Hi, I'm Robert Kugel, executive director with ISG.

Thank you for joining us today.

We're gonna be discussing data complexity

and the challenges that go with that, with David Marmer,

senior Vice President from board.

Hi David. Great to have you join the conversation today.

Hey Robert. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

ISGs research identified product

and process complexity as well as data silos, as major

barriers for companies in managing their supply chains.

For example, the research found

that supplier complexity is common.

81% of companies have more than a hundred suppliers.

42% have more than a thousand.

And as for products, 79% have more than a thousand SKUs.

And data for its part is scattered between systems

and often only kept in spreadsheets.

So, David, given that, how should companies begin

to address these challenges

and what's possible with today's technologies?

So, that's a great point. So I'm gonna start

by just bringing onto

what I think is a fairly familiar pain point.

Uh, refer to it as integration debt Over time,

many organizations just accumulate

dozens of disconnected systems.

They may have one for demand, they'll have another one

for supply and another one for finance.

And each of these need constant maintenance

and frankly, manual data reconciliation.

Uh, and the integration debt is this hidden cost

of the complexity that they've created.

It drags, um, and slows down the business

and the ability to really respond

and make any meaningful change.

And it shows up as inconsistent data.

It shows up as redundant processes

and endless it projects just to try

to keep the systems talking to each other.

And in today's volatile supply chain, that kind

of friction can be the difference between agility and chaos.

And so when we think about the type of systems that need

to be in place, um, I, I think

that the answer really lies in the idea

of a unified planning model.

And that's what the technology of today can bring.

A single integrated environment that connects all the layers

of planning, demand, supply, and finance.

Instead of stitching together data

through custom integrations, uh,

they model everything really in one place

where all assumptions, all forecasts,

all key performance indicators stay synchronized.

And this eliminates the need for

that manual reconciliation I spoke about earlier

and builds a foundation for true end-to-end visibility.

And it's not just about connecting systems,

it's about aligning the entire organization

and how the plans are executed.

So David, what's the first thing you recommend

that organizations do to begin

to address the challenges of complexity?

Yeah. And so this is an important part

of understanding how to get started.

So I think the first thing that companies really need

to look at organizations need to look at is

to access their integration landscape.

Um, you know, what are the biggest bottlenecks

and where do the redundancies exist?

'cause as you mentioned, with all the spreadsheets

that exist, there's guaranteed to be redundancies there.

Second, they should prioritize the highest impact use cases

they wanna focus on, like demand and supply chain alignment

or sales and operations planning,

where this integration debt is causing the most pain.

And third, they should adopt a more unified data model

and really start to harmonize, uh,

and look at the master data

so everyone can be speaking the same language.

And then last I'd say is they want to, they,

they should be really thinking about implementing

iteratively, right?

Move one business unit as a time

or one process at a time into the unified model.

Otherwise they risk things getting out of control again.

And finally, they need to embed

some level of governance over this.

Someone has to define ownership for the planning data

and then keep the business

and the IT organization aligned

as the systems evolve over time.

Great. Well, thank you David,

for your perspective and insights.

I really enjoyed our conversation.

Well, thank you Robert. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thanks again for joining us.

We invite you to listen to our other experts from board in

this series on unified continuous planning for supply chain.

We are confident that you'll find them informative

and well worth your time.