working in tandem with supply planning, companies can compare forecasted and actual demand to ensure materials are always in the right place to meet consolidated demand efficiently.
NetSuite’s Advanced Order Management system further enhances operational efficiency by staging shipments based on just-in-time principles and optimizing fulfillment through geographic and shipping rules.
The planner workbench streamlines the planning process, allowing users to focus on exceptions that need human input, test alternative strategies, foster cross-departmental collaboration, and continuously refine their operational plans for long-term success.
Smart Inventory Management: Automating for Efficiency and Satisfaction
NetSuite streamlines supply chain operations through advanced automation, enhancing both efficiency and customer satisfaction. With its Advanced Order Management system, businesses can configure custom rules to automate fulfillment processes, ensuring products reach customers precisely when needed. Every incoming order is analyzed in real time, enabling NetSuite to execute the most efficient fulfillment strategy automatically.
The platform determines the optimal fulfillment location by considering global inventory availability and geographic proximity, minimizing delivery times and shipping costs. Additionally, the reallocation feature allows businesses to redirect inventory toward high-priority orders, ensuring the most critical demands are met first.
NetSuite also goes a step further by anticipating future inventory needs. If inbound shipments are on the way but not yet stocked, the system proactively allocates those items to open orders, optimizing fulfillment based on predefined priority rules. This dynamic, automated approach ensures businesses can respond swiftly to demand fluctuations while maintaining seamless customer experiences.
Streamlined Execution: Enhancing Efficiency with Mobile-Driven Operations
NetSuite’s mobile capabilities empower users to execute production tasks seamlessly from their mobile devices, leading to faster processes, improved accuracy, and more efficient workflows across manufacturing and fulfillment. By enabling on-the-go access, teams can quickly complete tasks such as making, picking, packing, and shipping items, all while ensuring precise data entry.
The mobile solution provides real-time updates to work orders, guiding users through each step of material picking for production. It prompts confirmation with every action via barcode scanning, reducing errors and accurately recording production quantities. This ensures smooth operations and up-to-date records across the supply chain.
A multi-order picking feature further optimizes efficiency by allowing users to pick items based on predefined waves, consolidating shipments for streamlined fulfillment. As users scan bins during the picking process, inventory quantities are updated instantly, maintaining real-time accuracy throughout the system.
Additionally, the Quality Management SuiteApp adds another layer of precision, enabling inspections before shipment to guarantee products meet established quality standards. This integrated approach ensures that businesses can deliver on their promises efficiently while maintaining product quality and customer satisfaction.
What’s on the Horizon for NetSuite?
NetSuite is poised to make its allocation and fulfillment engine even smarter, leveraging the power of machine learning. In the future, the system will fine-tune inventory allocation strategies by factoring in key metrics such as revenue, profitability, customer satisfaction, and time-based goals like quarter-end or year-end targets. This intelligent approach will help prevent imbalances, ensuring that overstock in certain areas and shortages in others become a thing of the past.
The autonomous supply chain powered by NetSuite seamlessly integrates every aspect of supply chain operations, from planning to execution. With advanced intelligence and automation, businesses gain the agility to adapt to shifting market conditions. “You’ll be better equipped to optimize processes and product flows, ensuring the right product is delivered at the right time and at the right cost,” Maready emphasized.
NetSuite Now On Air presentations will continue throughout October, offering access to product keynotes, demonstrations, and real-world customer success stories. Participants can register to attend sessions live or watch them on demand, gaining valuable insights into NetSuite’s innovations.
