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Knowing where products are in the development process is key to ensuring a new product launch is successful. Knowing where products are in an extended supply chain is key to understanding potential future availability impacts. Having early warning mechanisms that allow the buyer or merchandiser to mitigate risks of problems before the problems impact sales and service is a massive benefit.

Critical path and logistics tracking enable the commercial teams to define and monitor the progress of a process flow. Each step may have a different owner and the actors in the process may be located around the globe, and most likely not all work within the retail organisation. None of that dispersion matters as process tracking brings them altogether and gives each party immediate and real-time visibility of the status of a process and a personalised and prioritised task list to enable them to do what is required in the most timely and efficient manner.

In addition to the obvious benefits of an "early warning system" for things which could affect the business, critical path and logistics tracking can also provide valuable measures with regard to process adherence by the actors in a process. If supplier lead time is agreed as 30 days and yet regularly a supplier is delivering at 35 days it enables a conversation about improvement, or a realisation that the fact is 35 days is reflective of a true lead time. If an inventory management tool is calculating stock cover on the basis of the next shipment coming in in 30 days and in fact the lead time is 35 there is a risk of 5 days of out of stock and therefore lost sales. Of course it can be the other way - if a supplier is regularly delivering early the lead time can be reduced, reducing the safety stock levels (as cover is required for few days in the order cycle) and therefore capital investment in stock can be reduced with no impact on availability - that's a benefit we all know is desirable!

Having the true picture of lead times enables a more open and honest conversation with the suppliers that will have a direct bearing on inventory and availability.

Of course any critical path or tracking tool is only as good as the data within it. It is important to consider such as tool as a live system enabling continuous improvement and not a static monitor for complaining when things don't get done. The retailer can learn what is the true state of their critical path and lead times and make pragmatic changes to ensure that this new knowledge is built into future plans to avoid problems reoccurring.