Understanding the supply chain and logistics dashboard
The supply chain and logistics dashboards are particularly important for physical goods companies. The supply chain management unit of a company is a critical part of the company’s operations. They are in charge of ensuring the timely procurement of raw materials, the effective coordination of the production and product distribution process, demand planning, and information systems integration with external parties to ensure a seamless logistics workflow.
Excel directly connects to some of the popularly used supply chain and resource planning platforms such as SAP and Microsoft Dynamics. For ones without a direct way to connect to Excel, a common alternative is to connect to the database the platforms are sitting on.
The following screenshot shows the SAP connector in Microsoft Excel:
Figure 2.4 – Connectors to SAP and common databases
