Control Tower Design and/or RFP

SCT’s advisors believe strongly in the promise of control tower capabilities.  We have embraced supply chain software provider investments in this space but recognize a successful ecosystem requires critical collaborations between these vendors, internal IT development, integrators and marketplaces, and cloud platforms.  Our objective is to help customers leverage their existing assets and embrace new offerings if appropriate with a clear end state in mind for their supply chain architecture.    

Our Approach 

• Organizational Alignment  

  Interviews with key stakeholders are coupled with SCT-led education on the current landscape of cloud computing platforms, supply chain vendors, and AI services providers, with a focus on your critical business needs and near-term opportunities for improvement.  Aligning on key objectives for the project across production planning, inventory deployment, order promising, merchandising, and business analytics allows us to build consensus and shared vision across the organization for Control Tower project objectives.    

• Integrated System Architecture Design  

  With a comprehensive appreciation for possibilities following the stakeholder alignment, evaluation of impacts to existing system architectures will identify areas of opportunity for a holistic data ecosystem as well as cloud platforms, integration methods and services, reporting platforms, and feeder application capabilities allow us to develop a best case future state architecture, providing guidance for subsequent decisions on the development of use cases and associated build, buy, or partner decisions. 

• Requirement Definitions 

  Detailed interviews around pain points and opportunities in each area of the business and for each user role allows SCT to align current state capabilities with the art of what’s possible in Control Tower visibility and augmented decision making (or even automated) capabilities.  We will work with our clients to identify a prioritized list of critical capabilities needed from a Control Tower platform, as well as additional capabilities and considerations for the functionality to be developed within it, along with any near-term improvements that can be achieved prior to a more formal project.   

• RFI/Vendor Interviews and Demonstrations (If Needed) 

  Vendor demonstrations are a critical step in vetting potential partners and ensuring consensus on success factors and preferred vendors across the organization, which in turn delivers a critical input to success of the overall program.  SCT provides vendors with guidance on your organizational priorities and what we see as critical differentiators so you can get a 360-degree view of the options before you.  Briefing sessions following the demonstrations translate vendor claims into valid expectations, and roundtable discussions unveil any reservations from the team that can be addressed in future conversations by the vendors.   

• Scoping Workshops 

  Following vendor demonstrations, as the preferred solution is materializing, Scoping Workshops allow our customers to dig deeper into capabilities, use cases, and setup requirements to more fully develop an appreciation for solution design and the effort required to deliver it.  SCT facilitates internal workshops, or 1-2 workshops also inclusive of vendor resources to walk through the priority use cases and how they will be delivered through data integrations, configuration, and/or custom development, 

• Roadmap Development, Scheduling & Staffing 

  An output of the scoping workshops, project plans take shape in the form of phased implementation methodologies and scope assumptions, with supporting resource allocations and timelines required with clear expectations on activities and deliverables each step of the plan.  Longer term roadmaps reflect deferred functionality for clarity on what is in scope and what is not, and let the organization think through longer term design implications early in the process.