The Common Operating Picture for Supply Chain

Apple, Amazon, and most recently Shein. Each one has had their place in the sun as one of the most innovative companies of a generation.

Whether it's scaling production to half a million iPhones in under 24 hours, making same-day delivery available to hundreds of millions, or the ability to launch 6,000 new line items every single day – behind each of these dominant companies, lies an even more dominant supply chain. Yes, they focused on products, but just as important was the speed and scale with which they got those products to the consumer.

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They are outliners. For most retailers, their supply chain planning remains their single greatest source of exposure. Much of that is down to an avoidable disconnect around how their people interact with these networks.

At Pendulum, we understand that there are no real silos in the enterprise, businesses create them. These internal fabrications are built with the intention of organizing communication and aligning expertise with problem spaces. In reality, a singular, but complex set of supply chain variables is parsed into components and managed under different leaders, processes, and systems.

While well-intentioned, businesses have long struggled to build and empower teams that act as the connective tissue between them. As any engineer knows, it's much easier to disassemble than to assemble – so that’s what enterprises default to, leaving them with neatly packaged and aligned components of a potentially powerful entire machine.

Planning becomes further undermined when these various components are pitted against each other for budget, FTE, and power, further codifying the disconnect across the business. Executive teams then have to bring those pieces back together, make sense of them, and then drive the strategic direction of the entire organization.

Their operating picture is not only foggy, but also distant. To access the data, analytics, and insights required to make informed decisions, they call upon a medley of frameworks that have come to collectively drive 21st century business: S&OP, revenue cycle, integrated business planning, to name a few. These processes consume time, people, and budget. While they try to make sense of them, scenarios change hour-by-hour (and at times, minute by minute), leaving leaders with a static snapshot of a rapidly fading past.

Stakeholders engage in a complex game of telephone and email ‘pass the parcel’, distilling their information into the dreaded mother-of-all-spreadsheets (MOAS). Neutral spectators would consider this laborious, cyclical and inherently unending in nature – the philosophical, social, political, and economic definition of ‘labour’. As an added bonus, it is also inaccurate and slow.

The underpinning technology has lagged light years behind the speed of business. Some of the largest software companies on earth are glorified filing cabinets for data. Digitization with a promise of future value.

That future arrived with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI disentangled financial markets starting in the 2010s causing a paradigm shift in trading, enabling each trader to increase volume and profit and unlock trillions in previously unreachable trades. Amazon was the earliest manifestation of a trade mentality in the supply chain sector and they redefined business for a generation.

These examples only scratch the surface of the power of AI. They too focus on a single facet of the business ecosystem. The technology of tomorrow, transcends the frameworks, siloed legacy data collection systems, and the walls of the myriad of conference rooms housing the string of planning meetings to connect inventory forecasting, to revenue forecasting, to pricing strategy, to procurement planning, to new product introduction, to marketing, to financing. The supply chain is the central nervous system connecting every aspect of the organization – it is the life blood of true business intelligence.

Last week, Pendulum announced our new Chief Product & Strategy Officer, alongside funding to build the first generative planning platform for supply chain operations. The technology of the future is well on its way, and it will redefine business for generations to come. Limitless decision making and foresight.

We’re on a mission to radically change how the enterprise approaches its supply chain management, by enabling them to simulate and optimize both internal and external scenarios and events through a single, highly accessible solution – get involved or get left behind.

Join us in the fight for true business intelligence.

Drew Arenth is a Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer at Pendulum Systems. In that time, he has been the architect of their operations, enterprise and go-to-market strategy across six continents. Throughout his career, Drew has been at the forefront of equipping critical industries and the U.S. government with innovative solutions for remote and complex operating environments.

Prior to co-founding Pendulum, he worked as Principal Strategist for Providence St. Joseph Health and Consultant for Intellectual Ventures. He has also served as Director of International Business Development at Foss Maritime, a global transportation and logistics company. He is also a National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) Mentor, Advisor at the edge computing provider Armada, and Advisor at distributed intelligent operating system deep tech company Grokit.

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