SAP Supply Chain Management (SCM) is a tightly integrated suite of applications that automate various processes inherent to the enterprise supply chain.
Good for large organizations but can be used across various industries from manufacturing to even medical. Also very Citrix publishing friendly to allow multiple users located anywhere to use AspenOne Supply Chain Management across the organization while consolidating their data in a centralized secure place. This ability to consolidate and centralize applications and data within the same facility makes migration, high availability in DR scenario easier to configure as well.
For retail, logistics and manufacturing industry business cases, I think SAP Supply Chain Management is very well suited. GATP backorder processing, forecasting, scheduling, product availability check, rule based ATP checks are specific scenarios in which it is well suited.
Availability of different statistical forecasting methods covering different patterns i.e. Trend, Cyclical, Seasonal and Irregularity.
Different modules to cater to different business requirement ranging from long-term need (Demand Planning), Medium Term (Supply Planning), Short Term (Production Planning and Detailed Scheduling).
Easy integration with core ERP for transfer of master and transaction data. Planning specific functions can be executed in SAP APO while execution can still be carried out in core ERP suite.
While AspenOne Supply Chain Management generate a wealth of data and information, the ability to organize and create reports can be time consuming as well as steep learning curve.
While incremental updates are predictable, AspenOne major version updates can be difficult to implement with wide user impact causing more downtime than we prefer.
Report merge and legacy version conversion tools can be made easier to use with more GUI (graphical user interface) options and less command base as well as status progress graphic and confirmation of completion would be very helpful.
When moving from non-SAP to SAP solution for Supply Chain Management-APO, it may take some time for business users to get use to, as solution provided in user interface sometime seems complex.
For track and trace solution within SAP Supply Chain Management has scarcity of good resources especially when you want to track custom objects with complex use cases.
AspenOne Supply Chain Management was a cheaper alternative to SAP HANA and while as not feature-ful and not as easy to integrate with SAP data, the interface was easy enough to configure without the need for HANA. It was also easier and quicker to deploy and implement which alleviated our business pain point. It's like an old saying the best software is the one you can use, now! Our management and supply chain team members have been happy with the product and very few complaints arise from the production usage or performance.
SAP provides an extensive product suite with its SCM and has functionalities to cater to different industries. Supply chain planning is divided into several steps, some of which are executed by components in SAP ECC and others by components in SAP SCM. It is possible and advisable to integrate these two systems and to use them together for planning. System integration takes place using the Core Interface (CIF). Even though As/400 remains a critical part of the computing infrastructure for many of the global organizations, ease of scalability, integration with cloud, advanced planning and analytics functionality and availability of strong talents make SAP SCM a better choice.
We needed AspenOne Supply Chain Management quickly back in 2013 since our biggest pain point was tracking movement of products and ability for multiple departments and locations to access the information to complete their responsibilities within the organization. Was able to successfully implement in three quarters for go-live.
Since our initiation implementation our two major version upgrades did not go as smooth as we would like causing downtime of user access and the system does not have flexibility to run previous version while upgrading to new version. Upgrade path needs to improve to minimize downtime.
The business reported quick ROI of better than expected results and the software paid for itself in under three years which beats projection.
Centralized implementation makes disaster recovery (DR) configuration easier to manage.
SAP Supply Chain Management provided suitable solution for promotion planning, forecasting, life cycle planning, VMI replenishment etc. Business team started seeing benefits of those in no time.
For collaborative planning, business team had few dis-satisfactory points when compared with previous non-SAP solution.
