For most of my career, supply chain leaders have blamed poor transportation visibility on external chaos—port congestion, customs delays, drayage slowdowns, or unreliable carriers. And sure, these factors matter. But they’re not the root cause.
The real reason visibility is broken is internal: most companies lack systems capable of understanding and integrating transportation data. The ports aren’t the problem. Your architecture is.
The Blame Game
We tell ourselves visibility failures are the fault of the outside world:
“The port is backed up.”
“Customs is holding the container.”
“Our forwarder didn’t send the milestone update.”
It’s comforting to think the problem is out of our control. But that excuse no longer holds up. Real-time data feeds from platforms like Vizion, Project44, and FourKites now exist. The problem isn’t access to data—it’s what companies do with it.
Most can’t systematically consume, interpret, and act on transportation events. They lack the infrastructure to translate raw data into operational insight. And that failure is architectural.
The Systems Problem
Let’s break down why internal systems—not external bottlenecks—are the real issue.
1. ERPs Weren’t Built for Transportation
Enterprise Resource Planning systems like SAP and Oracle are great at managing financials, POs, and inventory. But they treat transportation as an afterthought:
- A shipment is just a “goods receipt”
- In-transit visibility doesn’t exist
- Port arrivals, customs releases, and delays are invisible
From the moment a container leaves your supplier’s factory, your ERP goes blind. And you’re stuck managing global supply chains with systems designed for accounting.
2. TMS Platforms Focus on Domestic
Transportation Management Systems (TMS) like SAP TM or MercuryGate were designed for domestic logistics—rate shopping, load tendering, freight payment. These are valuable for high-volume domestic moves. But international is a different beast:
- Multi-modal complexity: ocean → rail → drayage
- Third parties: forwarders obscure carrier-level visibility
- Regulations: cross-border moves require customs compliance
- Lead times: LA to NYC is 5 days. Shanghai to LA can be 40.
- Risk: ocean delays, inspections, and port congestion are routine
Most TMS platforms don’t handle this complexity. They graft domestic functionality onto international moves—missing the actual pain points.
3. Event Data Is Fragmented and Misused
Even when companies ingest third-party data, they often mishandle it:
- Status updates arrive as unstructured messages
- Business rules for interpreting those events don’t exist
- Systems can’t answer basic questions like:
“Will this shipment arrive on time?”
“Should we expedite drayage?”
“Are we going to miss our customer promise?”
You drown in milestone data—but still can’t act decisively. Why? Because visibility without context is just noise.
What Real Visibility Requires
True visibility isn’t a dashboard or another API. It’s a system that integrates data, understands relationships, and enables action. That means:
1. Make the Shipment a First-Class Object
A shipment must live as its own digital entity—not buried in a PO or invoice. It should evolve over time and have a projected future based on real-time data. Without this, updates are just isolated events without meaning.
2. Continuously Ingest and Interpret Events
You need automated ingestion from diverse sources, validation of each milestone, dynamic re-projection of timelines, and threshold-based alerts. Visibility is not a report. It’s an ongoing, analytical process.
3. Bridge Shipments and Products
Most systems think in terms of either shipments or SKUs—but not both. To drive action, your system must:
- Know what’s in each container
- Update delivery forecasts at the SKU level
- Alert Sales, Customer Service, and Planning when key products are delayed
4. Visibility Must Drive Execution
It’s not enough to know something is late. You need to do something:
- Reallocate inventory
- Expedite drayage
- Prioritize receiving
- Notify customers
The ultimate test of a visibility system isn’t what it shows you—it’s what it helps you change.
Why This Is Now Existential
You used to get away with broken visibility. Slack in the system covered for delays. But today?
- E-commerce and D2C demand precision
- ESG rules require traceability
- Margins evaporate when shipments miss delivery windows
- Geopolitical volatility makes early warnings essential
You can’t compete without real-time, actionable visibility. And you won’t get that from legacy systems or another dashboard.
It Was Never the Ports
Ports, carriers, and forwarders have always been messy. That’s not new.
What’s new is the expectation: Customers expect reliable delivery. And companies that fail to redesign their architecture around this operational reality will fall behind.
The future belongs to those who treat transportation not as a black box—but as a dynamic, living process.
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