Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) bring numerous challenges across all departments. But IT teams are often charged with providing the underlying infrastructure that will allow the organizations to operate successfully under a new configuration. This is a big ask and typically occurs with little warning, and regardless of how much ongoing work exists in the day job.

There are plenty of factors that can further complicate this scenario, including when the company is acquired or merged is in a different country with unique reporting and regulatory requirements. While part of an important growth strategy for the organization, these moves can put tremendous pressure on already taxed IT staff.

Even when you do everything right, the unexpected can happen. Natural disasters strike, equipment fails, and human errors occurs. While steps were taken to mitigate risk, when disaster strikes, it’s still up to you and your team to race to recover, to ensure actions to get back online are taken correctly, and time is never on your side.

If your organization previously reviewed and dismissed the value of the cloud, it’s time to reevaluate. Decisions that seemed to make sense last year or even last quarter, likely look very different through today’s lens. This week, we focus on critical system failure and how unexpected outages can bring a company’s mission-critical operations to its knees.

Losses can be initially staggering and ultimately far-reaching, impacting not only revenue and productivity but also long-term brand value. It’s been estimated that the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute, with $140,000 per hour on the low end and as much as $540,000 per hour at the higher end. Absorbing the activities to resolve the issue itself and then putting in place actions across the organization to recover from the critical failure and its consequences can derail an organization for an extended period of time.

For many organizations, the realization that your go-to people, those who truly understand all the nuances in your enterprise ecosystem, are no longer there comes too late. Whether this loss comes through resignation, retirement, health issues, or merger and acquisition, you will need to find replacements. How can your organization ensure the continuity of day-to-day operations with the potential loss of technical expertise?

One of the ways to mitigate this risk is to accelerate cloud migration.   

Many clients have shared with me that in today's challenging times, they need to focus on their core business and not worry about running IT systems. What would happen if your IT experts are no longer available? 

As a long-time professional in cloud solutions, I can sometimes be struck by how uniform the information, discussion and debate is about the differences in cloud in the IT industry, whether from journalists, analysts or industry colleagues. Usually speaking in sweeping terms about the cloud and making everything from inaccurate statements to generalizing conclusions based on the cloud description. In this blog post, I want to help you understand the differences in clouds in relation to ERP solutions. It's all about the level of responsibility, agility and security.

The evolution of supply chain business models has been accelerated by unprecedented disruptions. As a result, there has been a clear shift from analog supply chains models of the past into a trajectory towards a digitalized ecosystem. These new business models recognize and necessitate the move to a digital and integrated supply chain that provides visibility and ease of use for consumers.

This journey is about moving towards a world where all parties participating across your network are connected to a single version of the truth. Supply chain thinking is shifting from ‘linear supply chains’ to ‘supply chain eco-systems’ propelled and supported by digital technologies.

Gartner has established a five-stage model of the journey to supply chain maturity, ranging from manual, analog systems to a fully digitalized ecosystem. Key differentiators along this evolutionary chain include consideration of data and collaboration, with the ultimate goal of integrating data across multiple systems to achieve a fully connected ecosystem that provides transparency and visibility for your company both internally and externally.

The average lifespan of assets in the chemicals industry has increased over time, and as a result, the associated maintenance work has significantly increased along with it. As per some estimates, 50% of fixed costs for a typical chemicals plant are the result of continuous maintenance work. This maintenance work can be classified into three categories: reactive, preventive, and predictive.

Reactive maintenance

As the name suggests, reactive maintenance is performed after something breaks down. When a company dedicates a significant amount of its time, money, and resources to conducting reactive maintenance, the company typically “pays for it” in the form of schedule interruptions, rescheduling, lost volume/sales, lost customers, lower pricing power to attract new customers, fines and charges, etc. While cutting maintenance costs may look profitable, a complete assessment of all side effects would likely prove otherwise. In fact, the total cost of reactive maintenance can turn out to be two to three times higher than a preventive maintenance approach.

In part one of this post we explored how to manage supply chain complexities and unpredictability. In this second part, we’ll help ensure chemical manufacturers don’t fall into a pattern of bad planning and skillfully anticipate seasonality.

To operate at its peak an enterprise needs to face and recognize the top trends that are reshaping manufacturing. Understanding these trends is the first step toward initiating a digital transformation. You can then take the additional steps designed to solve your business’ current problems, start showing value immediately, and help evolve a stronger business strategy.

Supplier seasonality and promotions

Thankfully, not everything about supply and demand is unpredictable—materials in the supply chain in various parts of the world follow their own, reasonably predictable seasonal patterns. For instance, cotton prices from India (the largest producer of cotton in the world, according to Statista) plunge when the harvesting begins in November, and stay low though when harvesting ends in March of the following year. This, obviously, has a significant impact on the fiber-garment industry.

In part one of this post we discussed the smartest ways to gain global visibility and respond to volatility in a food and beverage supply chain. And here in part two we will cover how to embrace the best technology. Addressing these key challenges can have a profound and positive impact on your entire supply chain—from procurement to manufacturing to delivery.

Embrace the best technology

When you're looking at building a better foundation to address the challenges you may be facing within your overall organization, there's a number of solutions to consider. These aren't necessarily always the options that fall into what you’d expect to be a supply chain solution, but they all overlap within your overall supply chain and will help drive effectiveness and efficiency.

The first example is formula management. Many companies want to ascertain that it’s creating the right products for the right country as there may be limitations from a global perspective of where you can sell a product. Trying to manage this manually is challenging. Being able to respond to inquiries from customers and prospects around the globe requires quite a robust formula management solution.

Food and beverage companies have long struggled with the unique requirements of shelf life management, complexities of batch scheduling, traceability, and many other factors. In addition, uncertainties around tariffs, sustainability initiatives, and growing regulations are some of a multitude of dynamics that will surely add even more complexity to the mix. Many of these issues and trends can have profound impact on your entire supply chain—from procurement to manufacturing to delivery.

In a recent Infor-sponsored webinar, Mike Edgett and Christine Barnhardt discussed a number of challenges as it relates to supply chain complexities in the food and beverage industry. In the webinar, we segmented the challenges into three buckets; gain global visibility, predict and respond to volatility, and embrace the best technology.

In part one of this blog post we’ll briefly go through the first two categories and part two will cover how to harness the finest technology. Click to watch the on-demand webinar for a deeper dive.

To stay competitive in today’s chemical industry, manufacturers must sustain a high level of operational productivity. Moreover, current issues like rapid commoditization, complex supply chains, aging assets, and increased need for dynamic operations planning make it more demanding than ever before to achieve the level of productivity that drives differentiation and innovation. Manufacturers often become locked into patterns where they’re implementing shortsighted cost-cutting measures that can adversely affect operational productivity and decrease overall market responsiveness.

To ensure you don’t fall into these traps, it’s vital that you not only understand the industrial challenges you face, but also recognize the top trends that are reshaping manufacturing. Gaining this knowledge is the first step toward building a foundation of digital transformation.

This blog post is a helpful summary of the top challenges a supply chain faces today. If you’d like to learn more about how to turn these obstacles into opportunities, please read Infor's recent executive brief for an even deeper dive into the topic.