When you think about visibility and tracking in your daily life, you might remember that $25 item you bought online and how you watched its movement across the country until it arrived at your doorstep.
The term “visibility” in a B2C environment usually means “tracking.”
In the B2B world, visibility is far more complicated. B2B visibility is really start-to-finish order visibility: from order placement, allocation/manufacturing, and warehousing through delivery and payment.
“Visibility” in a B2B environment means systematically interpreting and combining inter-enterprise data from many sources + artificial intelligence and workflow to react. It’s assessing the past, monitoring/reacting in the present and adjusting for the future. But getting visibility into the logistics flow has traditionally been either very expensive or produced limited results because:
These differences have made true TMS visibility extremely difficult and near impossible for any organization – except those with deep pocketbooks who can set up control tower projects that require lots of personnel and massive integration projects.
That’s changed.