How To Know If You Have Complete Supply Chain Visibility Solution?

As the global pandemic environment continues to clear, more and more companies are realizing that supply chain visibility is no longer a ‘nice to have,’ it’s a necessity.

Unfortunately many of these companies falsely believe they have complete visibility into their supply chain when it couldn’t be further from the truth. 

How do we know? Well, in talking with customers and prospects we’ve discovered they have major gaps in their ERPs and other home-grown systems of record –and it’s negatively affecting customer satisfaction and their bottom line.

It’s fair to suspect that your organization may be in the same boat. To help shine a light on some of these issues, let’s take a look at some of the supply chain pain points you may be experiencing, how to know if you have them, and what you can do to solve them. 

You Can’t Quickly Search & Find Critical EDI Documents

How can you have full visibility if you can’t find the information you need, when you need it? Companies we’ve spoken to refer to this as the “black hole.” If you’re having trouble finding and understanding inbound or outbound documents to trading partners you definitely lack supply chain visibility. Full visibility will enable you to quickly enter an order or document number and instantly see all of the associated documents presented in an easy to read format. It should also empower non-technical users to easily view these documents, see their current status, and identify important issues down to the order line item level.

You Don’t Have a Way to See All of the Documents in an Order

If you’re constantly in the dark in terms of knowing if an order has been changed (e.g. split into multiple shipments), identifying shortages before an order arrives, or tracking an order in real-time–then you don’t have supply chain visibility. 

Having the ability to achieve three- and four-way document matching is critical to gaining full visibility. You need to be able to correlate all orders with acceptances, ASNs, receiving, and the corresponding invoice to ensure what was ordered is what was received—before paying an invoice. This will help you  increase accuracy, save money, and maintain accurate records.

You Lack a Fast, Custom Dashboard & Report-Building Tool

If it takes you hours to build or format a custom report or dashboard based on your supply chain data–that’s definitely not conducive to full visibility. For example, you should be able to quickly build a report to view “all purchase orders that haven’t been functionally acknowledged in the last three days.” If your current system doesn’t allow you to drill down like that to extract insights, you don’t have the visibility you think you do. 

You should also have a way to paint a picture with your data through dynamic charts and graphs so you can learn how it impacts your bottom line and also view past performance, patterns, and future opportunities. Dashboards are also useful for creating vendor scorecards so you can save money by working with your highest performing, lowest cost vendors more often and with the weaker ones to improve their performance.

You Don’t Have a Way to Create Proactive Exceptions & Receive Alerts on Document Errors

Are you surprised when you learn that a document failed to process, wasn’t received on time, or values are missing? Discovering changes or discrepancies within your documents shouldn’t be stressful. If you’re not able to create rules (exceptions) to proactively monitor for and receive notifications on irregularities within your documents based on the criteria you set–then you’re lacking visibility. Those notifications should be delivered in-app and via email to ensure complete transparency. The exceptions themselves should allow you to drill down and view the order and associated documents. By having proactive alerts, you can promote issue accountability and nip those discrepancies in the bud before they turn into major headaches.

Now that you see where your supply chain visibility gaps are—how do you fill them?

If you’re still struggling to achieve any of the above, then it may be time to invest in a platform that can help. Luckily for you, there’s Syncrofy. 

Syncrofy is a powerful data visibility platform that helps break down barriers across your supply chain so you can see clearly and be proactive when it comes to your orders and shipments. It helps you prioritize challenges and solve problems before they occur—empowering you to eliminate costly fines and fees, prevent late payments and late shipments, and realize revenue faster.

Syncrofy doesn’t replace your ERP or other home-grown system of record but exists rather to fill in the gaps of those systems by providing real-time, self-service access to critical supply chain data so you can make quick, informed decisions on how to run your business. 

After implementing Syncrofy, customers are seeing savings in several areas with an average of:

• 55% reduction in the time spent finding information and researching issues
• 30% reduction in chargebacks with notifications, rules, and compliance management capabilities
• 20% reduction in procurement costs with fill-rate info, alerts, and vendor scorecards

Want to know more?

We’re experts in helping companies just like yours respond to supply chain execution problems every day. Learn how Syncrofy can get you the visibility you need to save money, increase customer satisfaction, and optimize your supply chain. Click here to watch our short video to learn more and see Syncrofy in action!

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