As global supply chains become increasingly complex over time, businesses are facing a constant pressure to deliver their products on-time at lower costs. Supply chains produce a large amount of data that can be analyzed better using reports, dashboards, and visualizations.
Data visualization for supply chains helps businesses make faster and more informed decisions, by helping companies identify potential risks, improve supply chain planning, optimize inventory management, and increase customer satisfaction.
5 Supply Chain Data Visualization Benefits
Reduce Costs
Data visualization can help you understand the needs of your customers better and develop a well-informed supply chain strategy. This can help prevent frequent customer complaints and the additional costs associated with them. Data visualization helps businesses optimize space utilization and reduce inventory management costs as you have complete visibility into the inventory and supplies available in your warehouse. Data visualization also helps you reduce obsolete inventory and eliminate wastage through accurate forecasting.
Gain Real-Time Visibility
Supply chain data visualization allows both employees and customers to see the data in real-time, even when the data is coming in from multiple systems. This improves visibility and provides up-to-date information to your supply chain team as well as your customers. You can quickly notify your customers regarding delayed orders and share instant information about the rescheduled delivery times.
Increase Efficiencies
Supply chains usually have separate systems for different functions like inventory management, supply chain planning and execution. Data visualization software for supply chains combines data from these different sources and presents it in a unified interface providing a single source of truth. Data is presented in an intuitive format so that supply chain analysts and customers have full visibility into order and shipping information. You can also easily compare costs of different suppliers and visualize its impact on your overall supply chain process.
Respond to Supply and Demand Changes
Supply chain managers can use data visualization to see all order, purchase, and delivery related information in a single platform making decision making faster and easier. You can reallocate resources in real-time based on any changes in supply and demand instead of wasting precious time in trying to combine data from multiple, disconnected systems into a spreadsheet to drill down and analyze.
Improve Inventory Management
You can visualize the current inventory levels and storage space in your warehouse in real-time and optimize it accordingly. You can quickly take action to get rid of excess inventory, replenish missing supplies, or reorganize your inventory to optimize space. This helps you save costs by ensuring optimal inventory levels and reduce the risk of tying up capital or damaging stock because it’s just sitting around in the warehouse. You can also improve customer satisfaction by reducing the time taken to procure items from your suppliers and deliver to your customers.
