COVER STORY What does real-time visibility mean to you as a supply chain professional? In simple English, real-time visibility essentially means live information that allows an organization to monitor the movement of goods, information, and their assets. It is also called ‘facts on the ground’. It provides the organization an ability to understand what is happening on the ground, under what conditions, and the occurrence of any issues. It enables the leaders to act/rectify in case of a problem or by ascertaining the situation and finding the best solution in time, which in turn helps in saving costs, duplications and eventually enhancing a seamless uninterrupted customer experience.
Why is it called the ‘holy grail’ of supply chain? Real-time visibility is the ‘holy grail’ of an organization and not just supply chain function. It is an outcome of an organization’s process management ability to be integrated & connected and the ability to track events related to Capital Assets or Customers; either in a linear manner or in an event-based manner. It refers to the ability that an organization must have or develop over a period to track & trace, in real-time, the movement of goods/ packages/ information right from their suppliers’ network to their manufacturers’ network to the warehouses and local DC enroute to the end customer where the product is finally consumed. An organization can develop a ‘real-time live’ visibility like an Ocean Tracker or can choose to have visibility, which is more triggered based on important events in the end-to-end value networks.
How do leaders’ go about achieving this ‘holy grail’? It always about leadership right!! It is cultivated & nurtured over a period of time. It is a combination of years of efforts and strong mindsets to remain integrated and connected in as many small siloes and structures that one can create. You cannot achieve this state of ‘connectedness’ by luck, you need to make a conscious effort every time you think of developing a new process or decide to make investments in multi-echelon
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enterprise business architectures. Visibility may (or may not be) necessarily be uppermost in our minds when we set about developing building blocks of our value networks. In the last 5 – 10 years, most of the software applications built for efficiency, customer engagement, integration do provide this as ‘given’ at an incremental cost.
What are the impacts that an organization would face due to lack of visibility in their network? Great question… An organization, which does not have proper visibility will work double or triple harder to satisfy their customers v/s an organization, which has proper tools & processes in place to make visibility routinely available across their enterprise. Unable to keep up with their competitors, the lack of real-time visibility will lead to inefficiencies in different areas of the business. Let us look at top 5 challenges amidst many: • Lack of Customer Loyalty: Modern customers demand end-toend visibility and if an organization (supplier) is not able to provide the same, they will lose their customers regularly. • Incorrect Benchmarking or KPIs: Without real-time visibility and control, inaccuracies would creep in planning and monitoring the supply chain process, which would ultimately lead to customer satisfaction issues, wastage (duplication) of resources and an ultimate loss of revenue. • Loss of customer trust: Lack of real-time visibility leads to confusion and chaos as it is almost impossible for an organization to track & trace deliveries, assets and can not provide a proper ATP (available to promise). If this situation is not corrected in shorter course of time, it is just a matter of time that many customers would shift to the next best alternative in the market. • Incremental cost adders: Lack of visibility can lead to discrepancies & increase the chances of theft and damage of goods. The end result is decreased productivity and excessive overhead costs that will bite the organization, indirectly setting it on a different cost saving spin. • Increasing risk, non-compliance:
Sanjay Desai, Co-founder & Regional Director, Humana International (S) Pte. Ltd. Lack of accurate real-time data and insights about your assets will increase the risk of accidents, exposure at border checks and customs clearances. Mitigating risks at the right time leads to higher productivity, enhanced reliability and more transparency.
How do you foresee the shape of things to come? My strong belief is, Visibility is a (mixed) outcome of an organization’s process management capabilities, customer focused approach, and the key investment decisions that the management makes on a day-to-day basis. As a leader, you need an unstinted desire to achieve visibility. Usually, visibility is taken for granted, either you have it (may be in a tainted form) or you do not have it. Leaders at different levels of the organization, have differentiated KPIs / business objectives to achieve and these can be so pervasive and overpowering that one may lose the sight of ‘visibility’ being as important or an enabler to achieve some of the larger goals in front of us. As Peter Drucker says, “Whatever you track improves” And the best part is. You need the visibility and processes to ‘TRACK’ anything. It is a Catch-22 situation, Isn’t it!
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