Business success in today’s fast-paced and interconnected world relies on effectively navigating global supply chains. Supply chain visibility is among the ways your business can shed light on the darkest corners of the complex ecosystems that sometimes transverse continents. It makes the processes on the supply chain visible to all stakeholders, improving efficiency, productivity and resilience.
So far, only about 6% of small and medium-sized companies have achieved full supply chain visibility, while 43% don’t even track their inventory. As a result, these businesses experience more disruptions, leading to up to 62% financial, 54% logistic and 54% reputational losses.
Below is everything you need to know about supply chain visibility, its benefits for your business and how to achieve it.
What Is Supply Chain Visibility?
Supply chain visibility refers to a business’ ability to track every tier or stage of its supply chain. It offers insight and transparency into how inventory and raw materials move while reducing risk.
Visibility on the supply chain allows businesses to evaluate production and delivery processes and ensure quality control and compliance. They can minimize disruptions, manage customer expectations, find improvement opportunities and enhance risk management strategies.
The primary goals of supply chain visibility include enhancing transparency, efficiency and resilience, which brings numerous benefits for businesses.
Why Is Visibility Important in the Supply Chain?
Optimal visibility on the supply chain unlocks multiple advantages geared toward improving workflow and increasing a company’s bottom line. These benefits include increased transparency for all stakeholders and the enhanced ability to spot and address areas of concern.
Below are a few reasons supply chain visibility is essential for businesses.
Allows Real-Time Visualization
Supply chain visibility enables real-time data collection and communication to keep all stakeholders sufficiently informed. As a result, you can identify problems and potential threats before they cause devastating losses, track them to the sources and quickly resolve them. Faster response times across the supply chain help you avoid disruptions and give you a competitive edge.
Enables Smarter Decision-Making
Visibility on the supply chain allows you access to large amounts of real-time supply chain data. Armed with this information, you can predict potential threats and challenges and respond without guesswork. Data-driven decisions lead to exceptional results by eliminating supply chain uncertainty and bypassing potential roadblocks.
Most importantly, with data, you can address problems at any stage of your supply chain before they escalate and make decisions faster.
Improves Business Agility and Resilience
A business’ resilience is crucial to its survival and success in today’s volatile global environment. Supply chain visibility allows you to be agile by ensuring you can strategically get ahead of problems.
It also enables you to evolve and change to keep up with industry and business environment changes and ensure your products are always in the right place at the right time. Visibility makes your business more scalable by decreasing uncertainty and making your operations more efficient, despite ever-changing circumstances.
Boosts Customer Satisfaction
Complete visibility into your supply chain processes enables you to identify areas that need improvement to ensure ultimate customer satisfaction. Real-time tracking gives you insight into stages of the supply chain that need adjustments to align with customers’ expectations and demands. It also helps improve response times to shifting needs and preferences, increasing customer retention and acquisition rates.
Additionally, supply chain visibility helps reduce risks that may directly or indirectly affect consumers and ensure consistent product quality and compliance with ethical and environmental standards.
Reduces Operational Costs
Supply chain visibility can help you minimize costs and increase your business’ bottom line in numerous ways, including:
- Cutting back on the cost of returns
- Ensuring compliance with industry standards to prevent recalls
- Reducing downtime caused by unpredicted disruptions
- Enabling a faster, data-driven decision-making process
How to Achieve and Increase Supply Chain Visibility
Increasing visibility within your supply chain involves employing innovative technological solutions to collect real-time data and streamline communication and collaboration at every stage. The tools you use should focus on improving operational efficiency and reporting changes on a moment-to-moment basis to ensure faster and more effective decision-making.
Here are some technologies that ensure and improve supply chain visibility by providing real-time data analytics and connectivity.
- Supply chain management systems: They ensure end-to-end control by integrating data from multiple sources to streamline logistics and enhance decision-making.
- Enterprise resource planning systems: These provide visibility into processes such as procurement, inventory and order management in a centralized platform, which eliminates data silos and reduces instances of other departments receiving outdated or inaccurate data.
A supply chain partner could help you automate supply chain visibility. The best companies have the necessary tools and technologies to increase supply chain efficiency, adapt to market changes and boost customer satisfaction. Their roles include managing logistics and sourcing and performing quality control to ensure efficient flow at all stages.
Improve Your Supply Chain Visibility With EMO Trans
EMO Trans is a reliable supply chain partner that can help improve operating efficiencies by streamlining your core functions and routine tasks. We are experts at managing international supply chains by providing customized global logistics solutions.
Our comprehensive list of services can help you achieve supply chain visibility and effectively eliminate uncertainties. Among them is our customized customer micro-site that allows you to access detailed shipment analytics, track shipments and request comprehensive quotes and reports. Request a custom quote today to find the best solution for your needs.
