Visibility is evolving. Are you ready for what’s next?

Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of Straight Talk. Inside, we discuss:

• Visibility-as-a-Service

• Tariffs hit electronics

• A major rail consolidation

• Gen AI’s hype slows

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Explaining VaaS

We talk a lot about visibility in supply chains. In fact, it gets talked about so much that some people no longer understand what true visibility actually means. Everyone wants “end-to-end visibility.” But what does that entail and is it possible? And most importantly, at what cost?

That’s the question I posed to Frank Kenney, director of industry solutions at Cleo, earlier this year for a Talking Supply Chain podcast episode. Frank’s got deep roots in this space (he spent time at Gartner before joining Cleo), and has spent considerable time on visibility. While the concept of end-to-end visibility is the Holy Grail, getting there has been difficult for supply chains that span globally.

Visibility is a beginning

“End-to-end visibility… dot dot dot,” Kenney said. “Because the stuff that comes out after the dot are the actions.” In other words, visibility shouldn’t be the goal, it should be the genesis that triggers an action. It is that action or result that truly benefits the organization. You want visibility so you can do something, whether that’s reacting to disruption, managing customer expectations, or staying compliant in an increasingly regulated world.

For example, you learn that a tier-2 supplier has recently added a separate assembly line for a new customer. Does this impact you? Will the supplier speed up production? Maybe slow down production? Can it handle shipping twice the amount of product out of a single facility? Without that level of visibility, you could be facing a sudden change in your supply chain without warning. But, having that information is only useful if you do something with it.

Where visibility works well, Kenney said, is when it’s tightly linked to the customer experience. “We’re doing a great job where visibility really impacts the entire customer experience … the satisfaction of the consumer is the best indicator of whether that person is going to buy again.”

But here’s the challenge: the further you get from the customer, the worse visibility tends to be. Think raw materials, multi-tier suppliers, and distant logistics nodes. Visibility is often buried in ERPs, WMSs, and EDI systems. “It tends to get commoditized down to a technology stack,” Kenney noted. “It’s not front of mind to the person responsible for your … gross revenue retention numbers.”

This leads to what Frank calls the “curse of information” - when you have so much data, but no clarity on what’s actually useful.

So what’s next?

Frank introduced a concept that has become quite popular in other arenas—as-a-Service. As in Visibility-as-a-Service. Think of it like Robotics-as-a-Service except instead of buying a single visibility solution and hoping it fits your needs, you “subscribe” to just the visibility that matters for your business.

“You can have the whole kit and caboodle and you can choose the things that are important to you,” Kenney said. And just like cloud computing, it’s elastic, meaning you can scale up or down depending on your seasonality, partners, or regulatory needs.

From a financial standpoint, this also changes the game. “It becomes an operating expense, it becomes a subscription,” Kenney explained. That means fewer big upfront investments and more flexibility to adjust as your supply chain evolves.

Of course, visibility for visibility’s sake doesn’t move the needle. Kenney suggested the way visibility solutions have been purchased in the past are akin to a newspaper subscription (does anyone still have one of those?) “If a man has a newspaper subscription but doesn’t read the newspaper, but just continues to stack ’em up in the corner, it’s really not doing anything for you.”

In other words, visibility only matters if it leads to action.

That’s where the future lies. And creating a Visibility-as-a-Service concept introduces the ability to scale visibility as you need it, and as you use it. Don’t care about tier-2 suppliers? No worries. But, do you want visibility all the way through to sourcing, you can have that.

As supply chains continue to evolve and adjust to geopolitical concerns, visibility has become a must. That is not debatable. The question is how do you achieve it?

You can listen to the full conversation here.

Electronics prices rising

Tariff-driven disruption is rattling electronics supply chains more intensely than during the pandemic, according to Supplyframe’s Commodity IQ report. In April 2025, its Lead Time Index hit a record 166.6, a 75% spike from March, driven by demand surges and low inventories especially for capacitors and interconnects, it said. Supply constraints and rising AI-driven hardware needs are contributing to fears of shortages and future price hikes. With inventory at its lowest levels since the pandemic, price pressures are mounting, the company noted, based on historical precedent in its index. Five months after the Commodity IQ Inventory Index hit prior lows in May, June, and July of 2021, there were increases in the Commodity IQ Price Index, which saw a 6.5% rise in Q4 2021 and a 14.1% jump in Q1 2022. While the company said it is too soon to show what level of price hikes will impact the electronics industry this time, the Index is showing similar characteristics to the 2021-22 timeframe. Microcontrollers and microprocessors are already set to rise 14% sequentially in Q2 of 2025, it said, with a Supplyframe predicting a 6% increase for July when final data comes in.

Ridin’ the rails

Union Pacific will acquire Norfolk Southern in an $85 billion deal, creating what company executives say is the first coast-to-coast freight railroad in the U.S. The deal is subject to regulatory approval and could be completed by early 2027. Assuming successful conclusion, what it would do is allow shippers moving goods via rail to contract with one provider for the entirety of the journey. The rail network would cover 43 states. While the rail companies believe it will improve service, rail unions are vowing to fight the deal, saying that “further consolidation has only led to job cuts, worse service and safety concerns.” Read the full story here.

What I read this week

With the current geopolitical environment driving supply chain network changes, it’s important to know the environment you are moving into. … Gen AI may not be living up to its hype, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t value to be found. … Hurricane season means unforeseen disruption, but businesses can prepare for the unknown. … Dynamic pricing’s time has come, and for sourcing leaders, it could be a difference-maker. … The White House has moved up the de minimus exemption end date nearly two years to Aug. 29. … John Lash, group vp of product strategy for e2open, offers his take on what shippers need to know regarding tariffs. … DAT is acquiring the Convey digital freight network platform from Flexport.

Thank you for reading,

Brian