Harnessing Your SAP Data on Google Cloud for Smarter Supply Chain Decisions with Pluto7’s Decision Intelligence Platforms

Blog / Harnessing Your SAP Data on Google Cloud for Smarter Supply Chain Decisions with Pluto7’s Decision Intelligence Platforms

As you navigate the vast expanses of modern data landscapes, you realize your data is proliferating at an unprecedented pace. Gone are the days when a SQL server housed all your enterprise needs, and digging through ERP and CRM data was the norm. Now, we operate in zettabytes, with hybrid clouds managing diverse data formats – from traditional databases to images, text, and videos.

The Evolution of Data and Analytics

You stand at a critical juncture, contemplating the next leap. The world of analytics is no longer what it was. It has expanded beyond traditional boundaries to encompass a spectrum of capabilities — predictive, prescriptive, cognitive, diagnostic, and descriptive analytics. This evolution is not just in terms but in the very fabric of data itself. You now confront the challenge of making sense of both – the structured data and the chaotic, unstructured data — texts, images, videos, and more.

To navigate this, you need a cloud platform — not just any cloud, but one that provides a vast playground to bring together all your data. This platform must allow you to blend them with external datasets, enriching your insights. It should offer the flexibility to plug these insights back into your preferred destinations, whether your ERP systems for operational action or your CRM systems for strategic customer engagement.

And that’s where Google Cloud comes in, offering the innovation and scalability needed to keep up with the zettabytes of information flowing through. With Google Cloud, you have the means not just to collect but truly connect with your data, to understand it in ways that were previously unimaginable.

The Google Cloud Landscape

The Google Data & AI Cloud is a vast ecosystem offering unparalleled capabilities for understanding and transforming enterprise data. Given its expansive nature, our focus here will be on the tools that are most relevant in the supply chain context.

Cortex Framework

When it comes to adapting to new technologies, time is of the essence. The Cortex Framework is a pivotal tool because it drastically reduces data transformation time. Cortex helps in creating a data foundation by consolidating data from SAP, Salesforce, and other sources into one centralized view

Imagine you are transitioning from ECC to S/4HANA; with Cortex, there’s no need to wait for the entire migration to complete before you can start leveraging your data. This framework allows you to tackle your most significant use cases now, using live data to solve real problems while the migration continues in the background. The strategic advantage lies in its ability to parallel process, ensuring your transformation journey is smooth and uninterrupted.

BigQuery

BigQuery redefines the data analysis process within the supply chain. As a fully-managed enterprise data warehouse, it enables immense processing power to execute complex queries over large datasets quickly. In the supply chain domain, this means gaining real-time insights into inventory levels, supplier performance, and customer demand. By analyzing historical data trends and current market signals, BigQuery helps anticipate supply chain disruptions before they occur, optimizing stock levels to meet fluctuating demands without over or under-stocking.

Generative AI

Google is rapidly advancing its Generative AI capabilities through Vertex AI, alongside developer-friendly tools like Gemma and customer-facing tools like Gemini. These advancements are making it simpler and faster to integrate and customize Generative AI models to fit unique enterprise needs. 

Generative AI for enterprises has several advantages, such as enterprise-wide data search that gives you contextual responses, understanding the specifics of your situation. And then there’s the ability to blend structured and unstructured data, which helps you pivot quickly during sudden disruptions, or identify the precise causes of product defects by examining images from the production line. In short, with Google Cloud, you have the tools to address a range of use cases with Generative AI, all built on the solid data foundation that Google Cortex creates.

The Customer-Centric Journey with Pluto7

At Pluto7, we understand that the journey of transforming data into actionable insights is continuous and interconnected. Our approach, powered by Google Cloud and SAP, is designed to navigate this journey, addressing each stage with precision and foresight. Here’s how we do it:

Demand Sensing

We start by harnessing external data, Salesforce (CRM), Google Analytics 4 (GA4), and ERP data to sense demand accurately. This first step is crucial in understanding both B2C and B2B landscapes:

• With GA4, we decode consumer behavior and trends, offering a granular view of the consumer market.
• Salesforce data is leveraged to grasp business client demands and sales trends, ensuring we’re always a step ahead.
• Our Demand ML solution accelerator connects SAP BTP with Google Cloud services, laying the foundation for advanced demand sensing.
• Features a Generative AI layer for querying data, enabling insights across your entire data footprint.
• Utilizes GenAI to integrate over 250 external demand signals into our models, enhancing the accuracy and relevance of demand forecasts.

Demand Forecasting

The insights gathered from demand sensing are then integrated with SAP and GA4 data for demand forecasting. This combination enables us to create highly accurate demand forecasts by leveraging the power of internal ERP data with external web analytics.

• Our platforms can access data stored in Datasphere without the need to physically move data, streamlining the forecasting process.
• Provides a Generative AI interface for scenario planning and information retrieval, offering flexible and dynamic forecasting capabilities

Inventory Positioning 

With accurate forecasts in hand, we turn to SAP for inventory positioning, ensuring optimal inventory levels are maintained. This ensures efficiency and readiness, aligning stock levels precisely with forecasted demand.

• Recommends inventory levels based on real-time demand, ensuring optimal stock levels at all times.
• Offers a single view of inventory, customer orders, marketing, finance, procurement, and suppliers, facilitating a comprehensive understanding of inventory needs.
• Uses Gen AI to pivot quickly in situations of disruptions, maintaining supply chain resilience.

Manufacturing

The journey extends into manufacturing, where we use SAP and factory data to minimize defects and streamline production planning. Our approach ensures that manufacturing processes are as lean and efficient as possible, reducing waste and enhancing productivity.

• Utilizes Gemini Pro-powered image detection for identifying manufacturing defects, ensuring product quality.
• Integrates manufacturing data with AI insights to enhance production planning and defect management

Financial Analysis

Parallel to these operational enhancements, we conduct financial analysis through S&OP with SAP. This analysis helps align operations with finances, fostering informed decision-making and financial efficiency.

Sustainability

Finally, our journey encompasses sustainability, where SAP integration allows us to manage and measure sustainability efforts effectively. This ensures that our solutions not only drive business success but do so in a manner that is environmentally responsible and sustainable.

• Blends in Google Cloud Environmental APIs, such as solar, air quality, and pollen, to inform sustainability efforts.
• Offers solutions targeted at inventory sustainability, supplier sustainability, and reducing the carbon footprint, making sustainability a core aspect of the supply chain.

Across this journey, our three platforms – Planning in a Box, CXSense, and Konnect Manufacturing – play a pivotal role. They are the backbone of our solution, ensuring that from demand sensing to sustainability, our strategies are not siloed but interconnected, providing a holistic solution to our customers. We’re not just solving individual challenges; we’re transforming the entire business landscape, making it smarter, more responsive, and customer-centric. Our mission is to ensure that, like us, our solutions are as customer-obsessed, embedding customer-centricity at every layer of the process.

Get in touch to learn more about how you can use your SAP data on Google Cloud to transform your supply chain. Our process is lean, clean, and simple. Together, we will identify your top priority use case and set you on your journey with a decision intelligence platform running on your GCP tenant in less than 24 hours.

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