Solid procurement planning involves end-to-end visibility into all activities along the process. Without visibility enabled within your supply chain, your shipments and orders are likely to become lost along the way, with nobody having any idea as to where the packages are at any point in the delivery process. It is a top goal for many logistics and supply chain professionals to improve the speed of deliveries as well as communication within your network or organization.
The Real Issues with a Lack of Visibility
A lack of visibility forces retailers to make predictions about their orders, and they will not be able to tell if they will receive their full order or receive only a fraction of it due to capacity issues, until the last minute when they receive orders. This becomes a massive problem for retailers, as they are expected to keep their shelves stocked to earn business.
Along with this, there are many other inefficiencies that can be avoided by using the right software technology. Some of these inefficiencies include a lack of flexibility when shipments and orders go wrong anywhere along the process, decreased customer satisfaction, delays and bottlenecks due to scheduling interruptions, wasted miles and fuel along with increased deadheading, adding to the carbon footprint, increased challenges during peak season, not being able to meet demand, and a higher rate of rejected freight delivery, especially for perishable food products.
Benefits of Increased Visibility and Its Impact on Procurement
Luckily, there are so many benefits to having more visibility in the procurement process. The major return on investment is improved costs and efficiency. With everyone in the supply chain being able to see all the procurement planning activities, this keeps everyone on the same page and saves massive amounts of time spent trying to figure out where orders are in the process, what amount of inventory is included in the order, shipment tracking, etc. Communication improves within your network and organization. Shippers, especially grocers and perishable food companies, can significantly decrease losses due to food items being spoilt or rotten, which all comes down to shipment management practices. Orders and shipment time can accelerate with the right visibility software to ensure deliveries are made on time.
How Collaborative TMS Can Help
If you want to streamline your communications, save major costs and time, and reduce overall stress within your network, you can look into a collaborative transportation management system to help improve your procurement processes and increase your organization’s productivity levels. With the supply chain landscape changing, visibility is becoming a need more than a want, and you can survive through this shift in supply chain management with the right platform at your fingertips. It is time to stop living off of predictions about your orders and inventory, and start working off of real analytical data to avoid undersupply, oversupply, and delayed shipments for an overall improvement in profits.
Zara Raza is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Turvo Inc., a cloud-based collaborative transportation management system to modernize the supply chain. Turvo helps 3PLs, freight brokers, and shippers improve and automate logistics and supply chain processes with a scalable TMS.
