SCIKIQ Supply chain control tower is a connected, customized dashboard of data of critical business KPIs, and significant events occurring throughout the organization. A Supply chain Control Tower allows you to gather real-time valuable intelligence, minimize or eliminate manual processes, and break down data silos so that business executives can make decisions quickly for the business.
In today’s volatile business environment, where disruptions like pandemics, geopolitical shifts, and supply shortages have become the norm, a Supply Chain Control Tower is no longer a luxury—it’s a competitive necessity. Acting as the central intelligence hub for the entire supply chain, a control tower provides organizations with real-time, end-to-end visibility and control across all operations. This high level of transparency allows businesses to see issues as they arise, make rapid, data-driven decisions, and proactively address potential disruptions before they impact performance.
The value of a control tower goes far beyond visibility. Studies show that companies with optimized, data-driven supply chains can achieve 25% faster order-to-delivery cycles and 15-20% lower supply chain costs. These improvements translate into powerful market advantages, allowing businesses to deliver faster, reduce operational costs, and ultimately increase customer satisfaction. Global leaders like Procter & Gamble and Nestlé have leveraged control towers to navigate crises, maintain inventory levels, and ensure on-time deliveries—even during supply chain upheavals. Read Supply Chain Dive
Beyond operational resilience, control towers are also strategic tools for growth. With predictive analytics and AI, these platforms help organizations anticipate demand shifts, identify trends, and enhance profitability. According to Gartner, businesses implementing a control tower can save 5-10% in supply chain costs annually, freeing up resources for innovation and expansion. For companies navigating the complexities of today’s global market, a Supply Chain Control Tower provides the agility, precision, and foresight needed to stay ahead of the competition.
Most important Supply Chain KPIs and Critical Business Metrics to track
Profitability: It’s the measure of how much money a business makes after covering all its costs. It includes
- Trade lane: This is a route or path that goods are shipped through from one location to another.
- Customer level: This refers to the individual or specific group of customers that a business focuses on.
- Organization-wise: It’s about how things are divided or categorized within a company, like by department, office, or entity.
Business performance: This is how well a Supply chain Department or company is doing in terms of achieving its goals and objectives. It includes
- Yield (E2E): This is the overall profit made from the start (beginning) to the end (finish) of a process or project.
- Booking: It’s the process of making a reservation or order for a product or service.
- Conversions: These are the number of people who complete a desired action, like buying a product or signing up for a service.
Customer analytics: This is the study of customer behavior and patterns to improve business strategies. It includes
- Retention: It’s the ability of a business to keep its customers over a period of time.
- New Accounts: These are freshly created customer relationships or contracts with a business.
- Receivables: This is money that a company has earned from sales but hasn’t yet received.
- Pre-sales: These are activities done before a customer makes a purchase, like marketing and product demonstrations.
Finance: This is the management of money, including investing, borrowing, saving, forecasting, and budgeting. It includes
- Operational PnL: This is the Profit and Loss statement showing the earnings and expenses from a company’s main business activities or Supply chain Activities
- Financial PnL: This is the Profit and Loss statement reflecting the overall financial performance of a Supply chain including revenue, costs, and expenses.
- AR/AP Analysis: This is the examination of Accounts Receivable (money owed to a company) and Accounts Payable (money a company owes) to assess the financial health of the supply chain and the company.
Sales Analytics: It’s the use of data to understand sales trends and improve sales strategies. It includes
- Conversions/bookings: This is the rate at which potential customers are turned into actual bookings or sales.
- Revenue Trends: These are patterns or changes in the amount of money a company earns over a specific period.
- Sales Quota management: This is the process of setting, tracking, and achieving sales targets.
Supply chain Operations: These are the day-to-day activities that a company carries out to do business. It includes
- Lost, New, Active: These typically refer to the status of customers – ‘Lost’ have stopped doing business with you, ‘New’ are recently acquired, and ‘Active’ are currently engaged with your business.
- Utilizations: This is the degree to which resources (like employees or equipment) are being used effectively.
- Detailed view: This means looking closely at something, with lots of information, to get a deeper understanding
Examples & case studies of Supply Chain Control Tower success
Unilever’s Supply Chain Control Tower has been instrumental in managing its extensive network of 3,327 production lines, 580 copackers, and 5.3 million annual shipments across 190 countries. This centralized platform enables real-time data analysis, allowing Unilever to reduce lead times from days to hours, achieve agile “no-touch planning” through AI, and adapt daily production based on sales trends( Report). The control tower also supports Unilever’s sustainability efforts, using real-time data to cut costs and track environmental impacts, aligning with their goal of achieving net zero carbon in operations by 2030.
MIT Sloan discusses this case study: Cisco’s journey to supply chain resilience took a major leap after struggling to maintain supply chain performance during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. At the time, despite a business continuity dashboard, Cisco faced immense difficulty responding to a $1 billion surge in emergency equipment orders to replace damaged telecommunications infrastructure. In 2011, however, when a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, Cisco’s newly established resilience processes enabled an immediate, organized response. Within just 12 hours, Cisco’s risk managers identified all suppliers in the impacted region, assessed the effects on over 300 suppliers, and cataloged 7,000 affected parts with assigned risk ratings. By the end of the first day, Cisco had addressed 118 customer inquiries and deployed a targeted mitigation plan, avoiding revenue losses despite the global disruption. This rapid, data-driven response illustrates Cisco’s advanced supply chain resilience, allowing it to effectively manage even the most complex disruptions.
SCIKIQ Case study on Supply Chain Control Tower Success
The less-than-container-load (LCL) industry is a crucial segment of global shipping, facilitating the transportation of smaller cargo volumes by consolidating multiple shipments into a single container. LCL shipping supports global trade by maximizing container space utilization and reducing transportation costs for shippers who do not have enough cargo to justify a full container load.
ECU Worldwide, a global leader in LCL shipping with over 300 offices across 180 countries, servicing 2,400 trade routes and 40,000 port pairs, partnered with SCIKIQ to tackle the complexities of its vast operations. With multiple clusters across 75+ countries, three product lines, six data centers, and data from 40 non-standardized sources, ECU faced challenges due to fragmented operations and a lack of unified reporting.
SCIKIQ implemented a Supply Chain Control Tower to streamline data, unify sources, and provide real-time insights, resulting in a 30% reduction in processing time, 20-40% sales growth, and a 25% increase in customer adoption for their digital platform, ECU360. Additionally, ECU’s digital platform, ECU360, saw a 25% rise in customer adoption, showcasing how SCIKIQ’s data solutions enabled ECU to optimize global operations and drive sustainable growth.
Read how Global Trade in LCL & Shipping Industry is transforming.
https://scikiq.com/blog/transforming-global-trade-in-lcl-shipping-industry/
How Smart Supply Chain Control Towers Are Helping Global Giants Thrive Amid Disruptions
The emergence of smart supply chain control towers has reshaped global logistics, helping companies like Toyota, Nestlé, Walmart, and Johnson & Johnson not only withstand disruptions but also maintain efficiency, resilience, and responsiveness. These control towers—powered by advanced technologies such as generative AI, IoT, data analytics, and machine learning—offer real-time visibility, predictive insights, and automated workflows that enable companies to tackle complex supply chain challenges head-on.
For example, Toyota used its supply chain control tower to weather the 2021 semiconductor shortage by pinpointing vulnerable suppliers, reallocating resources, and optimizing production, which helped minimize plant shutdowns compared to competitors. Nestlé implemented a similar system to monitor 1,000 suppliers globally, integrating data across 187 countries, which reduced lead times by 20% and improved inventory turnover, ensuring product availability despite disruptions in raw material supplies.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson & Johnson relied on its supply chain control tower to manage the unprecedented demand for health and hygiene products. The control tower allowed the company to track real-time data from suppliers and adjust production swiftly, resulting in 90% on-time delivery rates and a 15% reduction in logistics costs during a period of peak demand. Walmart, known for its robust supply chain, leveraged predictive analytics and AI to anticipate consumer demand shifts and ensure consistent inventory levels in over 10,500 stores worldwide. Walmart’s control tower enabled 30% faster replenishment cycles, helping it avoid stockouts even amid massive demand surges.
Globally, companies using supply chain control towers have reported 25-40% reductions in lead times, 15-30% increases in forecast accuracy, and 20-30% cost savings in logistics and inventory management. By harnessing these advanced systems, leading organizations have not only protected operations during disruptions but have also transformed their supply chains into strategic assets that drive agility, operational efficiency, and long-term profitability.
How to build a Supply chain control Tower & Dashboard
A supply chain control tower is a centralized platform that provides visibility into the end-to-end supply chain, metrics, Business Critical KPI enabling organizations to monitor and manage their operations in real-time. To build a supply chain control tower, you need to follow a structured approach that involves several key steps.
- Define the scope and objectives: Define the scope of your supply chain control tower, which could include the entire supply chain or a specific part of it, such as transportation, inventory management, or demand planning. Also, define the objectives of your control tower, such as reducing lead times, improving customer service, or increasing supply chain visibility.
- Identify data sources: Identify the data sources that you will use to populate your supply chain control tower. This could include data from ERP systems, transportation management systems, warehouse management systems, and other sources. Ensure that the data is accurate, timely, and relevant to your objectives.
- Choose technology solutions: Choose the technology solutions that will enable you to collect, store, and analyze data. This could include a variety of tools, such as business intelligence software, data visualization tools, and machine learning algorithms. Ensure that the technology you choose is scalable, flexible, and easy to integrate with your existing systems.
- Design dashboards and reports: Design dashboards and reports that provide visibility into your supply chain performance. Dashboards should be customizable, allowing you to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and track progress towards your objectives. Reports should be automated and provide insights that enable you to make data-driven decisions.
- Implement processes: Implement processes that enable you to act on the insights provided by your supply chain control tower. For example, you may need to implement processes for inventory management, transportation optimization, or demand planning. Ensure that your processes are aligned with your objectives and that they are communicated clearly to all stakeholders.
- Monitor and optimize: Continuously monitor your supply chain performance and optimize your processes based on the insights provided by your control tower. This will enable you to improve your supply chain performance over time and achieve your objectives.
Overall, building a supply chain control tower requires a combination of technology, processes, and people.

Book a Demo with us to explore how you can improve your supply chain organization with a Supply chain control Tower & right Metrics. Explore the SCIKIQ Supply chain control Tower here. and Book a Demo
Unraveling the Oil Supply Chain: Supply chain Management solutions for energy companies to run the world
SCIKIQ Case study with one of the Industry leaders in LCL Segment.
https://scikiq.com/blog/revolutionising-data-reporting-dashboards-for-a-global-logistics-leader/
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