Information sharing and business analytics in global supply chains

The importance of collaboration in business and transparent information exchange among supply chain partners, have been topics of discussion for several years. Global businesses such as Walmart and P&G have focused on collaborative relationships with downstream partners (buyers) and upstream partners (suppliers) to meet customers’ demands. While supply chain collaborations support transparent information exchange, business analytics is proving to be the source of generating business intelligence to all supply chain partners for production planning, logistics, and distribution in this digital era. This chapter highlights the fact that businesses with transparent inventory and demand information could realize cost reductions and improve service levels using sensible business analytics. However, creating a platform to share the information and developing trustworthy partnerships are paramount. Our study discusses a few examples from current businesses to bring out the importance of collaboration by (1) sharing information with all supply chains partners and (2) moving from traditional ordering to an automated system with the support of business analytics and supply chain collaboration.