Businesses are under constant pressure to deliver quality products, services and customer experiences at competitive prices. Under normal circumstances, this requires a supply chain that continuously delivers and optimizes operations, as well as mitigates an array of disruptions.

The global pandemic upped the ante and illustrated the heightened challenges faced when operating in a volatile and disruptive environment. It reinforced to Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) and business leaders the importance of high-performing and resilient supply chains.

However, most companies lack the visibility and intelligence needed to build more resilient and agile supply chains. Visibility is limited primarily because organizations have difficulty accessing demand, inventory and supply chain data scattered across disperse and siloed systems and external sources. With a traditional data integration approach, unifying information from different systems is a time-consuming and high-cost effort that must be repeated as systems and information needs change.


What is a supply chain control tower?

Supply chain control towers are designed to provide deeper end-to-end (E2E) visibility across the supply chain. They often include a central dashboard of data with views into key business metrics and events.

Modern control towers increasingly leverage advanced technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), to help organizations break through data silos, reduce or eliminate manual processes, and get real-time visibility and intelligent insights to drive action. An advanced control tower will enable collaboration across cross-functional teams and partners – and preserve organizational knowledge (in the form of digital supply chain playbooks) to improve and accelerate decision-making and outcomes. Ultimately, supply chain control towers help organizations..