As part of its Supply Chain Solution announcements today, Microsoft is unveiling a new supply chain service that will promote collaboration and data management for customers. Called the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, the new service combines components of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, and Dynamics 365.
According to the company, Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, gives customers the ability to adopt the components they want to meet their supply chain commitments.
Alongside the release of the platform in preview, Microsoft is also releasing a preview of the Supply Chain Center. This drives the Supply Chain Platform by giving customers ways to be more efficient through a purpose-built command center.
Starting with the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, the service taps into Microsoft Dataverse. If you're unfamiliar with Dataverse, it is a platform that lets users store and manage data that is used by business apps in a secure environment. All information is stored within tables and each table has rows and columns.
Dataverse allows customers to leverage common attributes, meanings, and tables quickly. Within the Supply Chain Platform, Dataverse allows customers to access a catalog of hundreds of connectors to provide more visibility on their supply chain.
Because the platform is open, Microsoft is urging partners to become involved. The company says partners can leverage Azure, Teams, Power Platforms, and Dynamics 365 (Supply Chain Management) to provide solutions. Amongst the partners the Supply Chain Platform connects to are inVia Robotics, Cosmo Tech, SAS, 09 Solutions, and many more.
Microsoft Supply Chain Center
Built within the platform is the Microsoft Supply Chain Center, which Microsoft says is the heart of the overall Supply Chain Platform. The company describes it as a “command center,” a central hub where customers can sync data across their supply chain systems.
With the Data Manager tool, users can tap into the Supply Chain Center to ingest data and orchestrate visibility across their chain. Moreover, they can also engage in action. Microsoft Supply Chain Center is in preview with the following benefits:
- “The supply and demand insights module uses advanced Azure AI models to predict upstream supply constraints and shortages through supply intelligence. Organizations can perform simulations using data from their supply chain network to predict stock-outs, over-stocking or missed-order lines. Combined with smart news insights, which provides relevant news alerts in the Supply Chain Center on external events, supply chain practitioners can make decisions and plan with real-world event information and historical insights for product demands.
- The order management module in Supply Chain Center intelligently orchestrates and automates fulfillment with a rules-based system using real-time omnichannel inventory data, AI, and machine learning. Organizations can quickly meet future order volumes and fulfillment complexities by extending their capabilities with pre-built connectors to specialized technology partners for order intake, delivery, and third-party logistics services. Existing Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management customers will automatically get access to Supply Chain Center and the order management module at launch.
- With secure, built-in Teams integration, customers can mitigate supply constraints by collaborating with external suppliers in real-time, to secure new supply sources, troubleshoot transportation issues and communicate up and downstream impacts based on changes.
- By having partner modules built into the Supply Chain Center, customers can easily unlock specific solutions like freight visibility from Overhaul. Since everything runs off Dataverse, the data is consistent no matter what module you are using. This eliminates pasting information back and forth and reconciling which reports have the most up-to-date information.”
Microsoft Supply Chain Center is automatically available to Dynamics 365 customers with the Supply Chain Management module. On November 16, Microsoft is hosting its Supply Chain Reimagined event where the company will provide more details on the Supply Chain Platform and Supply Chain Center.
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