Supply chain management (SCM) is the process of planning, executing, and controlling the flow of materials, information, and services from suppliers to customers. SCM involves a complex network of activities, such as sourcing, procurement, production, distribution, transportation, warehousing, inventory management, customer service, and analytics.

SCM is crucial for any business that wants to deliver value to its customers and stakeholders, while minimizing costs, risks, and environmental impact. However, SCM also faces many challenges in today's dynamic and uncertain market conditions, such as:

• Increasing customer expectations for quality, speed, and customization
• Growing complexity and volatility of supply and demand
• Rising competition and price pressures
• Evolving regulations and compliance requirements
• Disruptions caused by natural disasters, pandemics, or geopolitical events

To overcome these challenges, businesses need a SCM solution that can provide them with:

• Visibility: The ability to see the end-to-end status and performance of their supply chain processes and partners
• Agility: The ability to respond quickly and effectively to changing customer needs and market opportunities
• Intelligence: The ability to leverage data and analytics to make informed decisions and optimize outcomes
• Collaboration: The ability to work seamlessly with internal and external stakeholders across the supply chain network
• Innovation: The ability to adopt new technologies and best practices to improve efficiency and competitiveness

Oracle Fusion SCM is a cloud-based solution that offers all these capabilities and more. Oracle Fusion SCM is part of the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications suite, which integrates business processes across finance, human resources, customer experience, and enterprise performance management.

Oracle Fusion SCM consists of several modules that cover the key aspects of SCM, such as:

• Supply Chain Planning: A comprehensive solution that helps you plan demand, supply, order fulfillment, and production intelligently across your supply chain, collaborating end-to-end to increase service, reduce disruptions, and minimize costs.
• Inventory Management: A solution that helps you optimize your inventory levels and locations, manage multiple inventory organizations and subinventories, track inventory transactions and movements, perform cycle counting and physical inventory, and apply advanced costing methods.
• Manufacturing: A solution that helps you manage your manufacturing operations, from product design and engineering to production execution and quality control. You can support different manufacturing modes, such as discrete, process, project-based, or mixed-mode. You can also leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) to connect your shop floor devices and sensors to monitor and improve your manufacturing performance.
• Maintenance: A solution that helps you manage your maintenance activities for your assets and equipment. You can plan preventive and corrective maintenance schedules, create work orders and tasks, assign resources and materials, track work progress and completion, and analyze maintenance costs and effectiveness.
• Order Management: A solution that helps you manage your order-to-cash process efficiently and accurately. You can capture orders from multiple channels (such as web, phone, email), orchestrate order fulfillment across multiple sources (such as warehouses, manufacturing plants), apply pricing rules and discounts (such as volume-based or customer-specific), generate invoices and receipts (such as electronic or paper-based), handle returns and exchanges (such as refunds or replacements), and monitor order status and performance (such as on-time delivery or order backlog).
• Logistics: A solution that helps you manage your transportation and warehousing operations effectively. You can plan optimal routes and schedules for your shipments (such as truckload or less-than-truckload), select the best carriers and rates (such as contract or spot), track shipment status and events (such as pickup or delivery), manage freight costs and payments (such as accruals or invoices), optimize your warehouse layout and processes (such as receiving or picking), execute warehouse transactions using mobile devices (such as barcode scanners or RFID readers), handle inbound and outbound shipments (such as cross-docking or consolidation), perform inventory adjustments (such as transfers or adjustments), manage warehouse costs (such as labor or overhead), enforce warehouse security (such as access control or audit trails), comply with regulatory requirements (such as customs or hazardous materials), integrate with third-party logistics providers (such as 3PLs or 4PLs).
• Product Lifecycle Management: A solution that helps you manage your product lifecycle from ideation to retirement. You can capture product ideas from various sources (such as customers or employees), evaluate product feasibility and profitability (such as market analysis or cost estimation), define product requirements and specifications (such as features or functions), design product models and prototypes (such as CAD or 3D printing), collaborate with internal and external stakeholders (such as engineers or suppliers), manage product changes and revisions (such as engineering change orders or bills of materials), launch new products to the market (such as marketing campaigns or sales training), monitor product performance and feedback (such as quality issues or customer satisfaction), and retire obsolete products (such as end-of-life or disposal).
• Procurement: A solution that helps you manage your procure-to-pay process effectively and efficiently. You can source goods and services from qualified suppliers (such as RFQs or auctions), negotiate contracts and agreements (such as terms or prices), create and manage purchase orders and requisitions (such as approvals or receipts), process invoices and payments (such as matching or approval), manage supplier relationships and performance (such as scorecards or reviews), and analyze procurement spend and savings (such as categories or suppliers).
• Blockchain and IoT: Solutions that help you leverage the latest technologies to enhance your supply chain capabilities. You can use blockchain to create secure and transparent transactions and records across your supply chain network, such as product provenance, traceability, or compliance. You can use IoT to connect your supply chain assets and devices to collect and analyze data, such as location, temperature, or vibration. You can use these data to improve your supply chain visibility, agility, intelligence, collaboration, and innovation.

Oracle Fusion SCM also provides a powerful analytics solution that helps you uncover underlying drivers to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure customer satisfaction. Oracle Fusion SCM Analytics is a prebuilt cloud native solution that delivers ready-to-use metrics and dashboards that are aligned with your business processes and roles. You can also use machine learning to identify anomalies, predict possible outcomes, and make recommendations.

Oracle Fusion SCM is a cloud solution that offers many benefits for your business, such as:

• Lower total cost of ownership: You can reduce your upfront and ongoing costs by eliminating the need for hardware, software, maintenance, upgrades, or customization. You can also pay only for what you use with flexible subscription models.
• Faster time to value: You can deploy your solution quickly and easily with minimal IT involvement. You can also take advantage of the best practices and industry standards embedded in the solution. You can also access the latest features and innovations automatically with regular updates.
• Higher scalability and performance: You can scale your solution up or down as your business needs change. You can also ensure high availability and reliability with Oracle's secure and robust cloud infrastructure.
• Greater flexibility and agility: You can configure your solution to suit your specific business needs and preferences. You can also integrate your solution with other Oracle or third-party applications using standard APIs and connectors.
• Enhanced security and compliance: You can protect your data and transactions with Oracle's advanced security features, such as encryption, authentication, authorization, auditing, or monitoring. You can also comply with various regulations and standards, such as GDPR, SOX, or ISO.

Oracle Fusion SCM is a cloud solution that helps you optimize your logistics and operations by providing you with visibility, agility, intelligence, collaboration, and innovation. With Oracle Fusion SCM, you can deliver value to your customers and stakeholders while minimizing costs, risks, and environmental impact.

To learn more about Oracle Fusion SCM, you can:

• Request an SCM demo
• Watch the SCM video
• Read the solution brochure
• Explore the SCM products
• Read the analyst reports