AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog
How Accenture Reimagines Supply Chain Operations Using SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS
By Jay Pillai, Karthik Sonti, Amlan Chakraborthy, and Michelle Doyle – AWS
By Kishore Durg, Surya N S Chavali, Swati Sharma, Dharmesh Shah, Pratik Jain, and Anuradha Chari – Accenture
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| Accenture |
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Many organizations have stitched together a set of siloed functional and technical supply chain systems to solve their business problems, but some lack traceability and transparency across the end-to-end value chain.
Accenture’s SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS addresses these challenges by offering a fully integrated solution which brings traceability and transparency to the decision-making process.
Organizations are looking to improve supply chain resilience through disruptions while delivering relevant customer experiences and putting responsible business practices at the center of all decisions.
Yet, supply chain leaders are often hampered by resource and technology limitations that lead to a troubling lack of visibility. In this environment, transformation is hard and doing it at speed and scale is even harder.
This is why organizations must reimagine supply chain operations with urgency and intention to unleash total value. SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS enables teams to harness real-time data insight and human and machine talent to build a resilient, relevant, and responsible supply chain that fuels profitability and growth.
This can transform not only how supply chains operate but also how teams collaborate and innovate within the organization and across ecosystem partners. It also creates opportunities for the workforce to do more meaningful work while developing future-ready skills.
Accenture is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner and Managed Services Provider (MSP) that offers comprehensive solutions to migrate and manage operations on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Solution Overview
The SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS offering is client system agnostic, scalable, and modular. SynOps currently handles more than five million transactions per client per month, and its single unified user interface (UI) provides visibility across different engagement levels in an end-to-end supply chain.
At the core of this connected end-to-end platform is the ability to improve customer service, reduce cost-to-serve, and increase collaboration and efficiency focused on collaborative demand and supply planning. It also enables multi-channel fulfillment and procurement, all while tracking overall supplier risk.
User Persona-Based Interfaces
Currently configured within SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS are four specific user interfaces: Supply Chain Leadership, Supply Chain Manager, Supply Chain Associate, and Administrator.
SynOps provides the flexibility to choose applicable assets for associated functionalities as required by the user. The integration is seamless across customer-invested technologies tied into the suite of products using Accenture’s proprietary assets and technology-enabled business outcome-based approaches.
Services Used
SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS has pre-built integrations with a broad ecosystem to speed implementation and leverage best-in-class capabilities, including pre-built connections to:
- Amazon services:
- Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment: Third-party logistics (3PL) for inbound/outbound-last mile fulfillment logistics.
- Amazon Business product categories: Maintenance repair and operations (MRO), consumables, office supplies, commercial parts, IT peripherals, auto parts, medical equipment, retail.
- Accenture assets across the supply chain: Demand planning, inventory planning, replenishment planning, purchase order (PO) management, supplier onboarding, supplier delivery assurance, logistics control tower.
- SynOps Supply Chain Digital Assistant: Generative artificial intelligence-based Digital Supply Chain Assistant improves planning, identifies supply chain risk, and augments logistics control tower.
- Best-in-class supply chain ecosystem tools: SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), SO99+ (demand planning), Blue Yonder (planning and transportation management system), E2Open – INTTRA (ocean booking).
Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment
Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment brings together both the digital and physical power of warehouse management and logistics (inbound/outbound last-mile fulfillment). This integration helps clients reduce their capital investment while ensuring fast same day/next day delivery to customers with an Amazon Prime-like experience.
Clients can track and trace shipments through SynOps, and the real-time stock situation at the fulfillment centers is visible to users through the integration. Last-mile complexities are solved by Multi-Channel Fulfillment access to 250+ Amazon fulfillment centers and 100+ carriers, Amazon/Partnered Freight, and Amazon Deliveries.
Currently active in the United States, Canada, and UK, clients in these locations can experience an integrated and seamless supply chain network that provides logistics, distribution, and inventory management capabilities.
Amazon Business
Amazon Business is a marketplace that provides the world’s largest selection of business suppliers so organizations of any size can simplify their purchasing processes.
SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS integrated with Amazon Business provides the same transparency, shipping speeds, and customer ratings with business-specific attributes like tech integration, workflow approvals, and guided buying experiences. This provides business users with a familiar, trusted buying experience.
Amazon Business also enables the procurement organization to digitally transform their tail spend, including addressing spot buys and MRO spend. To help you easily connect to your organization’s procurement systems and supply chain operations, Amazon Business integrates with over 150 leading procurement software applications, including Coupa, SAP Ariba, Oracle, and Workday. It’s active in eight countries: US, Canada, UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Japan.
SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS: Digital Assistant
This conversational AI assistant leverages generative AI’s capabilities to provide supply chain managers with up-to-date insights on inventory levels, demand patterns, supplier performance, and other critical metrics.
The AI assistant monitors key indicators and triggers alerts for potential supply chain disruptions, such as delays in deliveries, inventory shortages, or production bottlenecks, enabling timely intervention and mitigating risks. It gathers and integrates relevant supply chain data from various sources, including ERP systems, transportation logs, and customer feedback.
The AI assistant also uses Accenture’s supply chain subject matter expertise to provide human-like recommendations and responses to questions asked by supply chain professionals.
Generative AI is used to train and develop machine learning (ML) models tailored to specific supply chain management tasks. The conversational AI assistant enables natural language interactions and seamless integration with existing systems so clients can efficiently obtain real-time updates of disruptions, inventory availability, order tracking, supplier status, and more, via a user-friendly interface.
Solution Architecture
Accenture designed SynOps for supply chain on AWS from the ground up as a cloud-native, multi-tenant solution which leverages Accenture’s existing library of accelerators.
Figure 1- SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS architecture.
SynOps for Supply Chain is largely architected leveraging native serverless services. Here’s the list and a brief description of their purpose:
- Accenture Integration Gateway has pre-built integrations with different enterprise systems.
- Amazon API Gateway exposes the order management APIs and other SynOps APIs for consumption by client systems.
- Amazon Kinesis streams data from different source systems into SynOps.
- Amazon Cognito protects the APIs and UI.
- AWS Lambda orchestrates the different Multi-Channel Fulfillment APIs, in addition to providing the implementation for various APIs.
- Amazon Lex enables the conversational AI interface using intents, utterances, and slot, as well as integration with AWS Lambda.
- Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is where all the data received from the customer enterprise system is staged in raw S3 buckets; after processing, it’s moved to the stage S3 buckets.
- Amazon Redshift provides the analytical data warehousing capabilities leverage by Sisense dashboards.
- Amazon SageMaker creates the machine learning models.
- AWS Glue is used to process and integrate all of the data in stage and insights zones.
- Amazon Aurora and Amazon DynamoDB are used by the APIs and UI for persisting data.
- AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), Amazon GuardDuty, and Amazon CloudTrail are used for security and auditing purposes.
- Amazon CloudWatch provides the logging capabilities across all the services and components.
Conclusion
Accenture’s SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS is built on the cloud using a serverless architecture. Engage with Accenture to modernize your supply chain using SynOps for Supply Chain on AWS.
Accenture and AWS have worked together for more than a decade to help organizations realize value from their applications and data. The collaboration between the two companies, the Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG), enables enterprises to accelerate their pace of digital innovation and realize incremental business value from cloud adoption and transformation.
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Accenture – AWS Partner Spotlight
Accenture is an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner and MSP that provides an end-to-end solution to migrate to and manage operations on AWS. By working with the Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG), a strategic collaboration by Accenture and AWS, organizations can accelerate the pace of innovation to deliver disruptive products and services.