WOOD DALE, Ill. — Optimas Solutions, a manufacturer and distributor of fasteners, inventory management services and supply chain solutions, recently reached a vital milestone in its "Forward Faster" transformation strategy.
The benchmark included onboarding key business intelligence personnel, implementing new analytics tools, and publishing custom certified reporting to provide predictive, personalized forecasts for customers.
"The goal of the BI team is to develop forecasting data analytics that helps customers make more informed decisions, particularly with industrial-tier manufacturing clients and mid-tier supply chain suppliers" said Daniel Harms, president of the Americas for Optimas. "In the past year, the BI team has increased from two to 11 teammates, creating and filling many vital business analytics roles that serve Optimas’ audiences.”
The BI team focuses on supply chain digitization initiatives, such as upgrading software tools with NetSuite, ToolsGroup and Tableau. And within the first several months of the strategy, the team has greatly impacted customers' and suppliers' businesses using data and analytics from a single source of truth. For example, the BI team has developed a library of 120 reports that employees can customize to analyze inventory management, inflation, sales and customer relationships, sourcing and demand planning. These newly created reports provide users with self-service tools to actively manage each portion of the business.
"This is a critical next step as we move Forward Faster toward transformation," said Mark Korba, vice president, business intelligence, Americas. "We've already received solid customer feedback on our ability to provide better insight into purchasing, inventory management and optimization of the fastener supply chain. In short, these tools are helping customers with visibility and assurance by enabling them to know how the fasteners affect their overall manufacturing operations."
The same can be said about suppliers to Optimas. The BI team is working more closely with this integral group to use data and analytics to manage inventory, improve the supply chain and reduce costs.
"When we set out to break down our plan into well-defined areas of improvement, it was important that all of them track back to or support our overall goals," Harms said. "We did an excellent job of defining those workstreams and are tackling each with integrity and great specificity to improve every aspect of the business. The Business Intelligence team has been a big part of making this happen as we strive to be a technology and data-driven organization."
