Industry research shows that firms with good visibility in their supply chain operations consistently outperform the competition. In fact, recent research from Aberdeen Group found that companies that achieve good visibility can reduce lead times, inventory levels, and carrying costs, while also gaining budgeting accuracy that’s significantly higher than that of the average company.

But how does a company go about achieving that level of visibility? Attendees learned answers to that and other questions in this webcast, which included Steve Cochran, chief technology officer at Inovis, and Mukund Mohan, vice president of marketing for the company, who discussed why supply chain visibility is so important and what companies can do to achieve that visibility. The pair covered the five key steps that lead to better visibility, with the end result being “actionable intelligence” that translates into more effective supply chain decision-making.

To open the webcast, Mohan highlighted the fact that many companies see reporting as a static activity based on the receipt of multiple reports from many different sources. “There’s so much information coming out on a consistent basis, and it’s hard to process efficiently due to how fast and frequent it is,” Mohan explains. “Companies have a hard time discerning what’s important, and what’s not important.”

The information can also become irrelevant quickly, particularly if it’s delayed in any way (a notice that comes in after an item has been shipped, for example, is often useless). This type of “rear view” information is confusing at best for companies, and gives them very little valuable visibility in a time when transparency across the supply chain is becoming more and more important.

“Executives want actionable visibility information,” says Mohan. “They want to be able to make sure they can reduce the number of errors that are occurring, increase the frequency and timeliness of relevant information, and react efficiently.”

To get there, Mohan urged attendees to remember five key things for actionable intelligence: communicate, transaction, awareness, collaboration, and interdependence. Cochran concurred, and pointed out that getting clean data at the right time in its lifecycle leads to better visibility. “It’s about getting the right tools for the job, not the presentation. In other words, view the presentation, but then extract the useful information from it—not the other way around,” says Cochran. “You need to develop a fundamental platform for doing this, or you won’t achieve the desired results.”