o9 Solutions, Inc. > Case Studies > Digital Transformation in Publishing: Streamlining S&OP Process with IoT

Digital Transformation in Publishing: Streamlining S&OP Process with IoT

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization
Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Industries

Education
Equipment & Machinery

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation
Procurement

Use Cases

Demand Planning & Forecasting
Track & Trace of Assets

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

The customer is one of the world's largest book publishers, with a global presence in 70 countries and a workforce of over 24,000 employees. The company combines world-class educational content and assessment with services and technology to enable more effective teaching and personalized learning at scale. They were seeking a solution to bring together multiple, disparate data sources onto a single platform to automate dynamic and agile data analytics, increase efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency in the S&OP process.

The Challenge

One of the world's largest book publishers, with over 24,000 employees operating in 70 countries, faced significant challenges in consolidating multiple, disparate data sources onto a single platform. The company aimed to automate dynamic and agile data analytics to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency in the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process. However, they had limited ability to quickly understand key trends in their product categories and update demand planning. The long lead times and complex supply chain made supply and demand matching a resource-intensive, time-consuming effort. This led to the inability to review detailed pegging information that connected original demand to final supply. Additionally, the company spent significant manual effort and time preparing for S&OP reviews across product, demand, and supply, having many different source systems.

The Solution

The company adopted o9, a platform that allowed them to plan and include key drivers of demand at the ISBN level. They implemented a multidimensional model with attribute-based aggregation and disaggregation to analyze and enrich demand planning. With o9, the company could perform end-to-end pegging, responding to demand with visible supply pipelines, effective utilization of available capacity, and scenario modeling to evaluate multiple options to solve shortages quickly. The company also leveraged the live o9 Platform as the review tool for S&OP meetings, replacing the source systems such as Logility for Demand Planning and Oracle ASCP for Supply Planning. The company used the o9 Enterprise Knowledge Graph as a read-only system which takes demand and supply plans as inputs to help in Integrated Business Planning (IBP) and demonstrate the gaps, shortages, KPIs, etc.

Operational Impact

The implementation of the o9 platform brought about significant operational improvements for the company. It became the primary engagement system for all supply chain-related data, replacing the source systems, and shifting away from creating manual reports to analyzing exceptions like supply-demand mismatch and supply projections. The platform increased effectiveness and efficiency, conveying analytical information in the S&OP process without significant manual effort. The views set up on the o9 platform helped the planners and management make informed decisions on forecast enrichment, measure and track KPIs, procurement, kitting and dekitting, destroy actions, and track (and avoid) obsolescence and deterioration.

Quantitative Benefit

Reduction in obsolescence due to increased visibility, better forecasting, and tighter supply planning decisions.
A reduction in Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) from repurposing IRCS, re-stickering between loose-leaf and print offer, and effective use of print gang-runs.
Efficiency gains from using the o9 tool allowed for savings to be made in Full-Time Equivalent (FTE).