LLamasoft

Supply Chain Guru Visualization Project
My Role: Lead Researcher

I planned and conducted this research project to evaluate Llamasoft visualization tools in the Supply Chain Guru modeling software. We wanted to understand how users incorporated existing visualization functionalities in their daily modeling work.

Methods

In-depth Interviews (60-minute Webex interviews, 16 supply chain analysts, enterprise-level organizations)
Survey: 250 respondents, enterprise-level customers
Google Analytics metrics to understand usage of functionality

Research Outcomes

2 research reports presented to cross-functional teams
Google Analytics/Data Studio analytics reports on usage
Addition of new feature to integrate Supply Chain Guru software with Tableau

Major Research Findings

A vast majority of Supply Chain Guru users do not visualize and present model results in the LLamasoft Supply Chain Guru software Instead, most use Tableau, followed by Power BI and Excel. They find Tableau faster, cheaper, more flexible, and a better visualization tool than SCGX.

In users’ own words

“It’s gonna be a constant battle we face much like Excel. We have 1600 people that will do whatever they want to in Tableau anyway versus a single modeling license. How much do we work with integrating it [Supply Chain Guru modeling software]? I’d like to say everything will be doable in Supply Chain Guru, but I doubt that’s realistic.” (Supply Chain Analyst in North America)

“I bring a lot of tables [from Supply Chain Guru] and connect them in Tableau – both inputs and output tables for the Operations department. We’ve created Tableau workflows that we refresh regularly.” (Analyst, North America)

New Integration Feature

User Persona

I created this User Persona following my research with supply chain analysts.