By Paul Damaren, Executive Vice President, Business Development at RizePoint

What if you were playing chess and could use tech tools to learn your opponent’s strategies before the game. Armed with these insights, you could make well-informed decisions about each of your next moves.

Now, what if you could apply the same principles to your organization’s supply chain? What if you could use tech tools to gather real time insights about events that are currently happening – and are expected to occur in the near future? Would you use this information to guide your decisions? I certainly would!

That’s why I advise businesses to implement real-time supply chain monitoring – using advanced technologies – to gather data, anticipate potential disruptions, and make more informed decisions based on these insights. Tech solutions – including AI, blockchain, machine learning, predictive analytics, SaaS solutions, RFID tagging, and GPS tracking – help organizations optimize performance throughout the supply chain.

Organizations like Amazon, Walmart, PepsiCo, and Chipotle are leading the charge, adopting innovative technologies to elevate their supply chain monitoring. Increasingly, more businesses across the supply chain are relying on real-time supply chain monitoring – using advanced technologies – to optimize operations, efficiency, accuracy, performance, communication, and transparency. And you should, too!

Here are 11 reasons that your organization should use real-time supply chain monitoring, which will allow you to:

1. Identify potential risks and disruptions. This effort can make you aware of potential disruptors – including weather events, transportation delays, product shortages, and labor strikes – that could interrupt business operations. By leveraging data to gain critical insights, you can anticipate potential disruptions within the supply chain and take proactive measures – like rerouting deliveries or pivoting to a different vendor – to minimize interruptions and maintain business continuity.
2. Prioritize food safety. Organizations across the supply chain must prioritize food safety and quality. Tech tools will help you maintain safety and quality within your own organization and gain visibility into your vendors’ food safety protocols, as well. Tech tools make it easy for vendors to communicate and share food quality audits, assessments, and reports. If there’s ever a food safety breach, your organization will have real-time visibility to know for certain if any of their products were potentially impacted.
3. Optimize operations. Leverage real-time data to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, delays, or other issues and improve supply chain performance. For instance, McDonald’s leverages real-time supply chain monitoring to maintain consistency across its vast, global network of restaurants, ensuring the availability of ingredients and minimizing disruptions. Known for its robust supply chain management system, Walmart utilizes advanced technologies to monitor and optimize its food supply chain, ensuring efficient inventory management and timely delivery.
4. Establish strong supplier relationships.  Foster partnerships with reliable suppliers, promoting transparency and effective communication channels to ensure visibility into their supply chain processes. Every supplier along the supply chain should be willing to share food quality audits, assessments, and reports on a continual basis. If you have any concerns that a vendor isn’t upholding the highest levels of safety and quality, change suppliers immediately, since any breach in safety or quality can irrevocably damage your organization’s reputation, and jeopardize the health of anyone that consumes the tainted food.
5. Find (and fix) problems. Food brands are starting to explore RFID, commonly used in retail, to better trace products, boost safety, quality, and compliance across their networks, and avoid costly, damaging food safety breaches. Chipotle Mexican Grill is using RFID to trace ingredients from their suppliers to their restaurants in real-time. Chipotle hopes the technology can provide better real-time visibility so if there’s any potential threat to food safety (such as contamination at a farm that grows its lettuce, tomatoes, or corn), the restaurant chain can pull and discard any compromised products. Food safety is a priority for Chipotle, who experienced several food safety outbreaks in 2015, which sickened their customers and damaged the brand’s reputation.
6. Make more informed decisions. Leverage advanced analytics tools to gather and analyze real-time data from various sources, enabling proactive decision-making and identification of potential bottlenecks. Nestlé implemented a SaaS-based supply chain management solution, which provided real-time insights into their operations, and enhanced efficiency. They could see a comprehensive view of their entire supply chain, manage their inventory, transportation, and other logistics, and ensure their supply chain was resilient, flexible, and sustainable.
7. Meet stakeholder demand. Key audiences – including customers, prospects, employees, investors, the media, influencers, and more – are supporting brands that follow safety protocols, prioritize DEI efforts, boost sustainability, operate ethically, follow responsible business practices, etc. Real-time supply chain monitoring helps elevate transparency and communication so organizations can effectively showcase their responsible business practices to increase trust, support, sales, and loyalty from these key audiences. PepsiCo prioritizes an efficient, streamlined, nimble supply chain, using advanced technologies to optimize resources and better meet consumer demands.
8. Improve sustainability. Use real-time visibility solutions to help you make decisions with sustainability in mind, such as choosing more environmentally friendly materials for packaging. Colgate-Palmolive has built an agile, resilient, and sustainable supply chain. An example of the brand’s innovation is their development of a new kind recyclable plastic tube for greener product packaging. Colgate-Palmolive continuously invests in digital capabilities, including wireless sensors and AI-powered data analytics, to elevate its performance and improve its sustainability.
9. Enhance inventory tracking. Utilize technologies like IoT sensors, RFID tags, and GPS tracking to monitor products, shipments, and inventory in real-time. While primarily an e-commerce giant, Amazon’s entry into the grocery market with Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods has demonstrated effective real-time supply chain monitoring practices, enabling seamless delivery and inventory management. And as one of the largest retailers in the UK, Tesco has implemented real-time supply chain monitoring systems to optimize inventory levels, improve product freshness, and streamline distribution processes. 
10. Invest in automation. Integrate automation and machine learning systems to streamline processes, reduce human errors, and improve overall supply chain efficiency. These improvements will also help you save significant money by monitoring inventory levels, improving demand forecasting accuracy, and optimizing labor (and related expenses).
11. Continuously monitor and optimize. If you’ve been wise enough to embrace real-time supply chain monitoring, congratulations! It’s a very smart business move with a variety of significant benefits. But – don’t rest on your laurels. This is an ongoing effort. Regularly assess and update supply chain monitoring systems, incorporating feedback loops and continuous improvement practices to enhance responsiveness and agility.

Follow Amazon, Walmart, PepsiCo, and Chipotle’s lead and rely on tech tools for supply chain monitoring. This effort can help your organization tremendously, with many far-reaching benefits, like improving transparency, efficiency, business continuity, cost-savings, sustainability, communication, and stakeholder support.  

Stay one step ahead of any disruptions by gathering valuable insights so you can make well-informed decisions about each of your next moves.

For more information about how RizePoint’s solutions can help your organization strengthen your food safety, quality, and compliance programs, let’s talk.