Real-time visibility is the ability to  see in real time where shipments are and what the latest ETA is. So you and your customers know what’s happening in the supply chain at any moment. It combines live GPS, telematics, carrier, and IoT data to provide accurate, continuous updates on shipments across all modes of transport.

Real-time visibility is becoming a basic requirement of any company as they and their customers expect to have real-time insight into the status and ETA of the transport. Ideally, this is an integral part of your TMS and enables companies to: improve Carrier Management (MGT) performance, avoid customer calls asking where the shipment is, improve reliability of the transport, reduce demurrage and detention costs and increase customer satisfaction. With real-time visibility, platforms like Descartes MacroPoint and Descartes TMS planners can view shipment status, predict delays, and manage any issues proactively.

The exact tracking method is dependent on the transport mode and sometimes on the carrier capabilities. Descartes has several options and shipments can be tracked through multiple data sources: Electronic Logging Devices (ELD), carrier Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), mobile driver apps, IoT services, and logistics partners. Real-time visibility provides logistics with reliable visibility without the need for manual follow-ups or unconnected tracking tools.

Yes. When implemented correctly, transportation visibility can connect all stages of a shipment, from order creation to final delivery. The goal of real-time visibility in the supply chain is to eliminate blind spots, so you can follow shipments through ports, terminals, warehouses, and last-mile networks.

Yes, though the approach is different. Over-the-road data tends to be more granular, while air and ocean visibility rely on carrier integrations and predictive analytics. Software like Descartes MacroPoint bridges these sources within the TMS system, providing a unified picture across all modes.

Descartes' solution integrates easily with most major TMS, ERP, and WMS platforms through APIs, EDI, and other standard connection methods. This ensures that real-time visibility platform data flows seamlessly between systems, reducing manual input and improving information across the supply chain.

Results depend on your transport flow scope  but organizations see measurable gains such as fewer “where is my order?” customer calls, 80% reduced manual tracking efforts, improved on-time delivery ,enhanced carrier performance, and fewer demurrage and retention charges.

Real-time visibility allows businesses to keep customers informed automatically, providing accurate ETAs, proactive delay notifications, and shipment status updates. Businesses can share an automated mail notification, individual tracking link, or even a control tower view for an important customer that wants to have one overview of all their shipments. By offering transparency and predictability, companies reduce customer enquiries and improve satisfaction, creating a more reliable and responsive delivery experience.

Sharing real-time transportation visibility data with 3PLs enables both parties to measure and manage performance more effectively. It supports data-driven collaboration, improving on-time rates, reducing retention time, and identifying areas of improvement. Visibility encourages a shared understanding of operations, enabling logistics partners to align around common goals and KPIs.

The most common challenges when implementing real-time visibility include the timely cooperation from forwarders/carriers and their ability to provide the data needed. With a trusted partner that has a proven extensive network with many existing connections, multiple integration options, tools and advanced real-time visibility software, your business does not need to suffer from these issues. This ensures that visibility is accurate and consistent, regardless of carrier size, geography, or technology used.

Supply chains are more interconnected and time-sensitive than ever. Manual tracking and static data are often hidden costs in your operations team, making you less competitive ,and still, it can’t keep up with customer expectations or global disruptions. Real-time visibility in supply chain operations enables organizations to reduce delays, improve communication, manage risk, and strengthen overall supply chain resilience.

Visibility offers insight, and can trigger automated action, but you need to use orshare it wisely to get the real value from it. You can observe what’s occurring, yet the crucial next step is for your team, other stakeholders, or your customers to use that information efficiently. Ideally, by integrating real-time visibility workflows with analytics in your TMS, visibility can yield measurable improvements rather than just increasing awareness.

A TMS should provide full visibility into all of your shipments. It needs to be properly integrated with your other systems (ERP) and carriers. By integrating with forwarders, carriers and other data sources a TMS can provide real-time information on the status of your shipments, including tracking information, delivery times, and any potential delays or issues.
A TMS should also provide visibility into the overall performance of your transportation operations, allowing you to analyze trends and identify areas for improvement. This can help you to make data-driven decisions about carriers, routes, and modes of transportation, and optimize your transportation processes to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

A complete TMS should natively cover; all forwarder/carrier communication (incl bookings, status events and invoicing) and give details on:

• Real-Time Tracking
• Status updates
• Collaboration and Communication
• Analytics and Reporting
• Exception Management

A Transportation Management System (TMS) and Visibility software can be separate solutions. The more complete TMS platforms offer built-in visibility features tightly integrated into the whole TMS providing more flexible and advanced options to use the data for all TMS users and other internal or external users. Such complete TMS can also use that data to automatically communicate updates via EDI/API messages to forwarders/carriers if needed.

It's important to note that while having separate TMS and visibility solutions is possible, integration between the two is essential. Integrating the systems technically is one step but having an aligned data model is also very important. How does the TMS use the different datapoints it gets from a visibility provider and what logic is already applied by the visibility provider itself. This often results in numerous issues where data is not correctly interpreted.