Companies must go through a five step process in order to get products or services to its customers. Supply chain management or SCM is the science and art of managing those five steps. Manufacturing companies, for example, need to plan out their needs, select sources of raw materials, make their finished products, deliver them for sale to customers, and return.

“Plan” is that portion of SCM that organizes all the resources that go into meeting the demand for your particular products or services. “Source” picks the suppliers that you will use to obtain the products and services you need for your production. It is also responsible for negotiating prices and delivery with these suppliers.

“Make” is the manufacturing part of the process, where the product is produced, tested, packaged, and prepared for shipping. “Delivery” is also called logistics by industry insiders. Delivery organizes orders, maintains warehouses, etc. “Return” creates the process by which customers can return defective or unwanted merchandise. It also is responsible for product support, helping customers who have trouble with the merchandise they purchased.

Packages dealing in supply chain management are among the least unified in existence. The total number of tasks runs into four or five dozen, each with its own associated software. In some cases, companies have stitched the pieces together, but problems arise from the seams showing. Until the introduction of this product, no single software product existed to deal with everything.

“Systems are only as good as the information they contain” is doubly true for SCM. When incorrect information is entered into a demand forecasting application, the results will provide an incorrect forecast. It is also true that if employees attempt to manage information manually, bypassing supply chain systems, an incomplete picture will be provided of pertinent company data. Management training and management coaching are vital, then, in order for supply chain management software to be correctly utilized.

The complexity of supply chain automation makes it uniquely difficult. Supply chain management software can only be used by the largest and most powerful companies because of the radical changes it requires. Both employees and suppliers need to modify their work methods. In addition, most companies need to get outsiders to support the system.

Supply chain management software or SCM is a combination of art and science that improves the raw materials it needs to make a service or product and deliver to its customers. Source chooses the suppliers who deliver goods and management coaching a set of pricing, delivery and payment processes with the suppliers. Attempts have been made to assemble diverse chunks of software into a single package, but a complete package that is management training right for every company has remained elusive. So if the information entered into a demand forecasting application is not correct then you will get an incorrect forecast.