Why Should Improving Supply Chain Visibility Be Your Top Priority?

Most businesses rely on a few suppliers and geographical locations. When the markets are functioning smoothly, everything is fine, but when there are disruptions like political instability, pandemics, and war, everyone suffers. Besides that, your existing suppliers may be unable to keep up with your expanding business, causing you to lose your market reputation.

According to a global management consultant, 68% of supply chain executives feel that they are constantly firefighting. They do not have time to recover from one disruption when the next hits. This brings us to the use of technology for end-to-end supply chain visibility.

Key Challenges in a Supply Chain

Common challenges that every supply chain consultant faces are:

1. Inefficient information sharing – Most supply chain experts say they do not have real-time global visibility of information across modes and regions on a unified platform. This causes different components of the supply chain not to function optimally, causing inefficiencies and a loss of revenue.
2. Supply chain interruptions – There is a general lack of understanding of the factors that can interrupt supply chains. This makes it easy to lose control over demand, supply, inventory levels, and other factors such as weather, traffic, and political events that are difficult to control.
3. Inability to retrieve the right data – Without knowing which data is helpful and which is not, visibility is of not much use. Supply chain experts do not understand the tiers and cannot disseminate the right information at the right time. 

What is Supply Chain Visibility?

Supply chain technology enhances transparency across the supply chain and makes data readily available to all stakeholders. Supply chain visibility is the ability to use technology to track components, raw materials, sub-assemblies, parts, and finished goods in transit.

Supply chain visibility software improves transparency in complex supply chain networks, resulting in higher-quality products and services. The data from various touchpoints help supply chain stakeholders derive useful insights and do better planning and strategy.

For example, the ability to track vehicles and their fitness status allows businesses to send them for servicing or repair on time. You can also choose the most appropriate time and route to send and receive goods, thus reducing the time on the road.

Role of Supply Chain Control Tower in achieving End-to-End Visibility

A supply chain control tower provides visibility to trading partners and monitors, manages, and controls decisions to optimize the complete network. The control tower uses technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and acts as a system of engagement across partners.

Benefits of Supply Chain Control Tower Software

1. Gain real-time visibility of the complete supply chain, including partners, suppliers, contract manufacturers, third-party logistics, and transportation carriers.

2. Reduce shortages of stocks by up to 90% and use early warning alerts and exceptions to resolve disruptions before they impact the business.

3.Reduce the expediting costs by up to 75%.

4.Increase inventory turns and on-time shipments by 100%.

5. Set up a supply chain that self-corrects through intelligent decision-making and machine learning (ML).

6.Get access to predictive and prescriptive analytics. Use autonomous decision-making and predictive and prescriptive analytics to boost productivity.

Selecting a supply chain control tower is a step-by-step process that starts with data integrity. It uses high-quality data and directly impacts the output of insights and degree of visibility.

Benefits of Digitalizing Supply Chain

By digitizing the end-to-end supply chains, your business can improve workflow and profits, cut costs, and reduce risks. Detailed benefits are –

1. Mitigate supply chain disruptions – Use AI and ML technologies to predict disruptions in the supply chain ahead of time. Limit the roadblocks and deliver exceptional results with strong data analysis and communication.
2.  Make the supply chain fast and agile – Gaining visibility of the supply chain leads to agility and boosting productivity regardless of any external circumstances. Data-driven indicators help you make appropriate decisions and guide you toward the next logical move.
3.  Meet customer demands faster – Shift the supply chains to meet changing customer demands and market levers.
4.  Achieve data-driven results – Get visibility of the complete supply chain with data-driven metrics and KPIs for greater supply chain success.

Traditional supply chains focus only on managing logistics that include only the movement in and out of the warehouse. However, digitization of the supply chain gives it a whole new paradigm shift. As supply chains expand and become more complex, visibility becomes increasingly important. It results in limiting disruptions, improving workflow, and preventing late deliveries.