Why is Supply Chain Visibility So Crucial For Businesses?

Your supply chain, the network of people and businesses that have to work together to produce services or products, has to function well to ensure you don’t lack inventory or disappoint your customers. But, supply chains aren’t always as transparent as they should be. Sometimes, information about production timelines or transportation can be delayed, leading to complications and confusion.

Improving transparency, particularly with digital technology, makes a difference and can help your company grow over the long term. When the supply chain is transparent, your business has a better view of what it takes to maintain your inventory, deliver goods, and mitigate the risk of delays or disruptions.

Why Supply Chain Visibility Is So Important for Your Business

Supply chain visibility is extremely important for your business. That may be why 55% of manufacturing-related businesses believe improving supply chain visibility is a top priority. Supply chain visibility:

Grants You Real-Time Information

With good supply chain visibility, you should see real-time updates on your supply chain. With today’s technology, such as digital tracking technology, you don’t need to collect information from disparate sources. Instead, you get it from a dashboard or tool that updates everything simultaneously.

Uncovers Risks That Affect Your Supply Chain

With a more visible supply chain, it’s simpler to see the risks that may affect it. For example, you may identify risks related to natural disasters or economic downturns, changes in trends, or inflation. Knowing those problems lets you tackle them before they happen, ensuring you can keep up with the competition.

Limits Risk

Once you identify risks through your supply chain management technology, you can take action to limit them. You may change the manufacturing partner, adjust quantities of products at different times of the year, or hire more transporters when you expect it to be busy, for example.

Reduces the Chances of Damage to Your Reputation

When you have a more visible supply chain, you reduce the risk of damaging your reputation. Knowing where products are and knowing when they’re available for your customers is key. With good transparency, you’ll be aware of anything that could affect a delivery date, so you can keep customers updated and happy with your service.

Supply Chain Management Laws: More Important Than Ever

Supply chain management laws are essential to ensuring supply chains are protected around the world. In the European Union (EU), a 2020 study discovered that businesses voluntarily identifying and taking care of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues weren’t doing enough to prevent or halt unsustainable practices or to protect those working within the supply chain. The EU, therefore, created legislation enforcing the need for due diligence by businesses. The EU isn’t the only part of the world that has done this. Norway, too, has implemented similar legislative practices.

Increasing the Visibility of Your Supply Chain

Now that you know the importance of having a transparent, visible supply chain, think about yours. If there are parts of the supply chain you can’t see clearly, you will want to do the following to improve visibility:

Map out the supply chain network.

To get started, you should map out your supply chain. By laying out the operation from start to finish, you will see areas that may bottleneck or cause disruptions. Having a comprehensive view of the supply chain will also show you if there are any improvements you could make to shipment visibility or other supply chain processes.

Be proactive when sharing updates.

Customers, vendors, transporters, and others you work with will appreciate good visibility during collaboration. When sharing updates, be proactive. Update early and often, as supply chains are interconnected and require clear communication to work effectively.

Communicate often with suppliers.

Good communication with your suppliers will help you stay updated on issues such as delayed transit or your own business status and needs. Provide and request feedback from your partners and suppliers to be sure you all work together as effectively as possible.

Offer to track shipments in real time.

Another helpful thing to do is to add tracking to your shipments. When you can see where shipments are in real-time, you can effectively eliminate gaps in supply chain visibility during transit.

Partner with an online shopping assistant.

Online shopping assistants know the current trends and what customers are looking for. To improve your supply chain processes, you also need to know what to order and how to prepare for up-and-coming trends in retail.

Gather customer feedback.

Feedback from your supply chain partners can give you insight into ways of becoming more efficient, but your customers are a great source of feedback, too. They can let you know if items aren’t in stock when they want them or if deliveries have been delayed.

Improve collaboration with suppliers and partners.

Finally, focus on improving your collaborative efforts with suppliers, partners, and competitors. Talk to partners and suppliers about your current supply chain processes and if communications could be improved through digital or other means. For example, you may see better efficiency with daily communications with the warehouse or a digital network that gives real-time updates.

5 Key Technologies That Enable Supply Chain Visibility

With better supply chain visibility, you avoid slowdowns, delays, and damage to your business’s reputation. Some key technologies that can help include:

1. The Internet of Things (IoT)

IoT devices provide real-time data and tracking by keeping embedded sensors and devices connected across the distribution network. Using geo-location data, it’s possible to track inventory, shipments, and more at any time.

2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have created an opportunity for predictive analytics for demand forecasting to rapidly improve supply chain management. With predictive analytics, it’s possible to analyze internal data, such as your business’s sales forecasts, with external content, including website traffic, weather data, or even market trends. By using these pieces of data, artificial intelligence can assist with risk management by identifying the status of your supply chain today and what it might look like next month, in the next quarter, or even a year from now based on historical data.

3. Blockchain

Ensuring transparency and traceability in transactions is a key element of blockchain technology. Blockchain is still a new, emerging technology, but as a decentralized option, it is completely tamper-proof. Today, it’s possible to use blockchain technology to create transparent transaction records that cannot be altered or manipulated.

4. Cloud Computing

With cloud computing, you get to centralize data management and improve accessibility. Cloud computing takes all your resources into the cloud, ensuring the data is available anywhere with internet access. A cloud computing infrastructure also uses less power and can technically be expanded infinitely, so your company can add as much data to the cloud as needed.

5. Advanced Analytics and Big Data

Thanks to artificial intelligence, it’s easier than ever to harness large datasets to get a deeper look into the supply chain and your logistics challenges. With advanced analytics, you get more accurate performance metrics to ensure your business is running as effectively as possible.

Improve Communication With Podium

Communication is one of the key elements to making your supply chain run smoothly. To avoid disruptions, inventory shortages, and other logistical nightmares, you must manage your supply chain and maintain a high level of transparency.

Podium can help. With its suite of lead management and communication tools, Podium keeps you connected with feedback you can use to make the most of your small business. Ready to see how an AI-powered platform could help you grow your business? Watch a demo.