Supply chain: the real cost of silos between plan and execution.

We often ask an operations department the same thing: “How much stock do you have, right now, and where?” The answer rarely arrives the same day. You have to consolidate the main warehouse’s file, the Thiès branch’s, the extract from the head office ERP, the list of containers going through customs clearance and the sales reps’ order book. Each of these documents is accurate at the moment it was produced. None is accurate at the moment they are added up. This inability to answer a simple question is the symptom. The cost lies elsewhere.

A container’s journey, seen from the data

Let us follow an ordinary import. The order is placed with the supplier in Asia or Europe, in euros or dollars, on the basis of a forecast made three or four months earlier. The ship arrives at the Port autonome de Dakar. Then begin the delays every importer knows: unloading, release, customs clearance, inspections, pick-up, transport to the warehouse. For goods in transit to Mali, the chain continues by road and across a second border. Each step has its planned date and its actual date, and the gap between the two is paid for: demurrage, container detention, storage, immobilised trucks.

Now let us look at where this information lives. The forecast is in the planner’s file. The supplier order is in the ERP, or in the mailbox. The arrival notice is with the freight forwarder. The port exit date is known to the customs broker. The warehouse learns of the arrival when the truck shows up. The sales reps, meanwhile, keep selling on the basis of the stock they believe is available. At no moment does a single person see the whole chain. It is not a problem of competence. It is a problem of information architecture.

Spreadsheets, between plan and execution

The spreadsheet is not the culprit. It is the bandage. It appears wherever the system does not follow the real process: tracking containers at the port, allocation between warehouses, inter-site transfers, reserving stock for a major customer, calculating the landed cost including freight, customs and exchange rate. Each of these files has an owner, a logic and an update frequency. None updates when another changes. The plan is made on figures a week old; execution corrects by hand what the plan did not see.

This way of working produces three costs, all invisible in the budget. First, stock-outs: the item missing at the Kaolack warehouse while it sits idle at the Dakar warehouse, the sale lost because the rep did not know the container had left the port the day before. Next, overstocks: each link protects itself against the others’ uncertainty by ordering a little more, a little earlier. Finally, and this is the heaviest for a company in the sub-region, cash tied up in foreign currency. Imported stock was paid for in euros or dollars, often before shipment. Every extra week between payment and sale is cash that has left the country and is not coming back.

Silos do not show up in the licences. They show up in the stock everyone adds to protect themselves from the others, and in the foreign currency sleeping in containers.

Why an integrated ERP is not always enough

Many companies we meet already have an ERP. The plan is in it, purchasing is in it, accounting is in it. But the secondary warehouses work on a separate tool, or on paper. Port tracking is with the freight forwarder. The sales reps keep their order book in a file or in a CRM that knows nothing about stock. The ERP is integrated; the company is not. The data it contains is accurate at head office and wrong in the field, because the field does not write into it in real time.

The answer is therefore not one more tool. It is a decision: a single set of numbers, fed where the events happen. The container changes status when it leaves the port, not when the freight forwarder’s invoice arrives. The warehouse records the receipt at the moment of unloading, not at the end of the week. The customer order reserves stock at the moment it is taken, not when sales administration enters it.

A single set of numbers

For a regional group or a company with several sites and several legal entities, SAP S/4HANA carries this single set of numbers: purchasing, imports, multi-warehouse stock, transport and SYSCOHADA accounting in one data set, with intercompany flows recorded on both sides in the same way. Inventory valuation includes freight, customs and the exchange rate at the time of clearance. The planner works on real stock, not on an extract. For an SME, Odoo covers this scope with sufficient depth and a lighter implementation; we discuss it in our SAP · S/4HANA & ERP offering, which includes Odoo for companies that are not a fit for SAP.

The last link is often forgotten: sales. A customer order taken in Salesforce must see available stock and incoming stock, and reserve it. Without that, the rep promises what they do not have, or refuses what they do. Connecting Salesforce Sales Cloud to the ERP, through MuleSoft or standard connectors, is a short workstream compared with what it avoids: promises kept, fewer partial deliveries, and a sales forecast that finally feeds the supply plan instead of being pitted against it.

What we recommend

• Start from the chain, not the tool. Draw a product’s journey, from supplier order to customer delivery, with every system and every file it passes through. Wherever a file appears, a silo begins.
• Choose one master system per data item. Stock has a master, the customer order has a master, the container status has a master. The other systems read; they do not re-key.
• Bring the port into the system. The freight forwarder’s and customs broker’s statuses must feed the ERP, through an interface or disciplined entry, with actual dates. It is the only way to measure demurrage before the invoice.
• Value in foreign currency from the outset. The landed cost is calculated in the system, at the exchange rate on the day of clearance, not in a workbook at month-end.
• Link sales to stock. The CRM sees what is available and reserves it. The sales forecast becomes an input to the plan.
• Measure three things. The stock-out rate, stock cover in days per warehouse, and cash tied up in foreign currency in stock and containers in transit. These three indicators say whether the silos are receding.

A supply chain without silos is not a supply chain without surprises. The port will always have its delays and the road its hazards. But when everyone looks at the same number, the unexpected is handled in hours rather than weeks. That is the conviction of our supply chain & operations expertise, and what we implement in distribution, transport and logistics across the sub-region.