While a deployment strategy depends vastly on the type of business you run and your supply chain maturity, there are some common denominators that a company should think about on its road to reaching end-to-end visibility.

1. Ascertain your clear-cut objectives for implementing a logistics visibility platform. While no solution will be the
   panacea for all your company’s challenges, it should nevertheless help you to reduce costs and improve productivity.
   The more precise and measurable your objectives are, the easier it will be to carry out the following steps and work
   with your chosen solution provider.
2. Determine the business and process requirements for both your internal, cross-functional departments and delivery
   ecosystem partners.
3. If you currently have access to data, look at performance history of deliveries, including budget variances, service level
   attainment, and customer satisfaction. Ideally, you should review the past three years.
4. Map out your current delivery logistics workflows. Pinpoint areas where information is lacking, and processes are
   inefficient. Determine the causes that negatively impact your delivery performance.
5. Map your ideal logistics visibility value chain. Think about what types of reports and analytics you would like to be able
   to generate with a new logistics visibility solution.
6. Align your ideal logistics visibility value chain with your current (or planned) business rules. This will help you to
   configure alerts and notifications in your logistics visibility platform.
7. Identify critical business KPIs. While you may already have some, you may uncover new ones you want to track based
   on your two mapping sessions. List your IT requirements and constraints.
8. Develop a preliminary implementation schedule, with attributed roles and responsibilities for a logistics visibility
   “taskforce.” At this point, you need not go into all the nitty gritty timelines. Think of major milestones, such as shopping
   for a solution, selecting a provider, implementation, integration with existing IT infrastructure and partners, onboarding
   and training.
9. The goal here is to get a feel as to when your organization and partners could realistically “go live” with a new logistics
   visibility solution. Plan for at least six months once you have selected your provider.
10. Create a communications plan to get all stakeholders on board. Do not underestimate the importance of this step
    as it is inherently tied to the success of your deployment. Change can be hard, especially when users do not see the
    benefits and prefer the status quo. By effectively communicating new processes and the tools to be used, you will go
    a long way into stoking the use of your solution and increasing accountability.

The four pillars of logistics visibility

True logistics visibility can only be achieved with a service-based solution that bridges gaps between different teams, different organizations, and different handoffs and touchpoints to provide a real-time holistic picture of the entire logistics value stream.

Scheduling

Schedule deliveries from manufacturers (first mile) to consolidation centres (mid mile) and to customers via carriers (last mile).

Traceability

Plan and track deliveries in real time thanks to barcodes or RFID, with complete traceability of items, orders, transportation mode, tasks per handoff, resources that process each handoff, etc. Manage exceptions and unplanned disruptions.

Communications

Communicate with all stakeholders in the logistics ecosystem (order confirmations, order transit status, ETAs, post-delivery surveys, etc.) by in-system alerts, texts, voice or email.

Reporting

Access business-critical KPIs via comprehensive reports, such as on-time deliveries, first-time-right shipments, customer satisfaction, damaged goods, miles/km per stop, and a wealth of other information.

Create a customer-centric delivery experience based on customers’ needs and complete transparency.