Supply Chain Visibility in Business Networks

Summary
The implementation of supply chain visibility grows more important with outsourcing and the building of supply chain relationships in the extended network.

IT programs are not aligned to close the gap.

Making this happen quickly is essential for business continuity, corporate social responsibility, and the prevention of major supply chain outages.

The extended supply chain is too important to be connected primarily with spreadsheets, faxes and phone calls.

Research Overview:

• Objective: To understand and benchmark companies’ supply chain visibility in business relationships within their extended supply chains.
• Highlight: Companies want supply chain visibility and the gaps in current supply chain capabilities are large. While EDI is effective in moving transactional data, the business networks want new solutions for supply chain visibility.
• Survey Details: The research for this report was conducted from October 31, 2013 – January 20, 2014. It is based on an online survey among 78 manufacturers, retailers, distributors and third-party logistics providers who are in supply chain, business leadership or IT roles.