Data Analytics for Supply Chain Professionals Training Course

Course overview

Supply chain teams hold large volumes of ERP, warehouse, transport, procurement and forecast data, yet decisions on inventory, suppliers and service levels are often made from disconnected spreadsheets or delayed reports. This course equips professionals to turn operational data into defensible actions: identifying excess and at-risk stock, tracing causes of late deliveries, measuring supplier performance, and exposing demand-plan bias. Participants learn to connect financial, service and working-capital consequences to everyday supply chain measures.

Across five days, participants work with supply chain datasets using Microsoft Excel, Power Query, SQL and Power BI. They define KPI hierarchies; clean and reconcile order, inventory and shipment data; build demand, inventory and supplier analyses; and apply methods including ABC-XYZ segmentation, safety-stock logic, lead-time variability analysis, OTIF measurement, Pareto analysis and root-cause drill-down. The course also addresses data quality controls, metric definitions and dashboard design so that reports can be trusted by planners, operations managers and finance stakeholders.

Instructor-led demonstrations are followed by guided analysis labs based on an integrated supply chain case. Participants build a practical supply chain performance dashboard and an accompanying action brief, using a realistic dataset covering purchase orders, sales orders, inventory movements, supplier deliveries and transport events. The final deliverable identifies priority exceptions, quantifies their operational impact and recommends actions for inventory, supplier or service improvement.

The course is designed for experienced supply chain practitioners who already understand how planning, procurement, warehousing or logistics processes operate and now need stronger analytical capability. It is equally valuable for managers seeking staff who can move from reporting numbers to explaining what the numbers mean and what should happen next.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Define a supply chain KPI hierarchy linking service, cost, cash and risk measures
• Clean and reconcile inventory, order, supplier and shipment datasets using Excel and Power Query
• Write SQL queries to join operational tables and calculate supply chain performance measures
• Segment stock using ABC-XYZ analysis and identify excess, slow-moving and shortage-risk items
• Analyse forecast accuracy, forecast bias and demand variability at product-location level
• Calculate OTIF, lead-time variability, supplier scorecard and purchase-price variance measures
• Build an interactive Power BI dashboard with exception views, drill-through and KPI thresholds
• Produce an evidence-based supply chain action brief from a completed data analysis

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Supply Chain Analysts — who need to convert ERP and operational data into improvement priorities
• Demand Planners — who must diagnose forecast error, bias and demand variability by product and location
• Inventory Planners — who need evidence for safety-stock, replenishment and excess-stock decisions
• Procurement and Supplier Managers — who evaluate supplier delivery, quality and commercial performance
• Logistics and Warehouse Managers — who need to investigate fulfilment, transport and warehouse service exceptions
• Supply Chain Managers — who must challenge KPI reports and prioritise operational improvement actions

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have practical experience in at least one supply chain process, such as demand planning, inventory control, purchasing, warehousing, transport or order fulfilment. They should be comfortable working with tables in Excel, including sorting, filtering, basic formulas and pivot tables, and should understand common terms such as lead time, forecast, purchase order, service level and inventory. Prior programming experience is not required: SQL is introduced through guided queries. Prior Power BI, Power Query, statistics and SAP system experience are helpful but not required. Participants should bring a laptop with Excel and permission to install or access Power BI Desktop.

Training methodology

The course combines short instructor-led briefings with hands-on analysis of a connected supply chain case dataset. Participants use Excel and Power Query to inspect and prepare data, SQL to combine order and delivery records, and Power BI to present exceptions and performance trends. Facilitated case discussions test how measures such as OTIF, safety stock and forecast bias should influence decisions. Small groups review competing improvement options, then each participant completes an application plan and action brief for a relevant workplace reporting or operational problem.

Course outline

Day 1: Supply Chain Data, Metrics and Data Quality

• Supply chain decision questions and analytical use cases
• KPI trees linking service, cost, cash and risk
• Data structures for orders, inventory, suppliers and shipments
• Master data fields, keys and product-location hierarchies
• Data quality dimensions: completeness, validity, consistency and timeliness
• Excel tables, pivot tables and calculated fields for operational data
• Power Query profiling, data types and repeatable cleansing steps

Workshop: Participants profile a raw supply chain extract, document data-quality issues and produce a reconciled KPI data dictionary.

Day 2: Demand, Inventory and Replenishment Analytics

• Demand history preparation and calendar alignment
• Forecast accuracy measures including MAD, MAPE and WAPE
• Forecast bias calculation and interpretation
• Demand variability and coefficient of variation
• ABC classification by annual consumption value
• XYZ classification by demand variability
• Safety stock, reorder point and inventory coverage analysis

Workshop: Participants create an ABC-XYZ inventory segmentation and produce an exception list for excess stock, low coverage and shortage risk.

Day 3: Supplier, Procurement and Logistics Performance

• Supplier scorecard design and metric ownership
• On-time in-full calculation and delivery promise-date logic
• Lead-time mean, variance and reliability analysis
• Purchase-price variance and spend decomposition
• Fill rate, order cycle time and backlog measures
• Pareto analysis of late-delivery and shortage causes
• Root-cause drill-down by supplier, lane, product and location

Workshop: Participants analyse supplier and transport delivery records to produce a ranked corrective-action scorecard.

Day 4: SQL and Power BI for Operational Decision Support

• SQL SELECT, WHERE, GROUP BY and aggregate functions
• SQL joins between purchase orders, receipts, sales orders and inventory tables
• Common table expressions for reusable supply chain calculations
• Power BI data model relationships and star-schema principles
• DAX measures for OTIF, inventory turns and forecast variance
• Power BI drill-through, slicers and exception-focused visual design
• Thresholds, conditional formatting and refresh-ready dashboard controls

Workshop: Participants build a Power BI dashboard that combines inventory, supplier and service KPIs with drill-through exception views.

Day 5: From Analysis to Supply Chain Action

• Interpreting KPI movement versus operational noise
• Quantifying working-capital, service and cost implications
• Prioritisation using impact-effort and controllability criteria
• Translating findings into inventory, supplier and planning actions
• Data governance roles, metric ownership and refresh cadence
• Communicating analytical findings to operations and finance stakeholders
• Designing a 30-60-90 day analytics implementation plan

Workshop: Participants present their completed dashboard and action brief, defending three priority interventions and a 30-60-90 day implementation plan.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power Query, Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft SQL Server

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions