Posted On August 15, 2019

We have all had that moment: You are lying in your darkened bedroom when you hear a sound that jars you out of your sleep. Maybe it’s the kids, wandering through the upstairs hallway, headed to the refrigerator to sneak another Capri-Sun. Maybe it’s the house itself, its bones settling in the night, just loud enough to wake you up. Maybe it’s the wind.

Maybe it’s something worse.

Whatever it is, something may have gone temporarily wrong. It could be something trivial—or it could be a big deal. Either way, you won’t know until you investigate the problem further. You reach over, trying to grab your cell phone off the nightstand as quietly as possible, because you know that the night will only get worse if you needlessly alarm your boss (aka, the spouse sleeping next to you).

You slowly reach over, your hand brushing over the nightstand surface, when you realize you have a problem: Sometime in the night, your phone has fallen off and likely landed under your bed. You fumble around, grasping at nothing, growing increasingly worried as you start to imagine the worst. In your mind the likely harmless noise coming from upstairs becomes a full-blown emergency, all because you lack something any shipping manager understands the value of:

Visibility.

Managing a supply chain without adequate visibility is like trying to find the source of midnight noise in a dark house: an inefficient solution that often leads to unnecessary panic—and a completely ineffective way to solve an actual problem.

Back in your darkened room, the moment your hand finally brushes your phone, your heart stops racing a little, because you know you have what you need:

A little bit of light.

You have the visibility necessary to get the information you need.

If you are a shipping manager, visibility is your cell phone light in a dark room. Problems that arise in a supply chain are far more complicated and costly than a four-year-old scaling the fridge shelves to get another packet of juice, even though it’s way past her bedtime.

A shipping manager doesn’t fear monsters under the bed.

A shipping manager fears a supply chain that goes dark somewhere just outside of Oakland.

At Flat World, we know just how scary that darkness can be.

That’s why we’ve focused on developing a suite of supply chain solutions that deliver the visibility shipping managers require, and the market demands. Our team knows reaching around in the dark—trying desperately to figure out the source of a problem—is the worst feeling any shipping manager can have. Any problem, no matter how bad, is easier to confront in the light, and many disruptions in your supply chain can be avoided altogether with the end-to-end visibility our industry-best Transportation Management System (TMS) provides.

Every shipping manager deserves—and needs—maximum visibility throughout their supply chain.

Without it, they can feel lost, and in the dark.

Visibility delivered by Flat Worldn is the light your shipping department needs.

Partner with us, and we will help you shine a light on a supply chain built on excellence.