Supply chain is a system or network which will act as a link between suppliers and customers. Conversion of raw materials, various resources and components into useful products is easier said than done as the whole process should be done in a systematic and cost effective manner. Managing service supply chain can be quite a complicated task.
The main reason behind this complexity for many product companies is their lack of proper insights around the business to take timely decisions. Proper insight is very essential to manage service supply chain effectively. Even though there are existing methodologies available to reduce the complexity, they are not up to their level. This is mainly due to non utilization of available data, non visionary approach to customer experience, reduction in customer satisfaction etc. To overcome this, analytics can have its potential play. Many of the firms are in path to increase their investment in analytics with a vision to go along with supply chain. Analytics can reduce the complexity and optimize the usage of post sales of supply chain. Due to the involvement of analytics related to supply chain activities, proper insights are being budding which helps to optimize supply chain.
There are some post sales processes which can be optimized using advanced supply chain analytics. First one is Transportation order management which can be established by a pre-call method with the customer, analyzing and cross segmenting the present state assessment. It results in reduction in transportation cost. Second one is Service Triage, which is a sort of frustration for the customers. It can be avoided by collecting the overall information such as machine to machine data, service parts cost and then applying predictive analytics. Retention rate is the third one. There are lots of firms which is having a low retention rates than expected. Even though the products of these firms will be labeled with No Trouble Found (NTF), customers will not be in a position to use it properly. By employing In-depth voice-of-the-customer (VOC), we can identify the customers with high interest for retention return. Hence advance view into the NTF becomes effective. In case of Reverse Logistics,which is one among the process, Return of unwanted and faulty products is quite challenging since it results to spend more money. We have to ensure that the return of those products is done in a much faster rate. Last one is the Service Parts Inventory Carrying which aims to reduce the inventory cost which is based on Analytic based approach.
Usage of above techniques in analytics helps to take out the maximum benefits from post sale supply chain. Hence analytics has got a significant role to play in post sales supply chain.
