Supply Chain Business Intelligence: The Critical Need for End-to-End Visibility in Supply Chain Management
Supply chains are the lifeblood of industries with logistical components, where even minor disruptions can ripple into significant financial losses and customer dissatisfaction. According to the BCI Supply Chain resilience Report, disruptions across industries are rising. Almost 80% of organisations’ supply chains were disrupted in the past twelve months, with most experiencing between one and ten disruptions. In today’s modern world, the complexity of interconnected systems often makes it difficult to trace transactions and identify bottlenecks. The same report states that most organisations identify the first two tiers of their supply chains as their main cause of disruption. That’s why, end-to-end visibility into these processes is critical for ensuring operational efficiency, minimising delays, and quickly resolving issues. By providing a clear view of workflows and system interactions, organisations can optimise their supply chains, enhance reliability, and maintain a competitive edge in demanding markets.
In this blog, we look at the impact of supply chain disruption on organisations and how Business Intelligence with end-to-end visibility can help overcome the complexity of modern supply chains.
The impacts on managing supply chains across teams
In any organisation, different teams face unique challenges when it comes to managing supply chains:
Operations Teams:
Struggle with limited visibility into supply chain bottlenecks and system failures. This lack of visibility often leads to delays, increased operational costs, and the need for ad-hoc manual interventions which are not scalable and prone to errors.
Financial Teams:
Find it difficult to trace complex transactions across interconnected systems, leading to discrepancies, inefficiencies, and challenges in financial reporting. This not only affects financial reporting but also impacts cash flow and operational efficiency. According to a Splunk, companies with Observability have high-performing supply chains and can achieve 30% higher financial performance than those with less effective supply chains.
Security Teams:
Are often blind to vulnerabilities within transaction flows, making it hard to detect and address potential threats. This can lead to undetected breaches and compliance issues, posing significant risks to the organisation. The average cost of a data breach in Australia has reached a record high of AUD $4.26 million in 2024, reflecting a 27% increase since 2020, making plugging security vulnerabilities even more critical.
How Supply Chain Business Intelligence can support sectors.
At the business level, the lack of end-to-end visibility can lead to operational inefficiencies, increased costs, and customer dissatisfaction. There are key sectors where end-to-end Visibility is business critical, let’s look at these a little closer:
Finacial Services
Business intelligence (BI) is crucial for financial services as it enhances decision-making, improves customer service, and helps detect and prevent fraud. This ensures efficient operations and a competitive edge in the market.
Manufacturing
Ensuring the timely delivery of raw materials and components is critical to maintaining production schedules and meeting customer demands. Visibility helps in tracking inventory levels, managing supplier relationships, and optimising production processes.
Retail
Retailers rely on efficient supply chains to keep shelves stocked and fulfill online orders. Visibility into the supply chain helps in ensuring products to market, managing inventory, reducing stockouts, and improving customer satisfaction.
Energy and Utilities
This sector requires the efficient management of resources and infrastructure. Visibility helps in monitoring the supply chain for equipment and materials, ensuring the reliability and efficiency of operations.
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Logistics and Transportation:
Companies in this sector need to manage the movement of goods efficiently. Visibility helps in optimising routes, reducing delays, and improving overall operational efficiency.
Healthcare
The healthcare sector requires precise tracking of medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, and equipment. Visibility ensures that these critical items are available when needed, reducing the risk of shortages and ensuring patient safety.
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Digitising the supply chain: The role and Benefits of Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI) plays a pivotal role in modern supply chain management, offering a robust set of functionalities that empower organisations to harness data for informed decision-making. These functionalities include:
Business Intelligence (BI) tools like Splunk Cloud provide a holistic view of supply chain operations and transactional workflows. They enable organisations to:
- Identify Bottlenecks: Quickly pinpoint and address failures or delays in the supply chain.
- Improve Operational Efficiency: Streamline processes and enhance system reliability.
- Enhance Security: Monitor transactions in real-time to detect and mitigate vulnerabilities.
- Reduce Costs: Not only from the resulting downtime but also from the ability to make smarter and faster decisions by analysing information across the supply chain.
- Improve Decision-Making: Enable better decision-making through comprehensive data analysis.
- Enhance Customer Satisfaction: Improve customer satisfaction by ensuring timely and efficient operations.
- Connect Stakeholders: Facilitate connections between internal and external ecosystems.
Business Intelligence in action – Case Studies
Optimising Logistics and Supply Chain Management for a Major Furniture and Homewares Retailer
This retailer faced significant challenges due to manual processes and fragmented systems, leading to duplicated deliveries and revenue loss. By implementing a customised observability solution with Avocado, they achieved comprehensive visibility into their logistics pipeline, eliminating inefficiencies and preventing revenue loss.
Enhancing Order to Fulfillment for Cotton On Group
Cotton On Group needed to optimise their online ordering systems to handle peak periods effectively. Avocado’s Order to Fulfillment (O2F) monitoring solution provided greater visibility across systems, enabling the Group to improve order processing times and enhance customer support during peak periods.
Final Thoughts
The complexity of modern supply chains necessitates the need for end-to-end visibility. By leveraging business intelligence tools like Splunk Cloud, organisations can overcome sector-specific challenges, improve operational efficiency, and ensure the smooth functioning of their supply chains.
Want to know more about how you can Proactively monitor your supply chain? In our next blog we look at the trends in modern tooling and shine the spotlight on Splunk Clouds Realtime Business Intelligence.
Proactively Monitor Your Supply Chain Today with Our Starter Pack
Avocado and Splunk offer a Supply Chain Visibility Starter Pack to solve your network challenges. This starter pack is a complete fixed-price solution delivered in just over four weeks. This means no hidden costs and a quick turnaround time, allowing organisations to start realising the benefits of real-time business intelligence almost immediately. Learn more about this offer and how it can benefit your organisation now.
