End-to-end visibility is ideal for enhancing the customer experience, but it’s not always easy to achieve. Even when operations are connected, the financial aspects of the supply chain, including freight payment, often fall through the cracks.
End-to-end (E2E) refers to entire supply lifecycles for physical inventory and also includes important business functions like cash flow and transactions. Reducing risk and streamlining workflows can only be achieved through visibility, connection, and communication. When important elements in your supply chain go into a black hole for a portion of the logistics timeline, that can introduce inventory bottlenecks and overstock, poor resolution time, and eventually profit loss into the equation.
What does visibility for freight payment look like and why is it so important? Is it worth the effort to create more visibility?
End-to-end visibility in the supply chain means you have access to data across the entire supply chain in real-time to enable more accurate risk assessment, performance improvement, and decision making.
True E2E enables transparency at all stages of supply chain management from procurement through freight payment and delivery of finished goods to customers. This is made possible by monitoring each step closely, capturing related data, and condensing it into easy-to-read data management dashboards.
Visible supply chain management allows logistics professionals to make decisions using the best, most up-to-date information available. It can lead to improvements both in the short term for planning and troubleshooting shipments in motion, and in the long term for collecting data over time to build actionable analyses that will improve business procedures.
Complete E2E supply chain visibility will include all vital business functions:
The supply chain most often breaks down in the gaps between suppliers or at remote endpoints outside the scope of traditional logistics management. Modern shipping and logistics involve many moving parts, no small number of which are out of view at a given time.
Effective management requires careful planning to get the best prices with the least risk, and the more operations you can observe, the better you can anticipate bottlenecks, cost overages, and other snags. A visible supply chain — complete with data tracking and monitoring of finances and transactions — makes your business more agile in an uncertain marketplace. After all, you can’t manage what you can’t see.
A visible supply chain improves performance by delivering:
Clear, easy-to-track metrics — E2E supply chain software can spot gaps and noise in the supply chain, which allows you to anticipate problems and create connections to fix them before they become costly backups. Some software can also normalize metrics across suppliers, so you can easily make comparisons.
Adherence to best practices — Better visibility translates into improved adherence to freight audit and payment best practices and fewer bottlenecks. This makes it easier to track and maneuver through shortages and meet compliance directives.
Data collection and forecasting — Clear and concise data sets can be invaluable for a supply chain business. Full visibility into workflows allows for action to be taken, thanks to improved analysis, accurate financial reporting, and well-targeted operational KPIs.
Streamlined workflows — Transparency throughout the supply chain encourages more simplified processes and optimized time usage. For example, the ability to orchestrate activities across multiple suppliers enables higher productivity.
Market-responsive agility — Visibility creates more agility so you can see exactly what’s going on, then create contingency measures as needed.
Payment tracking — When you can track freight payment throughout the entire fulfillment process, you can keep track of costs and avoid overages as shipments change hands.
The end result is a better understanding of where freight is and how it moves throughout the supply chain.
A lot of attention is trained on end-to-end visibility as it relates to transportation. But one often-overlooked area that’s equally crucial to E2E visibility is freight payment and accuracy — even though it’s vitally important to your bottom line.
Most supply chain companies need better data quality and faster, more accurate tracking of cash flow. Automated systems allow for improved analysis in this space to help prevent common challenges of freight audit and payment.
What does this mean for logistics professionals?
Partner-to-partner connections — Have the tools needed to connect every partner and onboard any data source:
Cloud connections — Never worry about limited or missing connections between orders, shipments, and carriers.
Accurate KPI and cost tracking — Shorter order to cash cycles, decreased duplicates, improved invoicing accuracy, and a better rate of on-time payment (and perfect order fulfillment).
When you’re looking to create end-to-end visibility, financials like freight payment shouldn’t get left behind.
ChronosCloud introduces advanced AI into your supply chain financial management to help connect parts of your logistics lifecycle with mobile device apps that extend data all around the world. That way, you can improve E2E visibility to add accuracy, insight, and overall excellence to your cash flow management.
Create end-to-end visibility in your supply chain financials. Download our checklist, Common Freight Payment Challenges and How to Solve Them, or request a demo today.