"Real-Time Visibility Trend Report 2021"

Real-Time Visibility Trend Report 2021

White Paper: TRANSPOREON

Welcome to the digital age

Supply chain operations were really put to the test in 2020. It was those companies that digitalized operations and utilized real-time visibility to address issues in real-time that were able to successfully manage disruptions. For many, the main takeaway from 2020, is that if you don’t know where your transports are, you really should. Therefore, moving through 2021, there must be an increasing emphasis on not only getting products from A to B, but doing this in a way that ensures full transparency at every step and where data is shared almost instantaneously from end-to-end. This may seem like a tall order, but luckily, there is a solution.  

Why real-time visibility?

Real-time visibility (RTV) is an essential tool for businesses looking to create a holistic overview of operations and digitize processes, making it the word on everyone’s lips in 2021 – particularly after the unprecedented challenges presented by COVID-19 in 2020.

Going digital means leaving behind old manual processes and technologies, including tedious manual forms of communication, in favour of a more connected and efficient supply chain. This largely involves automated processes, the ability to respond in real-time and make accurate data-driven decisions.

Previously, RTV has slipped under the radar when talking about digitalization. In 2019, Transporeon published a Visibility Report which found that, accordingly to industry experts, “the digitalization of transport logistics is progressing relatively slowly” and that it “has improved only slightly over previous years”.

The report also highlighted that in a previous study, produced in cooperation with RWTH Aachen University, transport transparency was found to be a key factor in achieving ‘Industry 4.0’.

Interestingly, Transporeon’s report found more than 30% of shippers already use cloud-based platforms when placing orders and tracking shipments, which also included automatically sharing status information with all parties. This left around 70% of shippers operating in the dark.

Fast forward to 2021 and the spotlight is on real-time visibility like never before. Today, how quickly businesses respond to disruption and how much of their operations is digitized is what sets them apart from the competition. According to Gartner, 50% of leading global enterprises will have invested in real-time transportation visibility platforms by 2023, with the market set to grow rapidly in the next couple of years. That’s not far off.