Supply Chain Visibility (SCV) is the ability to track all the parts, components or products in transit from the manufacturer to the consumer. Its main objective is to improve and empower the Supply Chain by making this information easily accessible to all the stakeholders, including customers. This enables different Supply Chain components in an organization to gain real-time precise information about stock, orders and deliveries and their flow in the incoming and outgoing networks.
Supply Chain Visibility in commerce achieved by the internet and its ability to look at products and services from around the globe has been proven to be playing a key role in driving change in the present Supply Chains. Buyers can now monitor their orders easily which had prompted sharp development in the supply chains to keep up and improve their service levels.
When access to data is made easy, more information can be derived, which improves the ability to plan, plan costs, and boost efficiency. In addition to reducing costs associated with logistics, good supply chain visibility can also promote operational and project managers’ ability to strategize plans more effectively, further boosting revenues.
In case of successful visibility, it is a win-win situation; everyone tends to benefit from it. While visibility is an exciting idea, it may not be surprising to learn that it’s much easier imagined than put into action.
With so many products available, and so many disjoint supply chain partners, some of the other problems are expected to emerge. Since the successful implementation of Supply Chain Visibility is dependent on all involved parties, there is a lot of collaboration, investment, and planning that goes into the successful implementation of such a system.
Phases in the supply chain where visibility is important:
Reliable planning is an important factor in effective Supply Chain Management. This requires procurement forms that run easily. Since we cannot control exercises of our providers, for their continuous monitoring, straightforward procedures and compelling two-way data sharing is of utmost importance.
The key benefits of greater visibility in the procurement cycle are:
1.Reduction in Time spent on managing contract status communications
With proper visibility of contract details, all stakeholders can be allowed to monitor the detailed progression of the contract as it moves through the workflow. In turn, the contract manager has to spend less time communicating details to stakeholders.
2. Clarity of stakeholders who are working on the same projects to streamline workflow
When all the stakeholders are able to access documents related to the grant code or project, it enhances the overall workflow efficiency.
3. Better Insight into the budget
When invoices are submitted by suppliers, some employees might be unaware of what budget levels are available to pay for non-PO invoices. Providing employees a clear view of the budgets available to pay for services empowers all employees and benefits the complete budgeting process.
4. Make quicker and informed decisions
When spend visibility is a priority among procurement professionals, visibility across the procurement workflow (upstream and downstream) can provide significant value in taking decisions quicker and with more in hand information.
Customer satisfaction
If businesses don’t supply customers with the information they need, it is likely that they will find it somewhere else. The convenience of modern technology enables consumers to use personal computing devices to investigate a company in a fraction of seconds.
When a business doesn’t have the details consumers need to plan purchases, they will most likely switch to a competitor. If consumers need to stick to a particular company that isn’t forthcoming with supply chain data, they’ll search for news sources or online reviews. Forcing consumers to search and speculate doesn’t put them in the best frame of mind.
If a company enables complete visibility of its supply chain and warehouse management, it would share the important details with consumers. Modern customers get doubtful when they see empty shelves or labels that indicate the product is currently unavailable. When businesses can information in case of such blank spaces with insight into when the particular product would be available again, it keeps audiences informed and interested.
This way better visibility ensures better customer satisfaction.
Inventory visibility is a prerequisite to create an active and alert global supply chain network. With growing globalization and complexity of the chain supply networks, accurate inventory visibility has become a crucial factor.
The benefits of inventory visibility in Supply chain are:
1. Resolved unpredictable scenarios
The best way to avoid unpredictable scenarios is the ability to see everything. Knowing the trends of Inventory management, it gets simple and easy for businesses to predict and plan when such scenarios arise.
2. Enhanced just in time inventory strategies
Lack of visibility may lead to manual scheduling and tracking of shipments from node to node, and needless to say, it consumes a lots of time!
3. Prevented cost erosion
Inability to communicate accurate stock availability, the quantity of in-transit shipment, and failure to deliver the shipment on time will result in strained relationships between the vendor and the customer.
Supply Chain costs
Inability to communicate accurate stock availability, the quantity of in-transit shipment, and failure to deliver the shipment on time will result in strained relationships between the vendor and the customer.
A key aspect of supply chain visibility is straight forward information about on-going procedures. This sort of data makes it easy to all. This also improves the arrangement of transport limits and selection of models of vehicle by expense or lead time. This would in turn yield solid advantages like less unfilled runs and shorter hold up times. Visibility across working procedures likewise enables organizations to turn stock quicker by cross-docking and advance products receipt procedures to accessible assets. Improved traditions methodology can in turn enormously streamline taking care of yet such benefits such as, including high consistency of information.
In addition to operation visibility, cost straightforwardness over the whole inventory network is a basic factor in attracting investment funds. Hence, the individuals who look up to implement a streamlining methodology, with greater scope for visibility would definitely accomplish a reduction in costs.
Many companies do not recognize the risks they are facing mainly because things have only gone wrong in a small way, in a way that they could manage.They have the attitude of ‘if it’s not broken, then don’t think about making it better.’”
Even some large corporations who might already have a risk management strategy face many challenges.
So what should companies do? The first step is to map the supply chain and understand which suppliers (across multiple tiers) and components/materials are the most critical to your operations.
Because of mergers and acquisitions and other factors, businesses often find that “people within the same company are not managing risks [in a coordinated way], they are not talking to each other, they are not sharing information.” Simply put, as with other supply chain processes, functional silos hinder the effectiveness of risk management.
Hence, Visibility is key.
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