Carolyn Nowaske is a senior account executive at iDashboards. She has over 10 years of experience in IT software and solutions. She is responsible for new business growth, specializing in the transportation & logistics sector. Outside of work, she enjoys quality time spent with her family.
Logistics is all about efficiency. In order to make sure your business is firing on all cylinders, you need to track and understand huge amounts of data. And it doesn’t stop there; you need the right tools to turn that data into actionable information. You need a plan. This is where data visualization comes into play.
By creating scorecards and reporting that compile and display data in a singular, easy-to-understand place, you can see how your business stacks up against its most important KPIs. With a data visualization plan in place, you can transform virtually unlimited amounts of information into tangible and effective improvement strategies.
Data visualization on the psychological level
Did you know that data visualization is psychological? It’s true! As a general principle, seeing data in the form of a chart or graph is better than trying to understand spreadsheets or reports. Your data tells a story, and the most effective medium is a picture book. It might sound simple, but the psychological benefits of data visualization go far beyond the pretty colors and stylish graphs. It’s all about the way our brains process and understand information.
Pre-Attentive and Attentive Processing
Pre-attentive processing is the secret sauce of data visualization. It’s what makes pictures (such as graphs and charts) easier to absorb than Excel spreadsheets. Imagine a poster filled with blue squares. Somewhere on that poster is a cluster of red squares. At a glance, your brain will automatically identify these unique elements. In other words, you don’t have to actively think about finding a discrepancy; your brain does it for you. That’s the beauty of pre-attentive processing.
On the flipside, attentive processing requires concentration. A word search, for example, requires attentive processing because you have to actively search for the information (or letters) you want to find. Data visualization allows you to maximize pre-attentive processing so your brain can skip the line and get right to the good stuff: the story within the data.
How data visualization improves KPI reporting and monitoring
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the backbone of business intelligence. They are (or should be) the strongest indicator of whether or not your business is successful. If your KPIs are on track, your business is too. This isn’t to say you should only track one or two performance indicators, but simply that your KPIs should reflect the overarching goals of your logistics business. Once you understand what those metrics are, you can build additional data visualization for smaller, supporting metrics.
Data visualization improves performance monitoring for several reasons. First, it saves time. Time is money, especially for logistics experts, so any tool that helps you streamline reporting is a good thing. Here are a few ways data visualization can speed up the data reporting process:
Provide instant reporting (no lag time)
Is available to stakeholders at every level, even on-the-go
Viewable from multiple devices (computers, tablets, smart phones, etc.)
Turning information into useful information
Most importantly, data visualization bridges the gap between “what information do we have?” and “how can this information help us become more efficient?” When you send a static paper report out, the data is instantly outdated. It’s also easy for important information to get lost or buried. By integrating dashboards that are easy to understand (thanks to pre-attentive processing), your reporting can eliminate the middleman and help you spend more time using data and less time trying to understand it.
There are several practical ways to accomplish this on your dashboard:
Proximity: Pair related metrics next to each other. By doing so, you can more easily spot trends and patterns that share a causal relationship. The number of deliveries within a given month and the average number of minutes it takes to unload shipments, for example, could relate to each other in ways you didn’t notice before.
Choose the right charts: Not all graphs are created equally. In fact, specific types of data visualization are best suited for specific metrics. If you want to track the number of deliveries in a specific region throughout the month of January, a pie chart probably isn’t your best option. If you want to know the percentage of deliveries that included no broken merchandise, however, a pie chart might provide the best, at-a-glance view of the data you need.
Use drilldowns: Drilldowns are like reports within reports. To avoid cluttering up your dashboard with every possible piece of information your business needs, try displaying the most important metrics on the front page. Then, give users the ability to choose their path of analysis. Whether they drill down to charts, other dashboards, or external URLs, they will have immediate access to the answers they need. In short, drilldowns are the best way visualize data that supports your larger objectives.
Which key performance indicators should you visualize?
Picking the right KPIs will shape the way you view your business’ success. In other words, knowing what metrics to pay attention to is a vital step in the data visualization process. In the world of logistics, some common and useful metrics include:
Shipping and Delivery Times
Order Accuracy
Transportation and Warehousing Costs
Warehouse Capacity
Number of Shipments
Inventory Accuracy and Turnover
Inventory to Sales Ratio
Percentage of Damaged Goods
Driver Safety and Incident Metrics
Before you design and launch your logistics dashboard, take these metrics into consideration and prioritize them. Scrutinize the implications of each data set and pair them with related metrics, then begin compiling a storyboard to visualize what you want your dashboard to look like. Additionally, keep in mind that – just like your goals – your dashboard can change over time. If you want to focus on one specific area of improvement, focus on that in your dashboard. If a metric doesn’t seem to give actionable insights, remove it. Your dashboard is a work in progress, just like your processes.
It’s almost Halloween, and if your town is anything like mine, your neighbors’ yards are already littered with ghosts, witches and tombstones.
Clearly some of us enjoy giving other people a scare. Just as clearly, some of us enjoy getting a scare.
I’m not one of them. I hate haunted houses. I avoid scary movies like the plague. And I once jumped on top of several eight-year-old members of the Girl Scout troop that I was leading in order to escape a haunted hayride’s zombie.
However, that doesn’t mean I’m not capable of (wo)manning up and facing my fears, especially it’s for a good cause, which is why ALAN’s executive director, Kathy Fulton and I recently put our heads together to create this short list of some of the scariest perceptions that people have about disasters and disaster relief.
Scary Perception Number One: “A Disaster Will Never Happen To Me.”
When people live in certain areas (i.e. far away from a hurricane-prone coast or earthquake fault lines) it’s easy for them to assume that they’re protected from many types of catastrophes – and to become dangerously casual about making disaster preparations or heeding safety warnings.
Frankly, this attitude scares the heck out of us, because if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that disasters can take a wide variety of forms and strike at almost any time. And the people who fail to plan – or to take shelter/evacuate as requested – are much more likely to find themselves in harm’s way.
Scary Perception Number Two: “It’s Okay. The Government’s Got It Covered.”
There are so many things wrong with this second perception that it’s not even funny. For one thing, not every disaster survivor qualifies for FEMA government assistance. For another, some survivors aren’t eligible for as much government assistance as others. Plus it can take some time for FEMA to process all of the requests for assistance that it receives and to conduct all of the necessary inspections that need to be made before it can provide funds. And even then, these funds are limited.
It’s a similar story for disaster survivors who are fortunate enough to have homeowners’ or renters’ insurance.
That’s why the humanitarian response organizations that provide food, hydration, shelter and other supplies immediately after a disaster hits (and the non-profit organizations that help survivors fill in the short-term and long-term gaps that government assistance and insurance reimbursement don’t cover) are so essential. It’s also why the people who support them are an answer to prayer.
Scary Perception Three: “We’re Too Far Away To Be Of Help.”
One of the laments that we often hear from potential transportation, warehousing and material handling equipment donors is, “We’d have loved to help you with relief efforts for X community’s disaster. But we didn’t have any locations in the area.”
The sad thing is, we probably could have used their help – and so could many of the humanitarian organizations that we support.
When push comes to shove, these organizations can’t afford to split hairs about where their donated relief supplies come from, especially if those supplies extend or enable their relief efforts. They might even NEED those donations to come from another part of the country because many of their closer potential product donors may have already been tapped out.
In light of this, never underestimate the value of a long-distance contributed logistics offer. Relief supplies are often located much farther away from a disaster site than you might imagine. And the help that you’re offering might be just the ticket.
Scary Perception Four: “It’s Been A Few Months (Or Years). So Survivors Of That Particular Disaster Don’t Need Our Help Anymore.”
If individuals and communities recovered from disasters as quickly as their particular disasters stopped making headlines, life would be much easier for everyone. However as any disaster survivor can tell you, that’s rarely the case.
Disaster recovery is a super-long process that’s usually measured in months or years rather than days or weeks. And many of its costliest and most work-intensive stages like clean-up and rebuilding don’t start until long after the news and camera crews have left.
So don’t ever think that there’s no way you can help a community just because the disaster that affected it happened quite a while ago. Chances are, that’s when your compassion and assistance will be needed the most.
Scary Perception Five: “Helping With Disaster Relief Won’t Pay The Bills. As A Result, There’s Nothing To Be Gained From Our Business Making A Financial Or In-Kind Donation.”
While it may not initially seem like you have anything financial to gain from helping a community in need, nothing could be further from the truth, especially if that community is home to some of your employees, customers, suppliers or business operations.
The people who live in these communities can (and do) remember who showed up for them when times were tough – and so do many other members of the purchasing public. In fact, according to recent article in the MIT/Sloane Management Review, multiple studies have shown that corporate donations ultimately attract customers. And according to another recent article in the Harvard Business Review, consumers tend to favor companies that donate a larger share of their profits.
Is this why so many of our country’s most successful organizations are also some of the most philanthropic? Possibly. However, if that’s the case, it’s okay by us, because when generous businesses do what they can to help a community get back on its feet more quickly, everybody wins.
Fear Not
There’s far more I could add to this story. But time and Halloween-candy buying obligations don’t allow me to discuss them all. Besides, I want to end this story on a caring rather than a scaring note.
So I’ll leave you with this: Even though disasters seem to happen with frightening regularity, I’ve actually become a far braver person since joining the ALAN family several years ago. It’s taught me that when horrible things like hurricanes, tornadoes and pandemics happen, a lot of wonderful people show up to help – and reminded me that when things are at their most harrowing, there are always extraordinary people like you ready to come to the rescue.
Just don’t ask me to go on a spooky hayride anytime soon.
"Spot solutions are needed to help a company get through a sudden shock, but the only way to ensure agility and resilience going forward is by addressing systemic issues in a way that is intentional and focused on the long term and brings together clear priorities, well-designed repeatable processes, robust governance, and a skilled team." - Harvard Business Review
An article published by McKinsey & Co. in August observed, “over the past year, many companies have made structural changes to their supply networks by implementing dual or multiple sourcing strategies for critical materials and moving from global to regional networks.”
This structural change pivots on the difference between low cost and best cost. The shift extends through Tier 1 Suppliers through lower tiers. The intent of a low-cost supply chain strategy is to present a low price to customers. A best-cost strategy adds factors beyond cost to the equation, like risk, lead time, and responsiveness.
The McKinsey article continues, “Ninety-seven percent of respondents [to the survey] say they have applied some combination of inventory increases, dual sourcing, and regionalization to boost resilience.”
We offshored, losing sight of the associated risk, for decades. Time to learn what near-shore, re-shore, regionalization, and localization mean.
As global supply chains become increasingly complicated, there are now more digital connections and business collaborations in the global shipping industry than ever before. Holding freight data in opaque, disconnected silos and relying on outdated methods of communication is not just inefficient - it’s unsustainable.
The global supply chain is no longer a linear process. Whereas before it was simply about moving freight from point A to B, now there is now a multitude of options for transporting that freight, each with its own unique set of capabilities and constraints.
So, what do shippers really want from their logistics service providers? Two things: accurate information at their fingertips and the ability to conduct business and transact - without having to pick up a phone or wait for email replies. Digital customer-facing freight execution platforms are the answer, collecting the most relevant and up-to-date data from carriers on one side, and providing shippers with a simplified and accelerated process on the other.
Digital freight execution platforms also provide shippers with a unified view of their shipping options, giving them the data they need at a glance to make an informed decision for any particular shipment.
Plus, as we continue to navigate uncertain waters, shippers are increasingly seeking solutions to increase resilience. After all, if there’s anything the last few years have taught us, it’s to expect the unexpected. The organizations that were able to pivot fastest came out on top. The availability of accurate data and solutions to action that data are key building blocks to resiliency in the face of new and unexpected challenges. Supply chain optimization, especially today, hinges on accessible, up-to-the-minute data, shared and acted on to keep freight moving as successfully as possible.
Digital Freight Execution Puts Power in Shippers’ Hands
Increasingly, freight forwarders and logistics providers are giving their shipper customers access to online freight execution platforms for just this purpose.
Largely unheard of just a few short years ago, online freight execution tools for shippers have quickly emerged to become a must-have for established forwarders to compete with startup digital forwarders. Logistics providers can no longer afford to go without offering this critical customer tool which enables shippers to access crucial freight data online, including timely visibility of their freight on the move. Their shipper customers have come to expect it, and it’s what’s needed to compete in today’s market.
Traditional methods of communication between shippers and freight forwarders can be slow and inefficient. Email and phone tag are not conducive to fast decision-making, and sales representatives may not always have the most accurate information about fleets, equipment, and routes. Digital freight execution platforms enable shippers and carriers to communicate in real-time, facilitating fast decision-making while eliminating the potential for miscommunication.
As digital conveniences proliferate our day-to-day lives (think of ordering food online, tracking your latest purchase, viewing your favorite shows on-demand, and so much more), it only makes sense that we should expect similar experiences in our work lives. That means that the traditional way of working in the freight industry, fraught with manual processes, phone calls, and emails, simply doesn’t cut it in today’s digital-first world.
What’s more, with timely freight data, shippers are better equipped to quickly address exceptions by changing transportation plans. Supply chain disconnections are costly. Responding to exceptions is critical to a smooth-running supply chain where shipments arrive at their final destination as planned.
“An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage,” Jack Welch
One of the outstanding things about a digital freight platform is the ability to integrate various functional modules to enable shipment data to be used and shared. These may include tracking and visibility, warehouse inventory, ocean shipments, freight rates, and even finance information, enabling a shipper to pay invoices online. Customer-facing online portals are an important and effective way to facilitate a shippers’ access to key shipment information, improving visibility and productivity on all fronts.
Partnering for Sustainable Success
Partner programs are another important aspect of connected digital freight platforms. This openness to integrate with a broad range of shipping industry businesses, such as technology or service providers, offers shippers the ability to access their partners through their forwarders’ customer-facing freight execution portal. This enables the shipper to have a comprehensive and complete flow of key freight data based on their unique needs and partners.
For example, if a shipper is using a real-time transportation visibility (RTTV) system provider, they can work with their forwarder to integrate the RTTV solution with the forwarder’s digital platform. This is only possible when the forwarder has a partner program enabling integrations.
All parties involved with a shipment can boost productivity and enhance value for the customer when they’re digitally integrated with freight transaction operational areas and partner providers. Technology companies who try to wall off access to the data they manage for their customers and their functionality have it backwards: they might create an appearance of their own business interests being protected in the short term, but long term, they’re either going to hurt their customers, or, more likely, their own product development roadmap.
Recent supply chain challenges have pushed BCO shippers and their logistics partners to take a much closer look at cargo flows. Accessible, convenient, and transparent freight data is now the expectation and necessary to control costs and keep cargo in view for optimal supply chain management.
Digital freight execution is the wave of the future, and it's already making a big impact in the shipping industry. Streamlining data flows by building out connectivity helps to bring greater logistics harmony that allows shippers to optimize their overall freight ecosystem.
America’s posture in world trade, and the underlying supply chains, are more than robust. According to the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the United States balance of trade in goods and services deficit dropped to $70.6 billion in July. Exports hit the highest level in real dollars since tracking began over 70 years ago. During the recovery from Covid,, with reshoring and shifting market demands, are holding imports flat..
This success is happening despite the global disruption caused by Ukraine. Expect our labor shortages to continue. Expect wage pressure to continue. Expect inflationary pressures across the supply chain to continue.