The Growing Emphasis on End-to-End Supply Chain Visibility

Many businesses struggle with supply chain operations simply because it involves so much monitoring and visibility. For even the simplest of businesses, the supply chain can be extremely lengthy and complex, involving many suppliers and steps. In order to manage one’s business properly, it’s completely necessary to see what is happening in the planning, sourcing, building, delivering, and returning stages.

Despite a growing movement towards investing in tech and qualified personnel, many businesses struggle to achieve end-to-end visibility across the supply chain in its entirety. There is clearly a need for it, but in a competitive global environment, it is difficult to respond as quickly as necessary to all supply chain events that could impact customer experience and profitability.

But what exactly is end-to-end supply chain visibility by definition? Why exactly is it so important, and how can one’s business focus more on excellent overall visibility? Let’s take a look.

What is end-to-end supply chain visibility?

End-to-end (also known as E2E) in supply chain management refers to the end-to-end process in the supply chain. It involves the process in its entirety, starting at the procurement of materials from suppliers and ending when the product reaches the customer. The process needs to be tracked with data logging and condition monitoring, and that collected data must be analysed.

In most instances, end-to-end supply chains will follow this formula:

Procurement and inventory management
Finance
Logistics and planning
Operations
Quality
Sales and customer service
When we bring visibility into the picture, E2E supply chain visibility is a necessity for businesses to communicate, solve problems, and provide service to partners and customers.

In addition to visibility, it is also important to understand supply chain collaboration, as it is the main way to gain visibility along your supply chain. Supply chain collaboration is the act of having a collaborative multi-tier supply chain planning and managing solution. For the sake of visibility, collaboration is a solution to getting more insight into the ordering process, inventory that is in motion or at rest, supply chain issues or risks, and stand-alone supply chain analytics. Collaboration also aids in supply chain event management. To put it simply, collaboration among the necessary teams, warehouses, suppliers, and stakeholders is necessary to have better visibility of your supply chain.