From ‘Visibility’ To ‘Control’: The Maturity Model Most Logistics Teams Skip

Most logistics businesses today consider progress to be knowing where their shipments are. The control towers are executed, and data is made visible. Eventually, the teams start feeling operational. However, visibility is a milestone, and not maturity.

Integrating the logistics control tower maturity model is a key change. Many businesses tend to overlook it. It is all about passive monitoring to active decision-making. The information is often well-documented.

A survey found that 56% of supply chain and logistics leaders support the use of maturity models. They see these models as a way to assess their skills. They used the SCOR model. Many businesses stall visibility, often missing out on gaining control and improving performance. Let’s explore some areas where the logistics control tower maturity model is crucial.

Supply Chain Control Tower

The logistics control tower maturity model is a central platform. It provides businesses with real-time data, analytics, and actionable insights into their supply chain. The control tower design draws on multiple data sources. It gives a clear view of operations. This helps businesses in numerous ways, such as the following:

• Predict and mitigate supply chain risks and disruptions.
• Foster supply chain optimization using data-driven decisions.
• Increase the ability to adapt to market changes.
• Boost logistics decision automation to reduce manual errors and improve efficiency.

Growth of Supply Chain Architecture

The global supply chain control tower market is set to hit $20 billion by 2030. The CAGR is expected to be around 13.12%. Many businesses still rely on control towers that react rather than proactively manage. This is a significant investment.

Traditional control towers can show what’s happening, but they can’t measure the impact. In logistics, it will provide information, but visibility may not be enough. So, when you get the alert, the shipments will be late, and costs will go up. The results? Unsatisfied customers.

It’s time to integrate an exception-driven logistics strategy to foster growth. This time, the industry doesn’t need evolution; it needs improvements. Logistics decision automation can be the new key to thinking, predicting, and acting. It’s the key foundations that need growth.

Supply Chain Visibility vs Control: Why Most Control Towers Fail?

Supply chain visibility vs control debate has been an ongoing one. They help businesses understand how they use their data. Real-time logistics visibility gives you ETAs. It also provides alerts and live shipment status. Data sharing can cause firefighting. Responses are reactive. They are not coordinated.

Control occurs when insights turn into clear decisions. These decisions shape workflows and trigger automated actions in warehouses, carriers, and partners. Industry research shows a significant impact through these gaps. Using the right control tower architecture solution can help increase financial gains.

A study by Accenture shows that a good logistics control tower strategy helps businesses. It can:

• Increase the revenue by as much as 1%
• Reduce the logistics costs by 3-5%
• Enhance labour efficiency by 10-20%

The mature logistics control tower strategy will efficiently resolve exceptions before escalation. It usually depends on various aspects like:

• Scenario planning
• Predictive analytics
• Decision governance

If not integrated well, control towers can lead to costly monitoring issues. While it’s rich in data, the operational impact will be less.

The Hidden Maturity Gap Between Data and Decisions in Supply Chain

Proactive supply chain management is crucial for business growth. It drives significant revenue. The organization should collect extensive data and use it to make informed decisions. The gap between data and decisions often leads to data-rich but information-poor decisions.

Key challenges that create a gap between data and decisions in the supply chain include:

• Data fragmentation: For easy logistics decision automation, the data must be unified. Usually, the collected data is fragmented across different systems. This affects the real-time logistics visibility.
• Missing on information: Dashboards and reports often highlight what’s easy to measure. They miss the more insightful data. A solid logistics control tower maturity model is key to achieving real results.
• Data quality and timelines: Bad data can lead to weak decisions and confusion. Inaccurate or incomplete data can lead to flawed decisions and insights.

The Maturity Stage Most Logistics Teams Skip

Most logistics teams skip decision governance despite having data visibility. This is a crucial stage where the information regarding shipments, orders and exceptions are streamlined in the single dashboards. It’s in this stage that every information is visible. However, sometimes the maturity model stalls here.

Decision governance is also a key factor that is often missed. The insights are assigned ownership and prioritized for business impact and then translated into the standardized actions. If the alerts aren’t actionable, the responses will be manual. Through visibility, businesses get an understanding of what is wrong and decision governance helps to determine who needs to act, how fast and when. Oftentimes, the control towers fail because decisions aren’t managed properly.

Why Do Businesses Skip Decision Governance Stage?

The organizational silos are one of the key reasons why businesses skip decision governance. In this case, the teams have data but not ownership for the outcomes. A lot of teams are skeptical of automation which delays the rule-based execution. Lack of ownership creates problems that can’t be resolved. This further leads to misaligned KPIs which affects decision quality. Therefore, the teams can monitor the problems but not resolve them systematically.

Why Do Businesses Need a Control Tower?

Integrating a logistics control tower strategy has become a basic necessity for businesses. Globally, companies using supply chain control towers have reported:

• Reduction in lead times by 25-40%.
• Increase in forecast accuracy by 15-30%.

Therefore, integrating control towers can help businesses in numerous ways. This includes:

• Increased agility: The logistics control tower maturity model uses real-time data. It quickly responds to changes in demand, bottlenecks, and supply shortages. This agility is highly crucial to maintaining resilience across volatile markets.
• Higher visibility: The centralized supply chain control tower provides real-time logistics visibility. It tracks production and delivery. The transparency across the schedule helps to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies. So, you can spot the problem early and start working on a solution.
• Predictive insights: AI helps supply chains. Control towers find disruptions. It helps identify demand spikes and supplier delays. This leads to better preventive actions. Proper logistics digital maturity helps to prevent interruptions and lower downtime.
• Cost reduction: Businesses must first optimize logistics, manage inventory, and procurement. Streamlining all these processes can help to lower operational supply chain costs. AI-driven processes can reduce transport costs. They also minimize the risk of stockouts and excess inventory.

What Do Logistics Control Towers Lack?

The integration of control towers can help with real-time logistics visibility. However, generating alerts may not be effective; there must also be proper outcomes. Thus, a proper logistics digital maturity model becomes the differentiator. At lower levels, alerts help with delays, exceptions, and risks. The planners will further have to investigate, coordinate, and decide.

Higher-maturity-level alerts use automated decision rules. They include cross-functional orchestration. Predefined workflows are also part of the system. Cross-functional orchestration is crucial for customer service, warehouses, and carriers. Often, the control tower has data, but it lacks structured, actionable insights.

The logistics control tower maturity model links alerts to ownership. It also drives system execution and sets up escalation paths. Without a proper layer, control towers are just monitoring tools.

With a solid layer and logistics control tower strategy, insights can lead to real impact. Therefore, it is a sign of true progression across logistics digital maturity.

Control is More Than Just Logistics Decision Automation

More automation in the logistics control tower maturity model can help. But it’s not the only solution. As a business, it is common to automate tasks such as

• Auto-assigning carriers
• Auto-escalating delays

If automation isn’t clubbed with accountability, it will create confusion. In the supply chain, control means having clear ownership of decisions at the right level. Businesses can create a strong logistics control tower strategy. They should assign a key owner to each part. Every missed pickup, failed delivery attempt, or SLA breach needs a responsible person.

There must be a team or role responsible for assessing, resolving, and accepting the impact. Logistics decision automation should help with choices. It shouldn’t replace them. Many businesses lack it because they can’t automate at the right level. Companies can automate tasks, but the team should address the fragmented parts of the process. Control must ensure that all tasks are completed in a closed loop.

If accountability across businesses is properly layered, automation will improve. Exception-driven logistics will support better decision-making, not just generate alerts. There will be proper measurement of SLAs and cost optimization.

How Should the Logistics Control Tower Model Maturity Function Be?

Here’s an overview of how the logistics control maturity model functions:

• Basic visibility: Data is divided into separate systems. This includes TMS, WMS, and carrier systems. The teams can track orders and shipments. However, in some cases, the tracking time updates are delayed.
• Unified monitoring: The control tower consolidates shipments, orders, and exceptions into a single view. The visibility will improve, but the action will eventually be reactive and manual.
• Contextual awareness: Events are often considered in the context of the business. This revolves around customer priority, SLA risk, and cost impact. Teams learn why and how things happen under the contextual awareness aspect.
• Operational costs: Clear ownership is highly crucial in business. Every key event should have clear ownership. The right decision will be clearly defined. This helps teams act quickly if there are delays or delivery failures.
• Predictive and Preventive Control: The control tower uses patterns and past data to spot risks. The issues are eventually resolved through proactive supply chain management.

How Does Supply Chain Control Towers Function?

Supply chain control towers provide real-time visibility into logistics. This is their actual value. Control towers help businesses grow. They use advanced technologies. They also combine data from different sources.

A logistics control tower maturity model can help organizations in many ways. These include:

• Operational Cost: Operational costs are significantly reduced through proactive supply chain management. It streamlined processes such as warehousing, inventory, and transportation for better management.
• Risk mitigation: Using a logistics control tower strategy reduces supply chain disruptions. This helps save millions in revenue. It also prevents penalties and protects the brand’s reputation.
• Labor efficiency: Automating logistics decisions helps cut errors. This can boost labor productivity. This helps overcome any additional costs caused by errors.
• Scalability and flexibility: Supply chain control towers boost scalability and flexibility. They enable businesses to grow faster and expand globally. Saving on operational costs can increase business profits over time.

Using a supply chain control tower can strengthen the supply chain. It helps improve resilience. It also plays a key role in reducing costs across the supply chain operations. Automation throughout the process helps boost visibility through data-driven decision-making. Furthermore, businesses can help to drive efficiency and agility.

The Future of Supply Chain Tower

Proactive supply chain management and self-learning will become fully interconnected. The control tower architecture will shift from just monitoring tools to predicting disruptions. It will also optimize routes and manage supply chains in real-time.

Some of the key things that the future holds for the supply chain control tower and freight forwarding include:

• Autonomous Decision Making: Logistics digital maturity helps reroute shipments. It optimizes sourcing. It also fixes bottlenecks. The integration of AI-powered systems won’t require human intervention.
• Hyperautomation and IoT integration: Sensors and robots will streamline the process. They will help it run smoothly. This helps deliver faster results and actions.
• Digital Twins: Advanced simulations are incredibly crucial for businesses. It helps the organizations test different scenarios. Real-time logistics visibility helps boost supply chain resilience.
• Sustainability and ESG Compliance: The control towers will monitor carbon footprints. They will regularly track waste reduction and ethical sourcing. This contributes significantly to improving the sustainability and ESG Compliance.

Conclusion

You must integrate a logistics control tower maturity model into your business. It’s essential, not optional. Proper integration plays a key role in meeting operational excellence and resilience. The successful integration of supply chain control towers requires careful planning and strategy.

Businesses need to know their specific needs. They should integrate control towers. This will boost visibility, agility, and decision-making. If you want to transform your supply chain category, consider partnering with Intech. Gain real-time control of dispatch, billing, and compliance with Intech. Scale your business growth easily.

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