Best Supply Chain Visibility Software
Featured Supply Chain Visibility Software At A Glance
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Learn More About Supply Chain Visibility Software
What is Supply Chain Visibility Software?
Supply chain visibility software acts as an information hub for all stakeholders involved in supply chain planning and execution. Supply chain visibility provides connectivity for users. Supply chain connectivity is the IT infrastructure that allows supply chain businesses to communicate with suppliers, contractors, manufacturers, and clients. Secondly, supply chain visibility software helps provide interoperability, this allows different software platforms to exchange information across multiple business units and organizations. Third, supply chain visibility provides visual data and information. This might come in the form of a dashboard, or other analytical display, that enables users to ascertain key information. Supply chain visibility software provides users a comprehensive overview of key information regarding the status of shipments and other logistics operations.
Key Benefits of Supply Chain Visibility Software
- Provide real-time updates on supply chain performance, allowing users to redirect supply chain efforts
- Allow users to efficiently communicate key updates to stakeholders
- Give users real-time inventory updates
Why Use Supply Chain Visibility Software?
Increasingly, supply chain companies are outsourcing various functions of their business. For example, a manufacturer may operate in Asia, while a distributor operates in the United States. Due to an increase in outsourcing, it’s becoming more difficult for businesses to keep track of their own supply chain and maintain productive communication among their clients. Supply chain visibility software mitigates this issue by providing a platform for supply chain businesses to communicate key information to their clients.
Who Uses Supply Chain Visibility Software?
Manufacturers — Since manufacturers often operate across different supply chain channels, supply chain visibility software is a crucial tool to accurately track shipments’ movements.
Retailers — Retailers working with manufacturers improve their supply chain communication when they implement supply chain visibility software into their daily operations. It improves communication with manufacturers and customers since retailers can easily track shipments and communicate arrival times to customers with supply chain visibility software.
Supply chain managers — Supply chain managers must orchestrate the movement of goods between suppliers and manufacturers. It’s important for supply chain managers to have access to supply chain visibility tools that enable them to track shipments and raw materials to glean actionable insights.
Supply Chain Visibility Software Features
Inventory optimization — A core component of supply chain visibility solutions is real-time updates on stock and inventory held at internal and external manufacturing sites, as well as inventory currently in transit. Real-time updates on inventory allows businesses to plan when inventory must be replenished. This also enables companies to keep an eye on their inventory so they don’t overstock, significantly cutting costs.
Communication hub — Most supply chain visibility software provide tools that allow business partners to communicate, coordinate, and share information. Since manufacturers are often in different countries and time zones, this is an important feature so all parties can easily stay in contact and updated with each other.
Tracking — Supply chain visibility software often includes tools that track individual items and shipments. This allows businesses to accurately track where shipments are in the supply chain.
Analytics — Supply chain visibility software processes data from various channels with the supply chain to glean data patterns and predict future patterns based on that historical data. This allows logistics companies to plan a more efficient supply chain.
Alerts — If there are pressing issues in a company’s supply chain, users can set alerts that message their phones or automatically email them updates. Proactive alerts allow users to provide an immediate response to potential disruptions in their supply chain.
Potential Issues with Supply Chain Visibility Software
Security — Supply chain visibility software allows users to share a large amount of data with telematics devices and software. While this greatly improves communication between suppliers and manufacturers, it also exposes a large amount of sensitive information that is susceptible to cyber attacks. It’s important to choose a supply chain visibility solution that keeps data secure.
Compatibility — One of the pressing issues with supply chain visibility software is lack of compatibility between different systems. If two supply chain companies are using two incompatible supply chain visibility software, then there will be a major lack of communication between the companies. In the future, expect to see more companies add integrations for different products.
Adapting — While most supply chain visibility software is intuitive to use, many supply chain managers are still using outdated processes to share information, including phone calls, emails, and Excel documents. Because of this, new users may have trouble adapting to this software. To combat a learning curve, it’s important to choose a software provider with good informational support and training documentation.
