Right now, your supply chain platform probably includes planning software — focused on things like demand, inventory or replenishment — and execution software — focused on transportation, logistics or warehousing — to create a more efficient supply chain. The data and automation provided by these solutions offer vital help to workers throughout the supply chain, increasing efficiency and making many jobs easier. But if you are not integrating all these links in the supply chain together at the point of customer engagement, you are not optimizing results.

At the same time, you are likely using a workforce management solution to handle your labor planning and scheduling. Utilizing workforce management automation can help create an efficient schedule by putting employees where they need to be while ensuring the right number of employees are working to manage labor costs. But if you are creating these labor forecasts and schedules in a vacuum away from the rest of the supply chain, you are not optimizing your labor.

Imagine you are a store manager creating a weekly schedule. You are determining how many workers you need for each shift by looking at previous sales and other historical data. By using time series data to create your schedule, you may be missing out on important updates that are apparent by looking at other parts of the supply chain. If you connect your labor forecasting with pricing, for example, your labor forecast can be updated to include a big closeout sale coming up this weekend that is likely to increase store traffic or an uptick in online ordering that will require more item pickers for pickup orders. More automation in this way gives more information without relying on people—such as a busy store manager with a hundred tasks on their plate—to relay it to each other.

Now imagine you are a grocery manager running the store. You have a view of what inventory is coming in and where it needs to go on the shelves or if it needs to be refrigerated or frozen. You have planograms laying out where each of the products need to go and you know how many employees you need to get inventory stocked while keeping the store clean and having workers to assist customers. These parts of the process are all optimized and detailed to get the work done quickly and effectively. But what if you have an employee call off? If your workforce management exists in a silo, you have this information, but your software does not. With integrated workforce management, an employee call off can automatically adjust labor capacity the same way news of a delayed shipment would be relayed to relevant parties.

All aspects of the supply chain from planning to execution gain insights from the others and increase the two-way information going between labor and the rest of the supply chain. By eliminating labor siloes as you have with merchandising, warehouse, transportation, etc., a more modern supply chain will become more efficient, less static and remove some barriers to execution. When your workforce management is integrated into the supply chain, you are not only sending more and better information about staffing, call offs and labor capacity, you are also sending it faster. This improves efficiency by providing up-to-date information that planning and execution functions can use to streamline the work they do.

In supply chain management, information is the name of the game, and your company is not operating as efficiently as it could be if your labor management exists in a silo. Accurate and up-to-date information can make a huge difference in both planning and execution. Whether they are working in space, assortment, demand or anywhere else in the planning process, your data analysts will always want all available information that will help them make the best decisions. Blue Yonder Workforce Management works with your supply chain, not around it, to provide up-to-date data needed to make the best decisions every step of the process.