What Supply Chain Orchestration Truly Means: ShipBob’s Ecommerce Take 

A supply chain is like an orchestra. In an orchestra, dozens of individual instruments must all work together to create a beautiful sound; in your supply chain, dozens of individual processes, activities, and stakeholders must all work together to quickly and seamlessly move goods from the factory floor to the customer’s door.  

But just as one out-of-tune instrument can ruin an orchestra’s sound, an issue with one element in a supply chain can throw off all your operations. That’s why it’s important for brands to carefully orchestrate and coordinate their supply chains, so that they can deliver the right products to customers at the right times and at competitive prices. 

In this post, we explore what supply chain orchestration entails, how your business can benefit from it, and how experts like ShipBob can help.  

What is supply chain orchestration? 

Supply chain orchestration involves integrating various supply chain tasks, including production, procurement, inventory management, logistics, fulfillment, and even supplier and manufacturer relations so that they’re all working in harmony. Orchestration also involves optimizing every facet of these processes to reduce costs and lead times and eventually improve your bottom line. 

Core pillars of supply chain orchestration 

Effective supply chain orchestration depends on a few core functions. These include: 

• End-to-end supply chain visibility: Visibility into your entire supply chain lets you understand how goods are moving through the supply chain, identify inefficiencies, see where you’re racking up costs, anticipate delays, and make timely decisions to optimize your processes. 
• Disruption management: Being able to anticipate possible disruptions and manage them is key to good orchestration, as it allows you to quickly respond to and mitigate issues before they snowball and impact your entire supply chain.  
• Strategic planning: Effective supply chain planning helps you organize how various activities should be carried out, which gives you more control over processes and reduces risk.  

Supply chain orchestration benefits 

When you strategically orchestrate your supply chain processes and resources, it can really benefit your business. Here are some of the best advantages of a well-orchestrated supply chain. 

Increased visibility 

Supply chain orchestration goes hand-in-hand with supply chain visibility. As you combine multiple data sources to orchestrate your processes, you naturally get better visibility into everything that’s going on within your supply chain. This allows you to monitor your processes, events, shipments, inventory movement, and more, so you can quickly keep up with what’s happening and where and get the insights you need to respond accordingly. 

Improved efficiency 

Orchestrating your supply chain operations makes it so that all your different activities and functions work seamlessly together. This allows for a smoother operational flow, which in turn results in greater supply chain efficiency. 

For instance, orchestrating procurement so that reorders are timed perfectly, suppliers are up-to-date, and transportation is arranged helps ensure that the process is executed without a hitch. With issues and bottlenecks prevented, you can receive your inventory more quickly and easily, and ultimately get it into customers’ hands faster.   

Better decision-making 

With the increased visibility that comes from your supply chain orchestration efforts, you have more information than ever – information that you can leverage to make more strategic supply chain decisions.  

For instance, say that you need to plan your next round of inventory replenishment. As you orchestrate suppliers and timelines, you notice that one of your SKUs has not sold very well. You then know not to reorder any more of that particular unit, and avoid amassing excess inventory that’s expensive to store.  

Depending on what supply chain management platform you use, you may also have access to real-time analytics. These insights can inform your decisions, as well as help you discover opportunities for improvement. 

Resilience and agility 

A well-orchestrated supply chain is a well-prepared and resilient one in the event that something goes wrong. When your operations are coordinated and you have your pulse on what’s happening in your supply chain, you’re better equipped to anticipate disruptions and quickly adapt to them.  

Supply chain orchestration also makes your supply chain more agile, as it makes it easier to pivot in the face of unexpected events that might otherwise derail your plans.  

The role of software in supply chain orchestration 

While an orchestrated supply chain makes a world of difference to your brand’s productivity, efficiency, and budget, it is incredibly hard to do manually. That’s why most ecommerce brands today leverage software to automate and streamline supply chain orchestration.  

Here are just some of the most common supply chain technology solutions that brands rely on to help orchestrate their supply chains. 

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems 

An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system integrates core supply chain functions, removing silos to unify vital supply chain management activities in one place. This then makes it easier to orchestrate key functions. 

For instance, an ERP inventory system lets you keep track of your inventory, record stock levels, analyze your inventory performance, and use automation to streamline your replenishment efforts. This enables you to see how much stock you have for each product and when you’re running low, and automatically place replenishment orders to restock your inventory. 

Your ERP system can also give you a holistic view of your procurement and logistics by factoring in lead times, raw materials on hand, and forecasted demand. This improves the accuracy of your demand forecasts and helps you make timely replenishments. You can even get insights to plan your distribution logistics for faster fulfillment and better cost savings. 

ERPs can be used in conjunction with other solutions to deliver even deeper insight into your supply chain. For instance, ShipBob platform integrates with leading ERP systems to give you a comprehensive view of your inventory throughout the supply chain. This simplifies order and inventory management so you can optimize every aspect of your procurement, fulfillment, and distribution. 

“Because we’ve been able to utilize ShipBob to fulfill all of our orders as a mini-ERP – including integrating directly to Amazon, multiple B2B channels, and our Shopify store – everything is so streamlined.”

Tyler McCann, Co-Founder of Taste Salud 

Transportation orchestration platforms 

Because transportation is such a huge aspect of supply chain orchestration, many brands leverage platforms specifically designed to manage transportation and logistics. This includes platforms to track and manage your freight shipping so you can choose the fastest, most affordable shipping methods while also arranging necessary documentation. 

It also includes platforms to help you manage the last-mile delivery aspect of your ecommerce logistics. These solutions should be able to help you compare rates and transit times between multiple carriers, enabling you to provide fast and affordable shipping that improves customer satisfaction. Moreover, the platform should help you keep track of orders once they’re shipped and ensure timely deliveries. 

ShipBob’s partner ecosystem includes leading freight and shipping solutions to help with transportation orchestration. You can compare prices, choose carriers, generate shipping labels, and track orders in transit — all in one place. 

Advanced analytics 

You can’t orchestrate your supply chain effectively without advanced data analytics. You should be able to get a comprehensive idea of your supply chain performance at any time, so that you understand where you’re experiencing hiccups and what improvements you can make. 

In particular, brands looking to orchestrate supply chains will need insight into: 

• Inventory metrics (inventory turnover, on-hand inventory levels, SKU performance, inventory distribution, etc.) 
• Fulfillment metrics (average fulfillment cost, average fulfillment time, OTIF rate, etc.) 
• Shipping metrics (average shipping cost, average transit time, average billable weight, average shipping zone) 

Tracking for these analytics is sometimes built into software solutions. For instance, ShipBob’s analytics dashboard offers insight into all the metrics listed above, plus delivers real-time data so you can use the most accurate and timely information to orchestrate your supply chain functions.  

Internet of Things (IoT) 

With so many supply chain tasks to coordinate, it helps to have automations and technology in place to continuously monitor certain aspects of your warehousing and inventory. IoT (short for “Internet of Things”) devices are specifically designed to collect and exchange data through a single online network, making it easy to gather a lot of information quickly and efficiently.  

IoT devices like RFID tags, sensors, and other tools collect data about inventory, warehouse locations, storage conditions, or even how the inventory is handled – all of which can inform you supply chain orchestration.  

Business process orchestrator 

A business process orchestrator helps you streamline work processes that are dependent on multiple stakeholders. It helps you coordinate your automated processes to create a seamless workflow and boost efficiency. 

Supply chain partners: Case studies in expertise 

While the right software solution can go a long way, supply chain orchestration is often easiest when you have an expert partner guiding you. ShipBob, for instance, has helped thousands of brands optimize and coordinate their supply chains to save money, free up time, and delight their customers.  

Here are just three of the brands that turned to ShipBob to enhance their supply chain performance, and how they’ve grown since.  

Semaine Health 

Before partnering with ShipBob, Semaine Health was shipping DTC orders from just one fulfillment center. As a result, their costs and transit times were huge, and it was creating more customer service headaches than it was solving. They knew they needed to rework the inventory distribution in their supply chain to scale, so they turned to ShipBob. 

By leveraging ShipBob’s Inventory Placement Program to strategically distribute their inventory across multiple fulfillment centers, Semaine Health was able to cut average transit times by 1.6 days, lower fulfillment costs by $2.16, and reduce their error rates by 10x – all while quadrupling their order volume.  

“We quadrupled our order volume this year, and because our fulfillment and shipping costs have gotten so much cheaper, we’ve been able to support that scale. The Inventory Placement Program has also made my life a lot easier. We only have 5 people on our whole team, and I handle most of the inventory shipments. Now that we’re in the IPP, it’s super easy for me to get the inventory where it needs to go – I just send it to one hub location, and it gets distributed across ShipBob’s fulfillment center network. Not having to worry about shipments and distribution saves me several hours every week.”

Matt Crane, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at Semaine Health 

PetLab Co. 

As a thriving multichannel brand, PetLab Co. knew from the beginning that they needed a supply chain and fulfillment partner that could handle all their orders across all their sales platforms. With ShipBob’s DTC and EDI-automated B2B fulfillment solutions, PetLab Co. was able to orchestrate their omnichannel supply chain seamlessly. Since then, the pet care brand has experienced massive growth (including a) 20% year-over-year increase in orders) and fulfills 45,000+ orders a week. They were also able to maximize operational efficiency, with a 2-person logistics team handling all their fulfillment processes and 85% of orders delivered in 4 days or less. 

“What we aren’t experts in is warehousing and fulfillment. While we obsess over getting it right, we know that we are currently better served in finding a partner who makes it their job to care as much about our business, our products, and customer experience as we do. Some of the largest petcare companies are based in the United States and being a UK-based brand, ShipBob helps us bridge the gap with a strong presence covering all regions of the US.”

Stephanie Lee, COO at PetLab 

Sharkbanz 

Supply chain orchestration is challenging, but especially so leading up to peak season. Ocean safety gear brand Sharkbanz knew they would need more inventory if their holiday season was to run smoothly. They decided to try out FreightBob: ShipBob’s freight program designed to help merchants get freight from China to the US faster, then distribute the inventory to the proper fulfillment centers to ship out quickly.  

Thanks to the program, Sharkbanz achieved a 50% shorter freight time than their previous average and successfully stocked up on extra inventory to tide them over during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday rush.  

“As it turned out, our sales for BFCM exceeded expectations — so we were lucky that we had FreightBob to deliver extra inventory so quickly, including the ocean freight portion that they orchestrated. We were in a tough spot, and I don’t think we would have been able to fulfill all of our retail orders across every single SKU throughout the entire BFCM holiday period without it. It came at a really clutch moment!”

Nathan Garrison, Co-Founder and CEO of Sharkbanz 

Supply chain unification starts with ShipBob 

Supply chain orchestration can be very tricky, but it’s easier with the right 3PL partner by your side. Here are some of the ways that ShipBob helps ecommerce brands orchestrate – and optimize – their supply chains.  

Leverage a global fulfillment network 

By leveraging ShipBob’s fulfillment centers around the world, you can expand your brand’s international supply chain with ease. ShipBob has fulfillment centers in Canada, Europe, the UK, and Australia where ecommerce brands can store inventory and effectively fulfill international orders. This footprint enables you to build an efficient global supply chain with fast and affordable international fulfillment, plus minimize cross border complexities.  

Fulfill in-house with our industry-leading warehouse management system 

For those managing their fulfillment in-house, ShipBob’s industry-leading warehouse management system (WMS) gives you end-to-end visibility and control to manage your supply chain. 

Our proprietary WMS serves as a single source of truth to manage all aspects of your supply chain, including warehousing, inventory, order processing, fulfillment, transportation, and returns. Coupled with advanced analytics, you can use its real-time tracking capabilities to efficiently manage your operations. 

Enroll in our Inventory Placement Program (US-only) 

ShipBob’s Inventory Placement Program streamlines your inventory distribution efforts to make supply chain orchestration that much easier. You can send your inventory to one hub location, where ShipBob’s algorithm determines the ideal distribution of inventory across our network.  

ShipBob will then distribute the inventory across different U.S. fulfillment centers according to this recommendation on your behalf. That way, orders can get shipped out from the most appropriate fulfillment centers so that you can reduce transit times and shipping costs. 

2-day express shipping 

Successful supply chain orchestration is also about optimizing last-mile deliveries to enhance customer satisfaction. ShipBob’s 2-day express shipping solution ensures that orders are delivered to your customers within 2 days across the continental U.S. This makes use of a proprietary algorithm that leverages a combination of ground, air, and regional carriers for timely deliveries at a cost-effective rate. 

For more information on how ShipBob can help you orchestrate your supply chain, click the button below to get in touch. 

Supply chain orchestration FAQs 

Below are answers to the most commonly asked questions about supply chain orchestration.