BT Champions Global End-to-End Visibility in the Supply Chain for Efficient and Sustainable Benefits

DALLAS, Dec. 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- As the complexities and costs involved in global supply chains have increased, supply chain visibility has become a top priority for many organizations. Leveraging its proven experience in operating and deploying supply chain solutions, BT is addressing a particular challenge in today's supply chain operations by enabling customers to extract data, in whatever form it exists across the supply chain, to facilitate collaboration and secure information exchange.

Speaking at the 9th Annual Supply Chain and Logistics Summit North America today in Dallas, Keith Sherry, general manager – Supply Chain Solutions, BT Global Services, will share how end-to-end visibility across the global supply chain can improve customer service, reduce inventory and help eliminate unnecessary waste in the supply chain. Outlining best practices in supply chain management, he will demonstrate how BT has streamlined its own operations and has applied that learning to provide innovative supply chain solutions to its customers. Sherry will speak at the conference today at 2.20 pm CST – "Best Practices in Supply Chain Management".

"Establishing end-to-end visibility over global supply chains is essential as supply chains are becoming increasingly volatile and disrupted," Sherry emphasized, "whether due to natural disasters, such as earthquakes or severe weather conditions, civil unrest as recently seen in the Middle East, or the increasingly demanding global consumer.

"Visibility that extends fully upstream and downstream in the supply chain helps deliver real-time, accurate in-store availability that maximizes sales," Sherry said. "It also provides suppliers, retailers, manufacturers, logistics providers, and customers with up-to-the-minute information, facilitating more accurate demand planning and forecasting."

When companies have the ability to extract data from an array of different depositories across the supply chain as well as from goods in transit and then turn the information into actionable intelligence and alerts, they can be more agile and responsive. Organizations can react more quickly to unforeseen events and make informed business decisions to avoid disruption to their supply chains that can cause lost sales and increased costs.

A natural benefit of end-to-end supply chain visibility also addresses the increasing focus on sustainability initiatives within business operations.

"Enterprises today understand they need to reduce their environmental footprint; it's become a key business driver," Sherry said. "At BT, our large-scale deployment of energy saving programs and management control systems across our business has significantly reduced our carbon emissions. And we are looking to incorporate many of our company's successful sustainability initiatives into our customers' supply chain processes, enabling them to eliminate waste, lessen their own carbon footprint, reduce operational costs, and gain greater business efficiencies."

BT was recently named by the Supply & Demand Chain Executive Magazine as a recipient in its "Green Supply Chain Awards" competition, which recognizes companies working to achieve measurable sustainability goals within their own operations and/or supply chains in the areas of sourcing/procurement, fulfillment/logistics, operations, product lifecycle management, and other areas of the supply chain.

About BT

BT is one of the world's leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries. Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to our customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services. BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Retail, BT Wholesale and Openreach.

In the year ended 31 March 2011, BT Group's revenue was 20,076m pounds Sterling with profit before taxation of 1,717m pounds.

British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group. BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York.

For more information, visit www.btplc.com

SOURCE BT