The supply chain is perhaps the most complicated industry since it includes so many phases and operations that managing every single one is next to impossible. Several businesses outsource each operation to a third-party partner, including suppliers of raw materials, manufacturing of products, packaging and distributing finished goods, and delivery of orders to the end customers. This is just an overview of the supply chain. If we consider it in-depth, there will be more than 20 phases.
Since it is such a long cycle, transparency and visibility play a crucial role. Failure to maintain them at optimal levels can be more challenging for any supply chain business, despite using technologies like sustainable AI-based reporting or supply chain software. Keeping this in mind, we have explained a couple of consequences the business can face if there is a lack of transparency and visibility.
Lack of insights into business performance
First, it will become difficult for the supply chain business to gain insights into the key performance metrics. For instance, it won’t know whether the product quality is up to the mark. Similarly, without transparency and visibility, the business won’t know about its customers’ expectations and changing behaviors. Even after implementing the supply chain software, the lack of transparency and visibility will cause problems in maintaining and optimizing performance and productivity.
No knowledge about partners
Another important factor that businesses in the supply chain industry should know is that maintaining visibility will help them to know their partners and suppliers in a better way. Without complete knowledge about them, it wouldn’t be possible to work collaboratively or maintain the channels and communication. So, every business should work on supply chain visibility and transparency from the beginning.
Irregular management practices
When there is no transparency, you won’t know if the management of the supply chain business phases is at the optimal level. As a result, you will rely on the old practices, which might have become obsolete. Discrepancies and redundancies will be present at every single level of the entire chain. This is why you must focus more on increasing visibility and transparency at every phase of the supply chain, no matter what it takes.
Loss of potential customers
Although you will implement different supply chain software programs, managing the customers and retaining them will depend on understanding their expectations and providing the same. If customers cannot relate themselves to your business goals and objectives, they won’t rely on you. That’s why the lack of visibility can cause a potential loss of a huge customer base, which can further reduce the business revenues and even force you to take a back seat.
Increased number of risks
Lastly, the lack of visibility and transparency in the supply chain will increase their risks. Businesses may have to deal with delays in supply chain operations consistently and even go under financial debt.
Conclusion
In this article, we have walked you through some of the major consequences businesses might face if there is no supply chain visibility. So, based on the explanations we have provided above, you can decide whether you want to go with the transparency level present so far or optimize it using various strategies.
