Supply Chain as a

Service (SCAS)
Authors
Sekhar Babu
Nipun Kohli
Sandeep Rameja
Gaurav Dixit
Nikhar Agarwal

JANUARY 2012

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract

Purpose

Target Audience

Introduction

Problem Statement

Key Industry Trends

Solution

Unique Business Benefits

10

Conclusion

12

About The Author

13

About HCL

14

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

Abstract
Many of the worlds leading Retail and CPG enterprises are facing increasing
pressure to improve operational performance, increase productivity and drive
innovation in supply chain management by streamlining processes, eliminating
errors and reducing costs. The industry is additionally challenged by the power
of a demanding consumer and multi-channel fulfillment business model.
HCL SCAS Supply Chain As a Service, is based on the latest supply chain
trends that enable an enterprise with best of breed supply chain solutions to
adapt the fluid business environment and ensure compliance with regulatory
requirements. HCL SCAS doesnt require large capital investment and is modeled
based on the Pay as Use model.
The HCL proposition, if adapted, shall improve operational efficiency of supply
chain and increase productivity by providing real-time information and hence real
business benefits. HCL SCAS solution has kept speed, ease-of-use and scalability
in mind and enables businesses to provide real-time benefits.
This paper on HCL SCAS will discuss details on how to assist the client
organization in overcoming challenges around operational efficiency, cost
reduction and enhance customer satisfaction.

Purpose
The purpose of this whitepaper is to enlighten Retail and CPG large and midmarket enterprises on cost effective supply chain solutions that help them to
manage day-to-day operations and processes efficiently. The proposed solution
also enables an enterprise with the needed insight and intelligence to successfully
adapt the fluid business environment and ensure compliance with regulatory
requirements.
3

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

Target Audience
The intended audience for the paper includes professionals with roles such as:
1. Supply Chain Heads/ Managers
2. Multi-channel/ eCommerce Heads
3. Business and/or Technology Consultants
4. IT professionals with Development and Project Management backgrounds
5. Technical Architects
6. Operations/ Retail & CPG Business Managers
The solution can be offered to companies in the following industries::
1. Retail & CPG
2. Supply Chain, Logistics & Operations
3. Manufacturing

Introduction
Many market enterprises, especially Retail and CPG, are facing challenges
in todays exigent economic environment. It is no longer business as usual as
companies struggle on how to optimize for today and get on track to capitalize
on new opportunities that will emerge as the economy grows. They need business
solutions to help them to manage day-to-day operations more efficiently and also
provide them insights to take the business forward.
With increased customer empowerment in Retail and CPG industry, it has
become imperative for companies to understand their supply chains better.
Over the years supply chains have become leaner as a result of cost cutting
exercises. As a result, there is negligible scope of coping up with variations in
demand or with unexpected events. The recent crisis over Europe because of the
volcano eruption in Iceland demonstrated this at a global level. Companies need
improved visibility in their supply chains in future which calls for development
of a collaborative sourcing approach and establishment of an infrastructure
allowing the exchange of information across the supply chain ecosystem.
As an enterprise evaluates different options, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
is an important parameter. Many customers have become interested in how
Cloud Computing or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) can help lower their costs by
eliminating upfront capital investments, very unpopular these days and ongoing
maintenance costs associated with on-premise solutions.
Today, organizations need solutions that enable them to meet their business
goals and also help them to conserve capital and reduce ongoing costs. For
many customers, cloud computing business solutions can help organizations to
achieve these requirements and provide them added flexibility to scale according
to business demands.
4

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

Cloud computing essentially eliminates the need for customers to buy, deploy
and maintain IT infrastructure or application software individually. Regardless
of the application, the cloud computing vendor takes responsibility for all of the
infrastructure required to run the solution-servers, backup, software, operating
systems, databases, updates, migration, power and cooling, facility space, etc., as
well as associated internal and third-party staffing costs. Since cloud computing
vendors manage all of their customers on a single instance of the software,
they can amortize costs over thousands of customers. This yields substantial
economies of scale and lowers the TCO.
With cloud computing, organizations can monitor current needs and make
on-the-fly adjustments to increase or decrease requirements and capacity and
accommodate spikes in demand without paying for unused capacity during slower
times. Aside from the potential to lower costs, organizations gain the flexibility
of being able to respond quickly to requests for new services and requirements
by purchasing them from the cloud.

Problem Statement
This whitepaper is written with an intention to promote a supply chain business
solution for several organizations, especially Retail and CPG, which are facing
challenges in terms of buying, deploying and maintaining IT infrastructure or
application software. An attempt has been made to identify certain businessrelated and technological challenges in the subsequent paragraphs.

1. Key Business Challenges

The following report from an Aberdeen survey highlights some of the key
challenges from the business angle that companies, especially Retail and CPG,
today are facing:

Cost to purchase and deploy traditional

on-premise SCM solutions

22%

Increased supply chain complexity

19%

Speed of change in supply design

requirements and network

16%

Rising customer collaboration

requirements

16%
15%

Rise in length of IT backlog and time to

implement new solutions
Rising customer service requirements

13%
0%

10%

20%

30%

% of respondents

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

Business Challenges

Description

TCO: Cost to purchasing,

deploying and running
traditional on-premise
SCM solutions

Traditionally, enterprises deploy solutions on

their own servers, own the software and bear
the cost of hardware, licenses, infrastructure and
deployment. Deploying traditional SCM solution
requires huge capital investments.

Complexity: Increased
supply chain complexity:

Understanding and managing the drivers of

supply chain complexity is important for an
organization to progress towards cost effective
and optimized solutions.

a) Speed of change in
supply chain

Todays rapidly changing economy - rapid price

fluctuations, surging oil prices, global competitions
and supply chain -- creates a stress on an enterprise
to respond quickly and effectively.

b) Advent of Multi-channel Currently, many organizations still have a single

channel of fulfillment and are hesitant to move
Demand Fulfillment
towards multiple channels such as eCommerce.
At the same time, the consumers are demanding
flexibility of multi-channel fulfillment.
There is no SaaS-based solution which is endc) Rise in length of IT
to-end; there are piece-meal solutions such as
backlog and time to
implement new solutions standalone TMS solution, WMS and time to
implement each solution and the interfacing
between the same is significantly high.
d) Globalization

In the current scenario, supply chain has expanded

its scope from local to global. A typical retailer
sources its goods across the world and hence
transforms itself into a multi-country entity.

Empowered consumer:
Hyper connected
consumer and

Customers keep raising the bar of their

expectations as consumers grow richer, are better
informed and travel more.

rising customer service

requirements

Faced with the pressure to raise the customer

service standard of excellence, businesses are not
able to meet the demands.

Reverse Logistics
Management:

Inadequate returns management drives the

management to over invest capital in their
business; they try to balance the risk of inadequate
returns with the cost of holding capital.
Increased warranty costs and customer
dissatisfaction can result from improper warranty
servicing.

a) Improper return
management
b) Improper warranty
management
MIS & KPI Analytics

Due to many disjointed and disconnected systems,

there is a challenge to get the single version of
truth across supply chain. Also, due to large data
volumes, it is difficult to get useful information.

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

2. Key Technical Challenges

Technical Challenges

Description

System Uptime

It is imperative for the proposed solution to have

and sustain industry standard uptimes, as this will
be a multi-tenant solution. Important challenges
for system uptime are:
- Planning and scheduling downtime
- Reliability centered maintenance
- Productivity maintenance

Lack of technical support

and people dependency

Organizations do not have sufficient product and

technical knowledge, have high support needs
and bear upgrade costs.

Coping up with system

upgrades

Whenever a products newer version enters the

market and it is understood to suit the requirements
better, huge cost and time is involved in product
upgrade.

Integrated solution

If multiple applications are implemented as

a solution, the integration between the same
involves high service cost, integration difficulty
and technical requirements.

Lower ROI and longer

lead time to implement

Typically on premise SCM implementation have

longer lead time and the ROI of implementation
is only observed after 3+ years.

Key Industry Trends

Retail and CPG companies, being leaders in outsourcing and new technology
adoption, are still limited to manpower and project outsourcing. With the cloudbased service, Retail and CPG companies can leverage the complete outsourcing
IT service and hardware infrastructure.
Cloud computing presents organizations with a different model of operation
that takes advantage of the maturity of web applications and networks.
Cloud providers specialize in particular applications and services and this
expertise allows them to efficiently manage maintenance, backups, disaster
recovery, upgrades, migrations and failover functions. As a result, consumers
of cloud services may see increased reliability, even as costs decline due to
economies of scale and other production factors. The key trends witnessed in
the industry today are:

1. Platform consolidation, rationalization and virtualization

Many retailers are looking at massive consolidation and transformation of aging
applications and antiquated platforms in order to realize the benefits of both
7

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

private virtualization and cloud, while reducing infrastructure costs from the data
center to the desktop. More generally, if retailers want to continue to innovate
their systems, they cannot afford to ignore cloud computing.

2. Data centricity
Many of todays applications operate within silos (e.g. product, departmental)
with hard-coded business functions that are antiquated and narrowly focused.
Building or upgrading enterprise data centers and building new data centric
applications across the business, are massive undertakings. Cloud Solutions can
offset costs and speed up implementation.
Most of the Global 2000 have more than four or five data centers. This results
in huge labor, cost, time, effort and money, in addition to resulting in global
warming. Retail and CPG companies, rather than operating more data centers,
can look at the possibility of leveraging cloud services to minimize the cost
of running the data center. Companies with large batch-oriented tasks can get
their results as quickly as their programs can scale. The economies of scale of a
very large-scale data center combined with pay-as-you-go resource usage have
praised the rise of cloud computing.

3. Effectiveness at customer touch points

Customers are choosing to engage with retailers through multiple channels to
become omni-channel.
Driven by convenience, location, ease-of-use and availability of technology,
todays hyper connected and demanding customers are creating new engagement
models and are driving retailers to adopt more innovative solutions quickly and
cost effectively.
To support and enable this change, many emerging solutions in this space are
cloud-based leveraging capabilities and infrastructure that are not installed
within a retailers data center. Whether its social media platforms, eCommerce
engines, search optimization services or mobile computing solutions, these
capabilities all exist in the cloud and can enable a retailer to engage with its
customers in unique and novel ways without the level of capital investment
typically required to build and support a new channel.

4. Global expansion
As leading retailers become multi-national organizations, they need to scale up
the technology infrastructure to support their new global operations. Cloud can
substantially impact the related costs and speed to deliver. Cloud is the most
innovative and cost effective way to have and maintain a global footprint.

5. Business analytics
Retailers will need to perform massive computing for periodic demands for
analytic processing power and the traditional spikes in seasonal consumer
8

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

demand. As analytic business processes become available as a cloud service,

retailers will benefit from inventory predictions and demand business forecast
capabilities.

6. Enterprise risk management

Retailers are and will always adopt significant upgrades to their enterprise risk
capabilities - in particular the ones which manage data like real-time information
hubs, complex event processing, business warehouse analysis and more, which
can be suitably offered on cloud services.

Solution
An ideal solution is to provide a secured and managed environment that the
customers (or groups of customers) can use to perform specific functions. A
solution needs to have an option to increase and/or decrease computing capacity
in function of the needs at any given moment in time and charge customers on
a pay-per-use basis. This is ideal to build a Supply Chain Cloud, on which the
customers of a specific ecosystem can securely perform transactions, exchange
information and analyze for trends, reports etc, without adding to the TCO.

Supply Chain as a Service - SCAS

A Best of Breed (BoB) standalone solution can be identified in each area to
meet the complete end-to-end requirements in supply chain: eCommerce (Order
Capture), Customer Order Management, Customer Relationship Management
(CRM), Warehouse Management System (WMS), Transportation Management
System (TMS), along with Business Analytics capabilities all integrated and
placed on supply chain cloud.
Enterprises

Channels
Service Providers

Sourcing &
Procurement

TMS
Planning

Analytics

Returns

Logistic
3PL

Value Added
Services

APPLICATION
/ WEB LAYER

BPO/KPO Services
Security Layer
SCM Cloud
WMS/TMS

OMS, Order
Capture

Analytics
BUSINESS
LAYER

Infrastructure Cloud
Desktops

Storage

Servers

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

Some of the potential BoB solutions for supporting warehouse management

activities, Order Management, Google maps and the respective APIs for
geocoding and providing the solutions for transport management can be hosted
on cloud and the same instance can be used for multiple vendors on a transactionbased model.
Retail and CPG in todays environment generally do not want all the solutions
and functionality within each solution for their business; they do not want to
spend huge chunks of money for the implementation of BoB solutions.
It would be highly attractive for such enterprises to access only the services
required by them from cloud on as and when basis.
HCL has conceptualized this solution and has named it SCAS Supply Chain as
Service -- and patented it in India.

Service Offerings
Apart from the solution on cloud, there can be more service offerings like
Process Consulting, Support and Supply Chain KPO, as there would be domain
and technical consultants available to support the enterprises whenever the
business needs them.
HCL (SCAS) - Business Layer
Order Management

Customer
Order
Management

Logistics Management

Vendor
Order
Management

WMS

TMS

Return
CFS / ICD Management
Management & Warranty
Management

Services

Service
Billing

Supply chain visibility - Dashboard

HCL integration layer / Infrastructure

Unique Business Benefits

Supply chain on cloud is an attempt to build on the customers business strategy
and help them gain competitive advantage by leveraging IT to drive increased
value across the value chain.

1. BoB Scalable & Reliable Solution

BoB solution under one umbrella:
Different areas of supply chain would be catered by BoB solutions under
one cloud and business would be able to access the benefits of each
solution, almost with negligible cost as compared to implementing all
10

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

solutions on his own hardware. Small to medium sized enterprises would

be able to afford the same rich and sophisticated solutions as the multibillion dollar enterprises.
Solutions scalable as per the need of business:
The solutions implemented would be flexible to accommodate new
expansions/ business in a very short span of time.

2. Reduce CAPEX, TCO

Reduce initial investment and TCO:
There would be no capital investment in hardware, no software license
investment and no infrastructure foot-print, which would bring down the
initial investment cost to almost 25% of TCO.
Translate user subscription to licensing cost:
Monthly subscription fees replace perpetual fully paid licenses, allowing
organizations to recapture solution costs through efficiency savings and
other benefits as they go.
IT Hardware Maintenance, Customer Support Center and Human Capital
Management are non-core areas of a Retail & CPG company. Our solution
will help you to focus on our core business areas and SCAS takes care of
all other IT, BPO and hardware-related activities.

3. Role-based Access
Granular administration of user and group privileges is very important for
internal security and the accounts can be customized to display specific
types of data

4. Seamless Integration
Ensure seamless integration with customers IT ecosystem:
Everything is subject to change. Seamless integration means making
a change without error or interruption in service. The enterprise can
now benefit from seamless integration of SCM services on cloud with
customers IT ecosystem and a smooth functioning of the overall solution.
SCAS is based on the SOA architecture and can be seamlessly integrated
with any standard industry solution or product.

5. Subscription Catalog
Catalog with SCM functionalities for a user to choose from:
This provides greater and direct visibility to enterprises on communications,
solutions and services offered by SCM on cloud. This would make it very
easy to look and identify different areas to begin to quantify the benefits of
different solution components which will best serve an enterprise.

11

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

Conclusion
The demand for supply chain solutions is growing with consumerism leading to
huge capital and manpower crunch. Current and future supply chain problems
can be effectively solved by on-demand hosted supply chain software delivery
model designed and delivered on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
The potential of this technology lies in overcoming the monolithic nature of
traditional ERP systems in operation and scale. Cloud-based models provide a
prospective customer the ability to capture and deliver orders through a globally
visible network and to ship the product directly to the consumer or retailer.
As analysts iterate that emerging supply chain systems are evaluated basis its
adaptability to innovative platforms vis--vis cost effectiveness, a cloud computing
solution with particular emphasis on global supply chain as an enabler to bottom
the cost-of ownership model would compel any smart organization to leapfrog
in their industry using the economic benefits derived from shifting to cloud as
their IT model.

For more information, please write to scas@hcl.com

12

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

Supply Chain as a Service (SCAS) | January 2012

About The Author

Sekhar Babu

Head of Retail Transformation Services

Sekhar has around 16 years of experience in the IT industry and
holds a Bachelors degree in Computers. Currently, he heads the
HCL Retail Transformation Service group which is responsible
for creating new solutions in this space. He is one of the thought
leaders in the company and invests in creating competency around
the cutting edge technology. He actively participates in forums and
discussions with analysts and CIOs.

Nipun Kohli

Practice Manager
Nipun Kohli has over 10 years of leadership experience with
Fortune 100 companies in the Retail, Multi-channel and Logistics
and Supply Chain Execution area. Nipun is a seasoned speaker
and a number of his papers have been published in Indian and
international forums. Nipun also holds the program chain for
CSCMP (Council of Supply Chain Management Professional,
North India Chapter). Nipun holds an Engineering degree and
Management Diploma from IIM Bangalore.

Sandeep Rameja

Associate Business Manager

Sandeep Rameja has about 6 years of extensive industry experience
in Business Analysis, IT Consultancy and Quality Assurance with
leading global organizations in Retail, Logistics and Supply Chain
Execution area. Sandeep has worked on multiple supply chain
product implementations in US & Asia Pacific and shares an
extensive interest in the supply chain domain. Sandeep holds an
Engineering degree in Computer Science and an MBA in IT.

Gaurav Dixit

Senior Business Analyst

Gaurav is a multi-channel evangelist and practitioner with more
than 6 years of experience working with Fortune 100 companies
in the Multi-channel, Finance and Analytics domain. His passion
lies in providing Real Business Value to customers. Gaurav is
an MBA-Gold Medalist from SP Jain Center of Management and
holds an engineering degree.

Nikhar Agarwal

Associate Consultant
Nikhar is a Supply Chain Consultant with over two years of
experience with Fortune 500 companies in the Retail and Supply
Chain Execution area with a focus on business consulting.

13

2012, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

CUSTOM APPLICATION
SERVICES
ENGINEERING AND
R&D SERVICES
ENTERPRISE APPLICATION
SERVICES
ENTERPRISE
TRANSFORMATION SERVICES
IT INFRASTRUCTURE
MANAGEMENT
BUSINESS PROCESS
OUTSOURCING

ABOUT HCL
About HCL Technologies
HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company, working with
clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since
its inception into the global landscape after its IPO in 1999, HCL focuses on
transformational outsourcing, underlined by innovation and value creation, and
offers an integrated portfolio of services including software led IT solutions,
remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and BPO.
HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network of
offices in 26 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry
verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Consumer Services, Public
Services and Healthcare. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of Employees First
which empowers our 80,520 transformers to create real value for customers.
HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated revenues of US$
3.7 billion (Rs. 16,977 crores), as on 30th September (on LTM basis). For more
information, please visit www.hcltech.com

About HCL Enterprise

HCL is a $6 billion leading global technology and IT enterprise comprising two
companies listed in India - HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems. Founded
in 1976, HCL is one of Indias original IT garage start-ups. A pioneer of modern
computing, HCL is a global transformational enterprise today. Its range of
offerings includes product engineering, custom & package applications, BPO,
IT infrastructure services, IT hardware, systems integration, and distribution of
information and communications technology (ICT) products across a wide range
of focused industry verticals. The HCL team consists of 88,000 professionals of
diverse nationalities, who operate from 31 countries including over 500 points of
presence in India. HCL has partnerships with several leading Global 1000 firms,
including leading IT and technology firms. For more information, please visit
www.hcl.com
2011, HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.