Global supply chains have grown increasingly complex, with products often containing components sourced from multiple countries and traveling through various facilities and logistics providers along the way. This complexity makes achieving true end-to-end visibility a significant challenge. However, supply chain visibility has become a top priority, with 95% of supply chain executives rating it as important or very important in a 2022 survey [1].
This 2600+ word article will provide an in-depth perspective on:
- The critical growing imperative of visibility
- How modern technologies and software overcome barriers
- A 6 factor framework for selecting visibility solutions
- Comprehensive analysis of top visibility software vendors
- Emerging trends, technologies, and use cases shaping the future
Gaining clear, unified visibility across global supply networks allows for data-driven decisions that optimize costs, enhance customer experience, build resilience and drive sustainability.
The Growing Imperative of Supply Chain Visibility
Industry disruptions ranging from natural disasters to trade wars to supply crunches have made resilient, agile supply chains an imperative. A 2022 McKinsey survey found severe increases in disruption frequency, severity and duration compared to 5 years ago [2]:
- 87% noted increasing frequency
- 83% noted increasing severity
- 80% saw longer lasting disruptions
The World Economic Forum similarly predicts supply chain disruptions could cost $4.6 trillion by 2026, a 42% increase over 2020 [3]. This volatility means supply chain visibility has rapidly evolved from a “nice-to-have” to an outright prerequisite for survival.
Visibility adoption driving rapid risk reduction
Tangible Benefits
End-to-end visibility confers calculated benefits spanning key metrics [4]:
17% boost in supply chain efficiency through elimination of bottlenecks and optimization of constraints
21% average reduction in supply chain costs via reduced inventory and expedited shipping
73% of companies see customer satisfaction gains through accuracy and proactivity
Beyond efficiency, cost and customer wins, visibility unlocks entirely new dimensions of value:
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Risk Mitigation – Simulate disruption scenarios and optimize responses. Reduce probability of delays, stockouts and losses. Visibility could have saved 56% of losses from the 2011 Thailand floods curbing Toyota output [5].
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Sustainability – Shipment route optimization, circular economy enablement and carbon footprint analytics support ESG goals. Companies with visibility are 2.4x more likely to successfully improve sustainability KPIs [6].
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Agility – Understand exact constraints during demand swings. Rapidly adapt sourcing, manufacturing, transport plans while quantifying tradeoffs.
The data shows compelling benefits, but manual approaches consistently fall short. Modern technology is the key to unlocking visibility’s immense potential.
Overcoming Core Visibility Challenges
Although 96% of supply chain leaders aim to expand visibility, just 4% have complete end-to-end integration today [7]. Attempts via manual data consolidation run into three primary barriers:
1. Data Fragmentation – Relevant supply chain data lives fragmented across ERP, WMS, TMS and other enterprise systems limiting accessibility and preventing holistic analysis.
2. Insights Gaps – With siloed data and manual analysis, organizations struggle to extract meaningful insights and trends. Future disruptions go undetected until problems arise.
3. Collaboration Limits – Communication and coordination across global partners is hugely challenging without a connective platform. Delayed responses lead to reactive decisions rather than alignment.
These barriers result in $1.3 trillion in annual supply chain losses as of 2018, a figure set to nearly double by 2023 according to Bain & Company analysis [8].
Supply chain barriers lead to ballooning losses
Without clear visibility, supply chains remain chaotic black boxes impossible to optimize and resistant to change efforts. The solution lies in connective digital infrastructure – next-generation supply chain visibility software.
The Solution – Modern Visibility Software
Purpose-built supply chain visibility software solutions overcome fragmentation, analytics and collaboration barriers through:
1. Centralized Data – Consolidate siloed data via seamless APIs and pre-built integrations with major enterprise systems like ERPs and WMSs. Expand inputs to include IoT, mobile and other signals. Establish “single source of truth”.
2. Advanced Analytics – Ingest unified data into a high-performance cloud analytics engine leveraging statistical modeling, machine learning and scenario simulation to extract otherwise hidden insights critical for planning.
3. Unified Platform – Share analytical insights via role-based dashboards. Foster communication and knowledge sharing across internal and external partners through collaboration tools integrated with data and analytics.
By connecting, structuring and collectively leveraging supply chain data for analysis-driven decisions, next-gen platforms unlock the power of end-to-end visibility – breaking down information barriers, multiplying insights, and enabling alignment.
Key Technologies Powering Next-Gen Supply Chain Visibility
Modern visibility platforms apply both incremental and step-change innovations in data, analytics, front-end UX and underlying infrastructure to transform visibility:
Blockchain – Shared tamper-proof ledgers create trusted critical tracking events datasets and verification of origins powering transparency initiatives. Adoption rising rapidly with 77% of shippers planning investment by 2023 [9].
IoT & Sensor Data – GPS, RFID, environmental sensors and more create exponential data growth with location, condition and chain of custody signals for fine-grained monitoring.
Digital Twins – Virtual models of facilities, inventories and shipments mirror real-world entities enabling simulation of disruptions and other scenario planning use cases.
AI & Advanced Analytics – Machine learning pattern detection, optimization algorithms and AI planning assistants provide both strategic foresight and guidance for everyday decisions.
Cloud & Scalability – Highly scalable cloud infrastructure manages surging data ingestion, storage and analytical workload requirements in cost-efficient, flexible manner.
Combining these leading-edge technologies multiplies the power and potential of visibility, enabling innovations from predictive disruption response to prescriptive shipments routing optimization and beyond.
6 Key Factors in Selecting Visibility Software
However, supply chain visibility solutions differ widely in their technical capabilities and alignment to business needs. Choosing the right platform involves careful consideration across six factors:
1. Customization – Seek highly configurable solutions allowing easy personalized adjustment of data models, workflows, analytics, alerts and user interfaces to close feature gaps.
2. Integration – Require robust connectivity capabilities and libraries of pre-built integrations to unify data across major enterprise systems like ERPs, WMSs, and TMSs.
3. Company & Solution Maturity – Validate software vendor stability through factors like years in business, total funding and number of customers. Also examine depth of supply chain focus.
4. Solution Breadth – Does the platform focus specifically on visibility challenges or offer a wider range of supply chain functionality? Prioritize capabilities matching top needs.
5. Industry & Process Fit – Opt for industry-specialized visibility tuned to requirements – compliance in high-tech, quality in food & beverage, batch tracing in chemicals – and seamlessly integrate into operational flows.
6. Customer Support & Services – Given complexity, assess post-purchase training, implementation assistance, responsive technical troubleshooting and user-driven feature enhancement availability.
Balancing these critical factors tailored to business objectives, current technical landscape and problem areas leads to maximum value realization. With an optimized visibility technology foundation, supply chain leaders gain infrastructure to enable transformative capabilities.
Analysis of Leading Visibility Software Vendors
Many platforms promise improved visibility, but which best fits your needs? This section compares solutions across key evaluation criteria:
1. Customization – Low-code, no-code or pre-configured? Enables personalized workflows.
2. Integration – Number of out-of-box connectors to major enterprise systems.
3. Company Scale – Employee count as proxy for maturity and stability.
project44
project44 is a rapidly emerging visibility leader combining real-time tracking, analytics and collaborative workflows via 1000+ pre-built carrier and software EDI connections. Their 500+ employees offer extensive domain expertise. Highly configurable “chain integration” technology bridges data gaps. $420 million in funding adds growth stability. Industry solutions cater offerings, with recent tailwinds from COVID vaccine visibility needs.
Tive
Backed by $54 million in funding, Tive provides hyper-granular supply chain visibility by leveraging sensor data and an insights-focused approach. Their lightweight, durable trackers with cellular connectivity offer product monitoring without infrastructure requirements. 120 employees develop Tive’s software cold chain visibility and loss prevention capabilities applying principles of actionable insights. Pre-built integrations ingest sensor telemetry into enterprise systems to trigger workflows. Complies with industry regulations (DSCSA, EU FMD).
FourKites
One of the largest pureplay visibility specialists, FourKites’ 1000+ employees serve Fortune 100 companies like Coca-Cola and Walmart to mid-market brands through real-time shipment tracking software. Supporting 3 million loads per week across 2 million vehicles, FourKites automatically ingests signals from telematics and hardware systems in addition to TMS and WMS data via APIs and EDI. Configurable dashboards deliver insights and workflow triggers. $300 million in funding cements stability.
Key Takeaways and Future Outlook
Visibility adoption continues accelerating as enterprise leaders recognize its risk mitigation and performance optimization power in turbulent times. Selecting tailored best-of-breed visibility software aligned to technical landscape and custom needs unlocks immense value. Consider customization options, embedded analytics, ease of integration with existing systems and specialty capabilities like predictive insights in procurement.
The visibility arena continues to evolve at breakneck speed:
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As global pressures escalate, analyst IDC predicts visibility spending will nearly triple 2018 levels reaching >$9B by 2025 [10]
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Supply chain complexity grows exponentially – the average company works with >75 offshore partners spanning 12+ tiers [11]
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Connectivity platforms enable collaborative visibility across entire ecosystems addressing risk
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Specialized solutions bring visibility into emerging domains like procurement, new predictive risk capabilities and emissions tracking for sustainability
With accelerating disruption frequency, rising uncertainty and ballooning costs of opacity, purpose-built supply chain visibility software delivers the urgent lens organizations need. The technology serves as infrastructure enabling data-driven resilience, efficiency and innovation as complexity continues scaling new heights.
