Survey: 88% of Companies Have Experienced Shipping Delays & Other Supply Chain Revelations

We’ve all experienced the major impact on our supermarkets and retail stores during the recent global pandemic. Not only has it highlighted the need for businesses to have greater visibility into their supply chain, but it’s also raised concerns about them having full visibility into their suppliers and suppliers of suppliers.

GET THIS: according to a recent study, only 6% of companies have full visibility into their supply chain. 6%! That’s a staggering number considering how critical the supply chain is to the health of a business.

Taking a deeper dive into the specific issues facing organizations, we reached out to over 30 companies (suppliers, distributors, and retailers) to better understand the challenges they’ve been facing over the last year-plus. Here’s what we discovered: 

Short-shipments are a big problem. When it comes to short-shipments, 35% say that at least ¼ of their orders have been short-shipped over the past six months. 29% have experienced it with up to 1/10 of their orders while 14% have had zero short-shipments—and those figures were nearly identical when it came to order delays. Short-shipments are more common when suppliers send orders in multiple shipments (due to low inventory) but fail to notify the retailer.

It’s interesting to note however that over 40% of the companies we surveyed said they did not raise prices as a result of those challenges—while 14% raised prices by 3-5%.

In the dark about chargebacks. In a shocking discovery, we learned that nearly 45% of the organizations surveyed had NO idea how much they spend on supply chain chargebacks, fines, and fees. The sad truth is that 2% of manufacturers’ and distributors’ top line revenue goes to pay for chargebacks. It’s a stunning reality that begins with a lack of visibility into the supply chain, flaws in the transaction process, and no real way to identify and fix the root cause of late or inaccurate shipments.

Additionally, over 65% said the CFO or COO are the roles who have visibility into the fines and chargebacks they pay.

Real-time visibility is critical for lead times/shipping delays. According to the survey results, 82% said having real-time visibility into lead times is “very important” and over 80% said the same for shipping delays. Other issues that were considered critical for real-time visibility were transit visibility (60%) and communication/collaboration with trading partners (60%). Conversely, 54% of the companies said as of today they have “limited visibility” into transit visibility and 43% have “limited visibility” into shipping delays.

Time wasted dealing with order issues. A staggering ¼ of the companies we surveyed said they spent 15 hours a week searching, verifying, documenting and/or communicating on order and shipment issues and questions. Even more alarming, over 20% say they spend 20-40 hours per week dealing with those same issues. 

It’s no secret that the pandemic has put a strain on supply chains and has hindered the ability for organizations to collaborate and gain visibility into their orders and shipments. However, this survey has illustrated that it may be worse than we imagined. 

With the right software in place, we believe you can eliminate many of these issues and facilitate a healthier, more collaborative supply chain. 

Meet Syncrofy! Designed with non-technical users in mind, Syncrofy provides full supply chain visibility and actionable insights from day one—no need to configure, map, or develop a specialized data warehouse. It calculates fill rate and lead time for both orders and shipments and reconciles invoices against POs, shipment documentation, and receipts to identify quantity and price discrepancies.

What else is Syncrofy capable of? To learn how it can help you take back control over your supply chain, click here.