Your technology platform must be able to centralize data from every part of your company for real-time decision-making for different people based on their roles. For example, a sales manager needs to view client, contract and fulfillment data, an HR manager needs to update organizational charts and a financial person needs to compute cash flow in real-time.

Even though every person in every department gets a view of data structured to the needs of his or her role, because that data comes from the company's single common data source it's also consistent across the entire business.

In order to move up the value chain, your technology platform must allow your teams to do the following effectively:

• Understand customer values and requirements so that your teams can identify how to align their operations to meet their customers’ requirements and needs.
• Manage projects, logistics and/or deliveries across the demand and supply chains with the help of both the downstream and upstream partners.
• Organize the customer management in such a way that your teams can provide a single point of contact to the customer for information and post-sales follow-ups.
• Share real-time demand and forecast information within and across the demand and supply chains.
• Focus on the synergies of strategic alliances and relationship management by building the sense of mutual trust and the spirit of gain sharing.
• Develop customer-driven performance measures to drive the behavior of all supply chain members across the supply chain.