As regulators and customers alike look for improved sustainability from businesses, shippers are searching for strategies to lower their carbon footprint, and they can find a tremendous opportunity in Scope 3 emissions. These indirect emissions from a company’s value chain include logistics and transportation. With the size of this category of emissions, it gives enormous potential for a positive impact, even by starting with incremental changes.

Today we’re looking at the challenges that shippers face in their efforts toward sustainability and how sustainability can be achieved through end-to-end visibility in supply chain management.

End-to-End Visibility is Necessary for Insight into Sustainable Supply Chain Management

Shippers often meet obstacles to maximizing the benefits of their sustainability initiatives. Firstly, there is a need for complete, end-to-end visibility over shipments. Without this, shippers cannot fully track their movement of goods, which is needed to optimize routes, reduce empty miles, and make informed decisions to minimize environmental impact. Going hand-in-hand with end-to-end visibility is real-time communication on shipment status, which shippers can use to communicate with supply chain partners to avoid inefficiencies that can lead to increased emissions. Shippers gain the necessary data to monitor statuses, identify bottlenecks, and adjust transportation plans accordingly. Armed with real-time visibility, shippers can optimize and reduce unnecessary fuel consumption and emissions.

However, tracking is only as useful as it is applicable. To truly leverage real-time tracking data and maximize sustainability initiatives, streamlined analytics and communication are vital. Shippers must have efficient systems in place to process and analyze the large amounts of tracking data available. Then shippers must communicate this data effectively, so that every aspect of operations can work together toward reduced emissions.

3 Strategies to Bolster Sustainability Through End-to-End Visibility

Shippers can find numerous use cases and benefits for end-to-end visibility. Here are three specific ways they can use this visibility to improve sustainability while simultaneously boosting operational performance.

1 Sustainability that Goes Past the Port

To achieve true end-to-end insights, shippers should have access to intermodal visibility, covering the next leg of transportation after containers reach their port of destination. Rail is already known to be a lower source of carbon emissions per ton-mile compared to transportation via truck, making it an effective strategy for improving sustainability. By implementing intermodal visibility solutions, shippers gain real-time tracking and monitoring capabilities throughout the entire shipping process, allowing them to optimize routes and minimize transit times. This holistic visibility empowers shippers to make data-driven decisions, ultimately helping them improve their sustainability efforts.

2 Event Awareness to Optimize Efficiency

Detailed insights into port and terminal events offer another level of data that shippers can use to improve efficiency. Having in-depth visibility, they can optimize their scheduling and coordinate the movement of goods within port and terminal facilities. With close monitoring of port activities, such as vessel arrivals, departures, and cargo handling like stuffing and de-stuffing containers, shippers can make decisions that reduce idle time, reduce congestion, and improve overall operational efficiency. This optimization reduces fuel consumption and carbon emissions due to unnecessary delays or inefficient handling processes. At the same time, this optimization offers the added benefit of helping to reduce detention and demurrage charges for shippers.

3 Actionable Insights to Increase Performance

Shippers can use analytics to extract actionable insights from raw data, revealing untapped improvement opportunities. This includes insights from both current and historical data. These analytics enable shippers to identify hidden patterns, trends, and correlations and gain valuable insights into operational inefficiencies and areas of improvement. Historical data can help shippers with recurring bottlenecks or peak demand periods. They can proactively adjust their operations to optimize efficiency. On the other hand, real-time data can provide immediate visibility into ongoing operations, enabling shippers to make fast-response decisions. This combination of proactivity plus agile reactivity ultimately improves performance and, with the right fine-tuning, enhances sustainability.

Expand Your Visibility with VIZION API and Searoutes

As we increasingly see across all industries, sustainability and reducing carbon emissions are not only for the companies that have built a brand name on being eco-friendly. The conversation is growing, as something that is very soon going to become necessary for all companies to think about. Those adopting more sustainable transportation practices now get the added benefits that come with it—increased transportation efficiency that helps their bottom line.

This is why VIZION has partnered with Searoutes to improve access to carbon emissions data. From a single platform, shippers can view their Searoutes’ data in context with VIZION API’s container tracking visibility, with the goal of making informed, sustainable decisions for every shipment. Learn more about sustainability with VIZION by scheduling a demo with us today.