The supply chain is more than just a means of getting product from the manufacturer to the consumer; it is an undeniable way for a company to understand their customers in order to better serve them. The supply chain also helps to remove redundancies from your business, improve your overall efficiency and help save you money in the end.

That’s why supply chain visibility is so essential to businesses.

Many years ago, supply chain visibility was hard achieve, particularly on a global level, but in the digital age, seeing how product moves through all the stages has become significantly easier!

Yet, many companies don’t bother to keep tabs on their product.

Visibility could be the key to your success
Visibility, in the simplest terms, is knowing where your product is in the supply chain, how long it has been there, and when it moves at any given time. It is a full end-to-end view of the selling and shipping process.

It’s still a complicated process to grasp, as many supply chains are veritable mazes consisting of suppliers, warehouses, vendors and more. That’s why 3PL providers are using modern technology and other tools to make it easier than ever to track products from one end of the supply chain to the other.

While technology can help, understanding how to effectively utilize supply chain visibility requires a lot more analysis.

It’s more than just knowing where your product is
You can track your shipments, but do you truly understand the information that you are receiving from your partners?

Even if you have all of your trading partners on a single network, which boosts your total control and visibility, that doesn’t mean that you are effectively using the data that is presented to you in order to improve your overall processes.

The best course of action is threefold
In order to get the most out of your supply chain metrics, you should:

1) Understand the data: based on your key performance indicators and customers feedback, what are you looking to do with the data that you are collecting? Do you want to eliminate redundant processes? Improve others? Add additional services?
2) Invest in technology to help you and your partners: It’s important to trust your partners to provide you with the data that you need, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t invest in new technology that can help you collect more useful information.
3) Act on your data: based on the data you have collected, analyzed and learned, how can you identify areas where you can save on costs, time and/or resources?

Don’t settle for partial visibility
The supply chain remains a complex entity, and achieving the apex of transparency may seem daunting, but it is something that your company deserves to benefit from.

At King Solutions, we partner with people all across the entire supply chain to give our clients the absolute best logistics solutions on the market. Most importantly, we give you full transparency in the process. We make the supply chain work for you, so give us a call and lets get started on your company’s future.