How to Monitor Inventory and Volume with Logistics Dashboards?
Gain insights on navigating volume through logistics dashboards. Explore efficient strategies in our informative blog.
Navigating a global supply chain, sourcing materials from different continents, coordinating numerous suppliers, and ensuring top-quality service to customers can be likened to navigating a maze. Dealing with continuous delays and unexpected issues in this intricate process generates a flood of data.
However, within this chaos lies a beacon of hope: supply chain analytics. These analytics act as a guide, transforming mountains of raw data into clear dashboards that help in making informed decisions.
In today's highly competitive market, leveraging these analytics isn't just beneficial; it's essential for staying ahead. A recent study by Gartner shows that about 79% of supply chain leaders plan to train their teams in advanced analytics. But why is this change so crucial for your supply chain's success? (Source)
In this article, we'll explore the power of a logistics dashboard—a roadmap to growth. We'll show how a web analytics dashboard has great benefits and can help you build important logistics solutions.
Table of Contents
What is an Analytic Dashboard?
The logistics analytics dashboard is like a control center. It collects lots of data and shows you how to manage logistics efficiently.
Consider your logistics dashboard as a digital toolset with several uses. It compiles data from logistics management, warehouse operations, and real-time inventory levels into a unified presentation. This dashboard, in contrast, provides more than just one feature; rather, it's a toolset full of information.
Let's take an example where a logistics dashboard shows that a certain route's delivery times have suddenly increased because of the construction. The team uses this information to adjust the schedule and ensure timely deliveries. They also make sure there are no backlogged orders.
It’s not just about displaying data; it’s about presenting it in a readable, visual format. This is where a supply chain dashboard comes into light, transforming columns of numbers into understandable charts and graphs for easier data visualization.
What is the Role of Analytics in Logistics?
Consider the huge quantity of data that is produced every day, ranging from specifications for shipping to contact information for returns. It's like having too much information, where not including important details could make you lose an advantage. Here's where the massive data sets can be made sense of with the aid of the logistics analytics dashboard.
The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in the logistics industry
Let’s look at some of the KPIs in the logistics industry discussed below:
1. Inventory Supply Days:
Inventory supply days indicate the average number of days a company's current inventory will last based on recent sales. It measures the effectiveness of inventory turnover by dividing the average inventory by the daily cost of items sold.
2. Inventory Turnover:
Inventory turnover is a financial metric that gauges how quickly a company sells and replaces its inventory within a specific period.
It is calculated by dividing the cost of goods sold (COGS) by the average inventory.
3. Inventory Velocity:
Inventory velocity is the rate at which stock moves or is consumed in a given amount of time. It assists companies in determining the effectiveness of their inventory turnover by measuring the speed at which goods move through the supply chain.
4. Returns & Reasons:
It refers to the process of customers sending back purchased items and the underlying causes for doing so. Analyzing returns helps businesses understand product dissatisfaction, quality issues, or incorrect shipments, enabling them to address root causes and improve customer satisfaction.
5. Freight Bills:
Freight bills are invoices that detail the charges for transporting goods from one location to another. They have information on shipping costs, services provided, and other relevant charges associated with the transportation of goods.
6. Shipping Rates:
Shipping rates are the costs associated with moving products from one place to another. These charges depend on a number of variables, such as the shipment's weight, size, and destination along with the shipping method opted.
7. Procurement Days:
Days payable outstanding (DPO), also known as procurement days, are a type of financial data that indicates how long it typically takes a business to pay its suppliers for goods or services. It is calculated by dividing accounts payable by the average daily cost of goods sold.
A higher procurement day value suggests a longer payment period, which could improve cash flow for the business but could also have an impact on supplier relations.
8. Order Details:
Order details provide specific information about a purchase, including items, quantities, prices, and customer details. This data is essential for order processing, inventory management, and customer satisfaction.
9. Delivery Days:
Delivery days are the amount of time that passes from the point of dispatch to the destination of a product or shipment. It is a measurement of the time between shipment and delivery that offers information about how well fulfillment and supply chain operations are working together.
10. Pending Orders:
It refers to consumer purchase requests that have been received but not yet processed or fulfilled by the business. These orders are in a queue, awaiting necessary actions such as payment confirmation, packaging, and shipping.
Analytics is the driving force behind increased productivity, success, and efficiency in the large field of logistics. In warehouse management, analytics drives productivity by providing real-time insights into inventory levels, order processing times, and employee performance.
Analytics, for example, anticipates peak periods, helps manage stocking levels based on demand trends, and finds places where employee workflows need to be improved.This data-driven approach contributes to the overall efficiency, minimizes costs, and ensures timely order fulfillment, contributing to the success of logistics operations.
Benefits of Analytics Dashboards in Logistics
Supply chain management dashboards play a vital role in the logistics industry, it acts as a central nervous system, translating complex data into visually appealing, easy-to-understand, and actionable information.
As we delve into the benefits of analytics dashboards, we’ll learn how they can be the go-to tool for logistics companies and business intelligence looking to outperform competitors, streamline processes, and maintain their competitive edge.
Enhanced Operational Efficiency
The logistics operations are managed centrally by analytics dashboards. They offer a concise overview of important data from many sources, giving you a comprehensive picture of your operations.
The dashboards play a vital role in inventory management. Through predictive analytics, companies can anticipate demand and help manage inventory levels efficiently, avoiding overstocking or stockouts. This leads to lower holding costs and improved customer satisfaction.
Improved Decision-Making in Logistics
A logistics analytics dashboard creates the foundation for effective decision-making by reducing an abundance of data into an easily readable manner.
The advanced analytical features of these dashboards can help you uncover trends and patterns in your data that may not be immediately visible. For instance, they may highlight periods of high product demand, trouble spots in your supply chain, or chances for cost reduction. You can strategically deploy resources, optimize processes, and ultimately improve your business performance by implementing these findings.
Lastly, an analytics dashboard supports collective decision-making. Teams can reduce misunderstandings and conflicts by using prescriptive analytics to determine the best course of action to achieve a specific outcome or goal.
Customizing dashboards is key to offering precise insights to users. Planning the dashboard layout in advance through wireframes gives an initial glimpse of the final design, focusing on specific metrics essential for data visualization.
These wireframes serve multiple purposes across various domains like logistics, management, and digital marketing dashboards. Tools like Mokkup.ai specialize in creating tailored dashboard wireframes, aiding in planning the eventual design.
Reduced Costs and Maximized Profits
Consider operational expenses, which account for a significant amount of logistical expenditures. Any inefficiencies in your supply chain, such as a bottleneck in the warehouse or an excessively long delivery route, can be found with an analytics dashboard. The dashboard makes these problems easier to recognize and helps in reducing unnecessary expenses.
Logistics analytics dashboards are essential for maximizing the use of available resources. By identifying areas that require improvement, fixing bounce rates, and places where resources are used efficiently, they allow resources to be moved from low-impact to high-return areas, thereby increasing profitability.
According to BARC research, companies using big data saw an 8% increase in conversion rates while simultaneously reducing costs by 10%. UPS, a prominent logistics firm, exemplifies this trend.
Through the integration of big data analytics into their operations, UPS purportedly earned annual savings of approximately $300-$400 million. This demonstrates how big data can significantly enhance profitability within the logistics industry.
Uses of Analytic Dashboards in Logistics
Logistics Analytic dashboard is not just about fancy graphs and charts; they are powerful tools used to inform, optimize, and transform operations. They act as the brain of your logistics business, performing complex calculations and displaying outcomes in a simple, digestible format.
But how do they come into play in the daily hustle of logistics operations? Let’s delve into some of the examples of dashboard wireframes used in the logistics sector, highlighting how they influence your strategic decisions and operational effectiveness.
Warehousing Finance Analytics:
A Warehousing Finance Analytics dashboard is a visual representation of key financial metrics and performance indicators related to warehouse operations. It offers a clear and user-friendly overview of financial data, such as inventory costs, storage expenses, and operational budgets.
This dashboard wireframe enables stakeholders to monitor the financial health of the warehouse, track expenditure trends, and make data-driven decisions for optimizing resource allocation and improving overall financial efficiency in the warehousing industry.
CRM Analytics:
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) analytics dashboard includes key metrics and insights related to customer interactions and relationships. In brief, it provides an overview of critical data such as sales performance, customer engagement, and marketing effectiveness.
This wireframe allows businesses to track and analyze customer interactions, monitor sales trends, and evaluate the success of marketing campaigns, empowering them to make informed decisions to enhance customer satisfaction and drive business growth.
Productivity Analytics:
A Productivity Analytics dashboard offers a concise overview of key performance indicators, including the Kaizen Index, housekeeping metrics, and lean savings. The Kaizen Index measures continuous improvement efforts, while housekeeping metrics evaluates the cleanliness and organization of the workspace.
Additionally, the dashboard wireframe tracks lean savings, indicating cost reductions achieved through lean manufacturing principles. This tool makes it easy to evaluate overall productivity and efficiency, which supports data-driven decision-making for projects aimed at organizational improvement.
Financial Components Analytics:
A Financial Components Analytics dashboard wireframe is like a financial summary for logistics and freight management. It shows the differences between billed, unbilled, and invoiced freight scans. Also provides a brief overview of how much money is collected for freight charges and the status of debtors' payments.
This helps executives in maintaining the effectiveness of the logistics process and making wise budgetary decisions.
Freight Operations Analytics:
A Freight Operations Analytics dashboard wireframe provides key insights into various aspects of the shipping process. It includes reports on pickups, middle mile activities, merchant documents, lost and damaged items, and aging of shipments.
Additionally, the dashboard offers real-time updates accessible both on mobile devices and web platforms, allowing users to monitor and analyze performance metrics such as mobile vs. web updates.
Conclusion
Supply chain dashboards wield incredible transformative power in logistics. They facilitate accurate tracking, enhance inventory management, optimize routes, improve delivery tracking, and accurately forecast demand.
These functionalities streamline operations, positioning logistics businesses for exponential growth and enhanced efficiency. Mokkup.ai further facilitates this process by offering an extensive library of ready-to-use templates, empowering businesses to quickly implement tailored solutions for their specific needs.