Supply Chain Event Management (SCEM) is part of Strategix OneOffice, a single software application combining ERP, CRM, SCEM and Supply Chain Management (SCM).

OneOffice SCEM is designed to help businesses reduce costs and improve both margins and efficiency. It detects critical events as they happen and actively alerts the business through powerful workflows ensuring swift resolution and, where necessary, escalation.

OneOffice actively brings key information to workers across departments which helps them to make better decisions which save money and increase margins.

Through a single intuitive user interface, WorkSpace, OneOffice provides full visibility and comprehensive analysis of all customer related activity including up to date notes of all contacts.

A major selling point for many businesses is the speed and frequency with which they service their customers - for example, next day and even same day delivery is becoming commonplace. As this speed increases, it becomes more and more important to automate and, where possible, eliminate businesses processes in order to achieve efficient and responsive customer service. As margins are squeezed, many companies seek to reduce salary costs through increased automation - although when things go wrong there is a risk that this may make it more difficult to react and thereby damage customer service.

As reliance on automation increases along with the pace at which business is conducted, it is clear that passive IT systems - which depend upon workers seeking out information in printed reports and screen based enquiries - are increasingly unable to cope quickly enough with the demands of high velocity commerce. For example, how can a report which is run over night be any use in dealing with orders which failed to ship the previous evening?

OneOffice on the other hand is designed to detect events which are important to the business either because they represent a variance from performance levels and hence a service failure, or because an opportunity to increase (or protect) revenue or margin has been identified. Once one of these events has been detected, OneOffice sends a real-time alert to the worker (or workers) responsible for the part of the business process where this event has occurred. As well as providing this warning, OneOffice will also provide context sensitive information to assist in the prompt resolution of the issue which caused the alert.

scem contextual intelligence
This contextual awareness can also, if appropriate, lead the worker back into the OneOffice application at the exact dialogue where the worker can resolve the alert. The way in which events trigger alerts is determined by customised rules which can be modified as businesses change. A single event may trigger several alerts depending on the data associated with the event and the rules. In addition, alerts which remain unresolved for a pre-specified period may be escalated through the organisation, again using rules based workflow.

It is equally important that the whole organisation is joined up when opportunities arise. When your people are speaking with a customer, they need the most up to date information to ensure that more conversations convert to sales.

For example, when your sales people start to enter a sales order the system should tell them if a quotation already exists as this not only saves time but also delivers better customer service. When a supplier misses a delivery date wouldn't it be valuable if the system could automatically send an e-mail notifying each customer and advising each sales person to make that follow up call? This could turn a potential disaster into a real customer service win.

OneOffice has a simple but effective three stage approach to SCEM:

• Step 1 - Detect what is happening inside the business.
• Step 2 - Determine who, if anyone, needs to know.
• Step 3 - Give them the information in time for them to act on it.

1. Events - To monitor your business.
2. Alert Manager & Workflow Engine - To determine what information is important and who needs to know about it
3. Alert-Q & WorkSpace - To pass information to your people when they need it.

Events
Everyday inside a volume distribution business thousands of activities are taking place and each one represents an opportunity to improve efficiency and deliver better service to customers; the challenge is knowing where and when to look. This is the role of Events. They are a series of 'agents' inside the OneOffice application suite monitoring key businesses processes. When an Event identifies an event that may be of interest to someone in the business it tells the Alert Manager.

alert manager and workflow engine
The Alert Manager looks more closely at the event and using a set of business rules works out who needs to know. The strength of the Alert Manager is the ability to discard information that isn't important enough to warrant further attention. Having applied the rules, the Alert Manager creates a package of information and passes it to the Workflow Engine.

workflow engine
The Workflow Engine then works out how important the information is and which users need it and then adds it to the relevant person's Alert-Q in priority order. Information can be passed to one person or a whole group of people. Once the information is in an Alert-Q, the Workflow Engine becomes a conduit for that information to flow between users.

alert-Q
An Alert-Q is maintained for each person in the business and contains information pertinent to his or her job. The Alert-Q works with WorkSpace to provide people with information at the time they most need it. Two types of information is held, general information that is sent to WorkSpace in priority order and context sensitive information that is only displayed when it is relevant to the current business transaction. So, for example, information relating to Product X and Customer Y is only sent to WorkSpace when the person is looking at information on Product X and Customer Y.

workSpace
WorkSpace provides a user with access to all aspects of OneOffice™ in a single intuitive interface. This simplifies training and improves efficiency. Incorporating the latest browser technology, it allows information to be delivered to users in the most effective way according to the role they perform.

collaboration manager
Part of OneOffice Supply Chain Management, Collaboration Manager offers the opportunity of real-time interaction between your systems and those of your customers and suppliers. While the core of OneOffice is focused on the activities within your business to help you make the most out of every opportunity, Collaboration Manager extends the scope of OneOffice to facilitate better and more efficient interaction with customers and suppliers by enabling easy and open electronic communication.