Krenar Komoni, chief executive officer and founder of Tive, discusses gaps in real-time visibility during the transit journey.

Investment in real-time visibility solutions is not only continuing but accelerating, Komoni says. Nevertheless, major gaps in visibility remain. To illustrate the frustrations that can result, he cites a situation faced by a supply-chain manager at a large electronics company. Carrier compliance was spotty and led to gaps around data quality and visibility.

“You want a carrier to provide data around where the shipments are,” he says. “There are some carriers who aren’t that technologically advanced in providing that data. So the worst-case scenario is they have to log into a platform and say, ‘I'm in this location, I'm in that location.’ Visibility is still very delayed.”

The goal is total visibility, but carriers seldom reach that, he says. “Even if every single asset was tracked — every container, every trailer — you still don't know if it's a hundred percent accurate — that the goods that you put in that trailer are in there.”

Because gaps remain, Komoni says, “3PLs and shippers are still playing Whac-A-Mole; they're still not understanding what the shipments are.” When carriers have only 60% to 70% visibility, updates are often impossible. “It's almost going backwards, where you used to do check calls, trying to figure out where your shipments are.”

Landed cost increases as visibility decreases, he says. “If you have no visibility, if you don't understand lead times, you really don't understand the final landed cost. The more your inventory is on the road, the more it’s on the ocean, the more it’s in transit, the more your landed cost is going to go up. If you don't have that full visibility, you don't get to understand how you can reduce the landed cost.”

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