In an increasingly interconnected and dynamic business landscape, monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing supply chain operations is essential. And that's when a supply chain dashboard comes to play.

Supply chain dashboards offer a real-time, visual representation of a company's supply chain operations, providing key insights at a glance. 

They are a central hub for data-driven decision-making, enabling businesses to track performance metrics, identify bottlenecks, and forecast future trends.

This article covers all you need to know about supply chain dashboards, exploring their key components, benefits, and how they can effectively enhance operational efficiency and strategic planning. 

This way, whether you're a logistics manager looking to improve your processes or a small business owner wanting to analyze your deliveries, you'll find important information about your company.

A supply chain dashboard is a business analysis process that allows businesses to examine their supply chain KPIs and elements to achieve their goals.

When you explore how each component works and contributes to customer satisfaction, you can prepare business plans that overcome roadblocks and delays. You can use specialized software to find correlations and prepare solutions and continuous improvement with supply chain data.

All managers must consider five elements in supply chain management when analyzing business intelligence components.

Supply Chain Forecast & Planning

The whole supply chain management process bases the operation on planning and forecasting events.

Managers must use inventory management and analytical thought to prepare contingency plans based on all the chain components to meet customer demands. All materials and products must be available to write your inventory levels without overinvesting.

It’s a process aligned with supply chain KPI (Key Performance Indicators) that all companies must go through to ensure four things:

• Cost reduction.
• Cost savings.
• Inventory accuracy.
• Potential bottlenecks.

Raw Materials Purchase

Raw materials are necessary to develop a company’s final product. The whole process depends on it. This is why a good supply chain performance needs a full-time purchaser that ensures material availability.

But this is more than getting components on time and in the right quantities. It involves:

• Quality control
• Standards verification
• Normative compliance
• Supply chain KPI compliance
• Contract management
• Delivery processes
• Damage-free delivery
• Inventory management
• Supplier communication

Manufacture

Every business has a certain type of manufacturing process. There's something to craft, whether a product or a service. Supply chain management takes the production’s control and ensures it’s organized, high-quality, and that everything is recycled if needed.

All this is prepared so the manufacturing process is developed seamlessly. The manager will oversee productivity and other key metrics while controlling transportation costs and warehouse operations to comply with packaging and logistics requirements.

Logistic & Product Delivery

Logistics and product delivery involve five aspects:

• Network delivery coordination.
• Shipping logistics, accounts, and fleet management.
• Price, quality, and speed delivery management.
• Payment methods and dispatching selection.
• Payment reconciliation and invoice preparation.

Depending on how your process and budget work, you could also outsource deliveries or hire an in-house team. You should send the products on time to meet customers expectations.

Returns

Returns are a normal situation of customer dissatisfaction due to your product not meeting their expectations.

These items are tracked and assessed to review the customer’s issue and solve it for future acceptance.

Companies use supply chain dashboards to analyze and understand supply chain real-time data.

This allows them to constantly improve their processes and gather more information about customer satisfaction, inventory management, and product development.

A business turns all this information into big data to prepare last-minute or well-thought strategies to manage all supply chain stages.

There are four types of supply chain dashboards you can use in your business. Each varies depending on your approach.

Descriptive Dashboards

A descriptive dashboard allows you to get internal and external historical data to identify patterns in delays and deliveries.

This process also lets you identify bottlenecks and give warehouse managers comprehensive tasks they must complete to have the inventory and product deliveries on check without unnecessary costs.

Predictive Dashboards

Predictive documents give you the ability to forecast events and predict multiple scenarios to prevent unfortunate situations such as:

• Increased freight cost
• Returns
• Unexpected delays when delivering products

This could result in massive losses for your company.

Cognitive Dashboards

Cognitive dashboards use real-time tracking to understand human patterns with machine learning to automate processes.

This transforms into ways to reduce costs, get real-time insights, and identify opportunities to dive deep into how customers feel, react, and like your product.

Prescriptive Dashboards

This combines predictive and descriptive dashboards to help you prepare an action plan and strategic decisions to reach your business goals.

Businesses need warehouse management, unwanted cost reduction, and boost sales. They can achieve all that using a supply chain dashboard.

Here are the benefits of using supply chain analytics on your business:

Improved Warehouse Management

This will help you reduce uncertainty when it comes to items, inventory days, and inventory rotation.

The dashboard will also analyze customer preferences, history, and market trends to help businesses plan their stock and keep the products available. This is also one of the most important fundamental indicators to measure a business's performance.

Boosting Profits

Supply chain analytics give managers insights about the best products with higher demand. This allows the company to anticipate the market and increase sales while reducing costs.

A business could analyze to predict how much you’re expected to sell and prepare for it.

Better Quality Products

Quality standards are essential for a successful company. A dashboard provides information to identify gaps in your manufacturing, purchasing, or delivery processes.

You can recheck these stages to ensure your products meet normative and national obligations. This will turn into higher returns as you increase transparency with your customers.

Big Data Usage

Businesses need information and datasets to prepare predictive situations and develop strategic growth plans. A supply chain dashboard allows you to use big data during analysis to forecast events.

This will give you hints and prepare you for future situations instead of reacting to them.

There are seven key features when using Supply Chain dashboards that you must consider:

Real-Time Data Analysis

Using old and static data promotes inaccurate information. Supply chain dashboards use real-time datasets to ensure you are compiling and analyzing current events. This will allow you to prepare immediate action and ensure a proper customer order cycle time.

KPI Realization

Supply chain dashboards have multiple uses, but the most important is their ability to align with your KPIs. Use them to create thoughtful, quick reports focusing on your business goals. 

Some of the indicators you could include are:

• Cash-to-cash cycle.
• Orders delivered.
• Perfect order rates.
• Price variance.
• Shipment quality.
• On-time deliveries.
• Invoices mistakes.
• Returns.
• Line fill rate.
• Volume fill rate.

Deep Dive Analysis

A powerful dashboard allows you to see potential issues right away and have a deep analysis of their causes and effects. You should look into the problem from unique perspectives and find efficient solutions.

User-Based Point of View

A dashboard with a user-based point of view allows stakeholders to see information and management comfortably. This way, a regular staff won’t see data beyond the access level, and the manager can approach all types of information.

Sets the Ground for Effective Decisions

The whole point of preparing a supply chain dashboard is establishing clear decisions to help the procurement, selling, delivery, and manufacturing processes. That said, executive and semi-senior managers must have access to all sorts of datasets used in the document.

This way, staff managers can:

• Consolidate all the elements involved in a supply chain.
• Drive users and stakeholders to take measures to improve all processes.

Collaborative View With Suppliers & Vendors

The collaborative perspective in the supply chain dashboard is essential. You could use the document and show it to your suppliers and other stakeholders to create a comprehensive strategy around troubled areas.

For example, you could track orders and invoice errors and let your supplier know with proof that items are missing from the previous shipment.

Responsive Design

This is not a crucial factor, but it could be helpful when trying to solve situations ASAP. You should give access to all stakeholders so they can see the supply chain dashboard through their mobile.

This could increase response speed and progress when building a business plan.

A supply chain dashboard should include at least 10 of the following metrics.

Gross Margin Return On Investment

Every company aims for the ultimate goal, to get the best ROI (Return on Investment) for all their commercial activities.

Regarding the supply chain, the gross margin ROI refers to how much revenue the company makes over every dollar invested in inventory and manufacturing processes.

You can have insight into this by following your monthly KPIs and examining which are underperforming and which are developing greatly to keep investing in them.

Formula: Gross Margin ROI = Gross Profit / Average Inventory Investment.

Cash-to-Cash Time Cycle

This metric calculates how long your resources can transform into cash flow. 

With this indicator, you consider when your business pays something and when cash enters. The shorter the conversion cycle ends, the better because your product sells fast and ensures less money is tied to an operation.

Formula: Cash-to-Cash cycle = DIO + DSO - DPO. 

Where:

• DIO: Days Inventory Outstanding.
• DSO: Days Sales Outstanding.
• DPO: Days Payable Outstanding.

Perfect Order Rate

It considers your success in delivering orders without incidents. This includes damages, delays, losses, or inaccuracies. The higher the numbers are, the more customers receive their orders perfectly.

Formula: Perfect Order Rate = Percent orders delivered on time x Percent of orders completed x Percent of orders without damage x Percent of orders with accurate documentation x 100.

Warehouse Costs

Warehouse costs are determined by the time and space your merchandise or materials occupy in your stock. These expenses may vary but still indicate a healthy supply chain and opportunities to reduce costs.

You’ll have to consider the following actions to determine warehouse costs:

• Staff hourly costs

• Warehouse rent

• Utility bills

• Equipment

• Materials

• Supplies

When you identify all this, you can operate more efficiently and adjust where needed.

Returns Rate

Return rates measure the events and motives of why your customers returned an item. This information will help you develop your business and improve your product.

A supply chain dashboard isn’t complete without a chart that displays all this information and explains the main reason for your returns. The idea is that you can assess weaknesses and critical areas of all the processes to improve your service.

Delivery Time Rate

This metric focuses on checking how long it takes a customer to receive their order since they press “purchase.”

This KPI considers all the processes until your customer has their package on their doorstep, which means you could discover delays in one of your processes to avoid customer dissatisfaction.

You could also change shipment policies or inform your clients of delays due to an uncertain situation.

Freight Bill Accuracy

Issues during shipping are critical for your business. And billing accuracy tracks the shipping process to spot trends, improve your process and help your business avoid bad situations.

Formula: (Error-free freight bills / total freight bills) x 100

Inventory Turnover

Inventory turnover provides information to businesses about the number of times they can sell their stock. This indicator shows proper planning, process strategy, and management levels.

You can calculate this KPI by determining the time shipping rate and comparing it against other competitors.

(DSO) Days Sales Outstanding

DSOs measure how easily you can generate revenue from customers. This metric’s result showcases how many days you need to collect money and demonstrates that selling on credit slows your cash flow. 

Aim to lower numbers when calculating DSOs to ensure you have a steady and functional cash flow stream.

Supply Chain vs Sales Cost

This metric considers the cost analysis and connects it to sales directly. It helps you calculate the entire supply chain costs and give you insights about how much you’re spending compared to your revenue.

This metric is an essential part of your supply chain dashboard as it provides a clear picture of your actual spending and compares it with your current sales, hence obtaining your profits and potential savings.

If you want to know if you’re successful with your current processes, you could take your results and benchmark them.

Days of Supply Inventory

Inventory days supply gives you an accurate metric about when you will run out of stock if you don’t purchase or assemble more products.

This metric allows you to understand, prepare and avoid inventory-related situations such as shortage or overproduction.

Delivered on Time and In Full (OTIF)

OTIF is one of the most powerful metrics of a supply chain dashboard. This value clearly shows you your delivery success during a timeframe. This means it only considers the successful orders passed through the supply chain, from manufacturing to delivery.

OTIF considers the following factors:

• Right product delivery.
• High-quality standards.
• Correct quantities.
• Right destinations.

Your results will show if there’s space to optimize processes or what you can do to tweak your strategies.

Freight Cost per Unit

The freight cost per unit expresses how much you pay for shipping your merchandise. It’s an essential metric for sustainable businesses and could potentially hinder your profits if not optimized.

Formula: Overall freight cost / Number of units you’ve sent.

If you don’t control this statistic, it could cost you money, time, and loyalty. Use it wisely to develop strategies and cut down expenses related to the shipment.

Packing Material Usage

Measuring how much materials are used to develop packaging is essential for your business. If you don’t take it seriously, your product could arrive in bad condition. But, if you overuse packing material, you’ll reduce your profits.

So, measuring how many elements are used through the production process and benchmarking is necessary to find a balance between investment and quality delivery.

Supply Chain Cycle Time

Supply chain cycle time refers to how long it takes to complete a customer’s order considering if your stock is zero.

The idea is to test your processes' agility and control each stage. The shorter the cycle, the more efficient you are.

Damage-Free Delivery

All businesses suffer product loss. This is inevitable. Yet, there is certain control over it, and you know when things are getting out of hand. That’s why you must keep tracking your deliveries and ensure they are received without details.

The Damage-free delivery allows you to know exactly how many packages were delivered untouched. It uses real-time and historical datasets to point out where the problem is.

Turn-Earn Index (TEI)

The turn-earn index is a metric to understand how your company uses its inventory. It considers the gross margin and stock turnover to discover how your processes use materials and products to make profits.

Its result will show how low or high your inventory needs to be to gain money while maximizing efficiency.

Formula: Turn-earn Index = Inventory turnover ratio x gross profit %) x 100

Freight Bill Accuracy

The freight bill accuracy lets you see how many shipments sailed successfully during a certain period. You can see orders, quantities, deliveries, and shipping information. The idea is that you see an accurate number of deliveries corresponding to the number of freights.

The number should be paired with your sales to be considered a successful metric. Otherwise, it could mean you’re having incongruences and spending more on deliveries than necessary.

Formula: Freight bill accuracy = (number of correct freight bills / total freight bills) x 100

When preparing a supply chain dashboard, follow these tips to improve readability and information access.

• Give information to those who need it: Part of the appeal of a supply chain dashboard is its interactivity and the possibility of accessing information if you have enough permission to do it. This is essential as you need complete information to create a comprehensive plan to respond to all the unfortunate situations presented in the document. 

• Prepare the report for seasonal events: Not all supply chain issues happen during a fixed date, some of them occur due to the seasons. Winter tends to be a more problematic season than others. So, ensure you include those situations even though they’re not as frequent as others.

• Use the right KPIs: Only add the metrics you have information about to your dashboards. It’s not worth including a perfect order rate if you’re a small business that hasn’t made the first sale yet.

• Leave space for a what-if scenario: Your dashboard should have space for forecasting. This will allow you to plan and consider multiple strategies.

After considering all this information about how supply chain dashboards work, you may ask how to create one. We’ve scattered the internet and found intuitive templates for your business.

Template #1

Supply Chain Dashboard Template - Download Link

Template #2

Construction Supply Chain Management Template - Download Link

Template #3

Executive Dashboard Template - Download Link

But where can you open these templates?

RoyalCDKeys brings you a low-cost and original Microsoft Office 2021 CDKey that you can use for your personal projects or business.

You can use Word or Excel to create a reporting tool that makes sense for your organization. Use them to build graphs, charts, and formulas that update automatically with real-time data.

And if you want to add more information to the templates above, you can do it without too much struggle.

Supply chain dashboards are powerful tools, fundamental for businesses that want to get information about their processes and thrive in a modern and data-driven environment.

They can transform complex data into actionable insights, serve as the compass guiding businesses through the hardships of supply chain management, empower organizations to anticipate potential disruptions and streamline operations while making strategic decisions that drive growth and competitiveness.

Now, a dashboard is only as good as the data it displays and the people who interpret it. So ensure you have the right people analyzing it and developing a relevant business plan for your company that englobes the supply chain issues.