With the new online format of the annual Microsoft Ignite conference, Microsoft virtually informed Dynamics 365 users and fans around the world of all the new and exciting features coming to its suite of business applications.
If you are interested in exploring how to utilise Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management to create an agile connected and resilient supply chain, then keep reading to learn everything you need to know about what was announced at Microsoft Ignite.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management
The current worldwide Covid-19 pandemic has increased the demand for the critical business capabilities such as:
- Online commerce
- Contactless delivery
- Supply chain automation
- Remote service
Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management enables organisations across the globe to meet these critical business demands.
With Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, your organisation can build resilience into an agile connected supply chain at enterprise scale and meet the needs of today and tomorrow.
If your organisation operates on a large, or even global scale, Incremental understands your need to avoid any disruption now more than ever by having insights into not only identifying bottlenecks early but also sourcing suggestions that can improve capacity and remove business delays. You need to know what is happening on individual sites, but also need to have a view across your whole infrastructure to build resilience around it. One of the biggest challenges in achieving this are remote or distributed facilities, where often there is network latency or poor connectivity due to high traffic or significant distance from the data centre.
New hybrid architecture
At Ignite, Microsoft announced it will be launching a hybrid architecture for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management. The new model comes with new Cloud and Edge Scale Unit add-ins that will enable organisations to distribute warehousing and manufacturing workloads across Azure computing infrastructure and on-premises. This will enable seamless scalability during usage spikes to ensure high throughput that will keep operations running smoothly no matter where they are located.
Due to the heavy regulations and strict policy requirements of the industry, many manufacturers and distributors have been slow to make the migration to the cloud. The risks of being a cloud-based business have become clear since the start of the pandemic. With on-premises applications organisations lose the ability to overcome disruptions quickly and easily, like the many caused by Covid-19.
Microsoft’s new hybrid solution will enable your organisation to digitally transform and reduce costs to become more resilient by allowing you to continue running your manufacturing and warehousing workloads on-premises while migrating the rest of your operations to the cloud.
With the new architecture, system managers will receive data on workloads at local sites including information on traffic volume, network latency and time-out requests. Before applying any infrastructure changes, managers will be able to run a simulation of these changes and then monitor the outcome after deployment.
New inventory solution
Without real-time inventory visibility across all channels, organisations risk major disruptions to their supply chain. To build adaptable and flexible distribution and manufacturing processes, organisations need real-time cross-channel inventory visibility to ensure that they are stocking distribution centres with the right mix of products and right quantity.
In addition to the hybrid architecture, Microsoft also announced the launch of a new inventory visibility add-in that will enable large volume retailers and manufacturers to handle millions of transactions every minute and determine cross-channel inventory accurately in real-time.
To meet customers’ needs of tomorrow, organisations need to enhance demand forecasting and this new solution will allow them to share live inventory information with key suppliers and customers to mitigate stockouts and overstocking with seamless integration into third-party systems.
What next?
The preview of these new features for Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management will start in October 2020 with a general availability launch in 2021.
To find out more about you can harness these new capabilities, get in touch with Incremental Group today to discuss your requirements in detail. Alternatively to find out more about Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, download our product guide