End-to-end visibility in the supply chain

Supply chain flexibility has become risen to be among the top priorities for leading companies the last year. The reason why is not hard to guess, Covid-19 has proven that companies with a flexible and agile supply chain can faster react to disruptions in the supply chain and furthermore take better, more informed decisions in the wake of these.

But to be able to create a flexible supply chain companies must create a strong foundation of real-time information throughout the supply chain. What you need is end-to-end visibility. End-to-end visibility means receiving information and being knowledgeable of every step of your supply chain. The crux is that supply chains, in most cases, include several different companies, from manufacturers and suppliers to customers and consumers. All who need to collaborate and share data from their processes.

The complexity and recourse requirement of collecting data from every tier of the supply chain proves a challenge. Data valuable in an end-to-end supply chain most often exists to a large extent but are “siloed” and historically considered as proprietary, and therefore isolated. Furthermore, companies may have concerns over sharing potentially competitive information as well as having different definitions of what constitutes transparency. Finally, even when data is reliably shared and collected, the accuracy of the information must still be validated.

Nevertheless, the value of end-to-end visibility cannot be ignored by leading supply chain companies. Modern-day supply chains are complex webs of interconnected companies, global suppliers, a myriad of sites and sometimes thousands of different articles. The option to constrict your visibility to within your four walls or towards just a few selected suppliers is becoming more and more untenable. The need for real time visibility covering your whole supplier base is here to stay.

Read more about End-to-End visibility here