Microsoft has announced the launch of a new supply chain platform, which has been specifically designed to help enterprises respond quickly to changing market conditions and disruption by providing an “open, collaborative and composable foundation for data and supply chain orchestration.”
The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform helps companies maximize their existing supply chain investments with an open approach, bringing the best of Microsoft AI, collaboration, low code, security, and Software as a Service (SaaS) applications to a composable platform.
The company has also announced the preview of Microsoft Supply Chain Center, a ready-made command centre for supply chain visibility and transformation and part of the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform. Supply Chain Center is designed to work natively with an organization’s supply chain data and applications, with built-in collaboration, supply and demand insights, and order management.
The Supply Chain Center includes pre-built modules that address supply chain disruptions across supply and order fulfilment. Existing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management customers automatically gain access to Supply Chain Center as part of their current agreements.
“Agility and resilience”
“Businesses are dealing with petabytes of data spread across legacy systems, ERP, supply chain management and point solutions, resulting in a fragmented view of the supply chain,” said Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Business Applications and Platform.
“Supply chain agility and resilience are directly tied to how well organizations connect and orchestrate their data across all relevant systems. The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform and Supply Chain Center enable organizations to make the most of their existing investments to gain insights and act quickly,” Lamanna added.
With the new Microsoft Supply Chain Platform and Supply Chain Center, Microsoft aims to make it easier for customers to realize the value of the Microsoft Cloud for their supply chain. The Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, for example, provides the building blocks across Azure, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams and Power Platform for customers to develop or independently adopt capabilities for their supply chain needs.
Meanwhile, with Dataverse, customers can create thousands of connectors to gain visibility across supply chain, develop custom workflows with low-code solutions in Power Platform, and securely collaborate internally and externally through Teams.
Partner ecosystem
The Microsoft partner ecosystem will continue to play a critical role in enabling customer supply chain resiliency and agility. With the Microsoft Supply Chain Platform, partners can bring their industry and domain expertise to create integrated solutions leveraging Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Teams and Power Platform.
“We will continue to support our customers with a rich partner ecosystem including advisors and implementers like Accenture, Avanade, EY, KPMG, PwC and TCS. In addition, to help customers find the best solution for their supply chain needs, we’ll continue working with solution providers such as Blue Yonder, Cosmo Tech, Experlogix, Flintfox, InVia Robotics, K3, O9 Solutions, SAS, Sonata, To-Increase Software and many more,” Microsoft noted.
