Neither the supply chain nor the customer benefits from masses of data without the right visibility that enables true collaboration, says Krenar Komoni, chief executive officer and founder of Tive 

There’s a strong connection between the desire of online retailers to enhance the customer experience and the need for greater visibility of product in transit, Komoni says. Amazon.com and others have raised service expectations on the business-to-consumer side; now there’s a push to provide the same level of reliability for business-to-business orders.

Key to achieving visibility is the use of trackers that can relay the progress of shipments every step of the way. Up to now, says Komoni, more than half of Tive’s customers had not used such technology, but there’s a “huge” demand for it now.

The catalyst is, in part, the COVID-19 pandemic and the pressures that it has placed on B2C and B2B supply chains. But growing customer demands for faster delivery were evident well before the virus appeared on the scene. Today, shoppers want total visibility of their orders on a real-time basis, and that requires innovative technology, particularly that which employs artificial intelligence and machine learning.

There’s plenty of data generated within the supply chain, Komoni says, but it isn’t “clean.” Companies need to filter the flood of data generated by the internet of things in order to understand what customers really want — “to give them more actionable information instead of just alerts.”

Automation will eventually solve the problem, Komoni adds, but until it does, people will be needed to help fulfill ever-increasing customer demands for service, including a rise in the use of the subscription model for boosting sales and order predictability. To reach that goal, collaboration among retailers, shippers and carriers will be necessary.