Big Data & Analytics Savi Sensors Solutions

Visibility is a Murky Word



While heading home from work the other day, my car interrupted my thoughts with a chime and message on my dashboard alerting me that I needed an oil change. I thought, “How did my car know that I needed an oil change sooner than the generally recommended 3,000-5,000 miles?” In that moment, I realized that my car was using sensor technology and predictive and prescriptive analytics to determine the quality and level of my car’s oil. With this information, it predicted that I would need an oil change sooner than 3,000 miles.

The accuracy of this information is far more beneficial to the health of my car than the handwriting of my mechanic’s prediction of my next scheduled oil change on a faded windshield sticker.

Similarly, there are a lot of companies in the supply chain industry that claim that they provide visibility solutions to help you understand what’s going on in your supply chain. The problem lies in the varied definitions of visibility. Visibility to one company could be simply providing alert statuses once goods reach certain shipment checkpoints or benchmarks. Another company may create parameters based on time or quality, and then alert you when parameters aren’t met.

Although, like my mechanic’s oil change prediction, these types of solutions fall short because they don’t offer visibility into the actual status and location of goods in order to improve your supply chain.

Sure, you need to know where your goods are. But, wouldn’t it be better if you could use this information to uncover trends that provide visibility into how you could improve your overall operations?

At Savi, we provide our customers visibility that goes beyond traditional track-and-trace solutions. By using predictive and prescriptive analytics, we take raw data about the location and status of your good to find trends and patterns in your supply chain. By knowing precisely where your goods are while also leveraging knowledge from trend analyses, you gain visibility and business intelligence that will allow you to continuously transform and improve your supply chain operations.

Now, this is true visibility.