How to reduce your working capital requirement with real-time visibility

For years companies such as those in manufacturing and retail have aimed to get commodities delivered ‘just-in-time’ to avoid tying up valuable cash or the need for costly warehousing. 

The desire to optimize stock levels and cash flow has led companies to reduce working capital to an absolute minimum. However, as 2021 in particular demonstrated, delivery delays have become the norm leaving businesses in a challenging situation. The challenge for companies has moved from ‘just-in-time' to ‘just-in-case’ - they can choose to pay for additional storage to increase inventory or risk stock-outs. Both impact a company’s overall performance and do nothing to help estimate the delivery times of new goods.

Gathering information from disparate carriers, shippers, and freight forwarders to locate products travelling via sea, road, rail and air - and then estimate arrivals times - is a huge, daily task for many. It requires hours of work and the results are typically rife with errors and frustration. 

Some technology platforms assist with tracking but focus only on a single mode of transport.

There is another way to manage this challenge and provide end-to-end visibility of your transport flows. It doesn’t involve a total rethink of your global supply chain but rather using a real-time tracking platform to locate goods at any time.

The Wakeo solution integrates multimodal transport flows and enriches the information provided by transport providers with independent sources.

Real-time data then helps operations teams to adjust and manage inventories. It provides them with a comprehensive understanding of their supply chain, and helps them to better anticipate stock flows and maintain optimal levels of safety stock, while satisfying or exceeding customer expectations. Being able to agilely reduce in-transit stocks is a must-have for companies in the current market, especially with rising interest rates.

Wakeo’s real-time visibility platform has generated various benefits for customers, among them:

• A leading healthcare company was able to identify 82% of shipments were delayed on a specific route and use Wakeo’s analytics to identify better routes and switch to a more reliable carrier based on real performance
• A gas industry business was able to reduce its in-transit inventories by 10% as a result of optimized transport flows
• A global manufacturer adjusted levels of security stock after Wakeo’s analytics highlighted that one carrier was taking an average of 9 days longer than expected

Wakeo’s platform also enables customers to identify the most efficient and relevant routes on the market, by benchmarking route reliability on all transport modes. Selecting shorter transit times or more reliable lanes enables organisations to reduce both in-transit stocks and excess inventory buffers to streamline working capital. 

Improving your organisation’s supply chain management over the next year and beyond is not about avoiding every single delay, but rather how able you are to handle disruption. Technology can help shippers reduce costs and improve supply chain efficiency, enabling them to be proactive rather than reactive and thrive despite disruption.