Institutional knowledge, including which suppliers slip, which lanes underperform, and where costs quietly leak, is trapped in fragmented systems and individual operators' experience, making it inaccessible when decisions need to be made, according to new research presented by Beacon.
“The dysfunction is not in the teams - it's in the disconnected information between them. Finance works from figures the supply chain has moved on from. Production plans against delivery dates that have quietly shifted. The data exists, but because it's not connected, it cannot become insight,” says Fraser Robinson, CEO and co-founder at Beacon.
Key takeaways:
· Accumulated operational intelligence exists but remains locked in spreadsheets, emails, freight portals, carrier scorecards, and the lived experience of key personnel.
· When asked how many ocean shipments they were currently managing, several leaders could not provide a precise number, not because shipments weren't being tracked, but because data was so fragmented across systems that no unified view existed.
· The research identifies six ways data fragmentation creates measurable costs: emergency air freight (routinely 4-6 times ocean cost), demurrage and detention charges, stockouts forcing premium purchasing, excess safety stock, damaged goods shipped before discovery, and finance time spent on manual reconciliation.
