The Supply Chain Visibility Maturity Ladder

By Neil Marchant, MET Supply Chain Consulting

Every supply chain decision tells a story.

Over the years, I’ve worked with consumer goods suppliers of every size: from multi-national FMCG giants to family-owned SMEs. Size doesn’t always equal sophistication. Some of the biggest companies have had products with millions of units of excess tying up working capital, firefighting daily, all because their visibility sat shockingly low on the maturity ladder.

So what is visibility maturity?

It’s a scale of how well a business uses their available data to see future demand.

It includes:

• How a company uses consumer demand data within the visible horizon,

• How well it understands the customer replenishment strategy and forecast inventory,

• How effectively it anticipates customer range changes, promotions and distribution shifts in advance.

Living in the Past

At the bottom of the ladder are businesses whose decision-making is built on history and instinct or gut feel. Forecasting decisions are rooted in historical sell in. Loudest voice in the room calls the shots based on their interpretation of the buyer's signals in their last meeting, decisions are largely instinct rather then fact based.

Stock isn’t categorised and retailer data, if it’s used at all, comes weeks late or not at all.

These businesses often look busy, but they’re blind to what’s coming.

One gut feel buying decision on the strength of a line without the appropriate visibility could leave a warehouse full of obsolete stock and a huge distraction from selling full priced product, a painful write-off and a hit to profitability. I've seen it many times.

When rear view planning is in force, the company is asleep at the wheel and blind to what's really going on.

Sensing the Edges

Businesses on the middle rungs begin to recognise that sales history alone isn’t enough. They start to bring structure and ownership to owning their external reality:

• Reviewing consumer demand forecasts against actuals.

• Planning in line with their customers seasonality, listings and distribution.

• Aligning year on year consumer sales growth or decline, current and past retail pricing and their own commercial plans to analyse their forecasts and vendor commitment.

Their decisions are becoming more disciplined, their data cleaner, their planning cycles more deliberate.

They can see further ahead, enough to anticipate some shifts, but still with blind spots. They might know when sales are slowing, but not why; or when a customer’s stock is building.

This is progress, but it’s still partially sighted.

Seeing the Future Clearly

At the top of the maturity ladder are suppliers who’ve built a dependable, consensus view of the future.

Their data is accurate, real-time, and integrated across sales, supply, and customer teams. They use EPOS data and customer on-hand stock to forecast replenishment needs. They know when a promotion or price change will impact sell-through before it happens.

These suppliers often operate structured S&OP or consensus processes. Meetings start with consumer sales trend discussions and what’s coming next.

Their tools have evolved too, moving beyond Excel into cloud-based platforms or AI-driven systems like Lumina, removing the dependency on individual spreadsheets and replacing it with shared, reliable intelligence.

The difference is profound:

• Forecasts become collaborative conversations, not arguments.

• Decisions are grounded in data, not instinct.

• Profitability improves, because inventory and demand are aligned with what the customers really need.

The Invisible Risk

Visibility maturity isn’t a tech problem. It’s a thinking problem.

Every business sits somewhere on the ladder, but what defines their position is how far they can see, and how much they trust what they see.

Low maturity companies live in the past, reacting to what has already happened. High maturity companies live in the future, adjusting course before problems emerge.

One of the most dangerous assumptions I see in SMEs is believing that visibility equals having data. It doesn’t. Many businesses are drowning in data, but starving for insight.

True visibility means joining the dots and understanding what your data is telling you about tomorrow.

Climbing the Ladder

Moving up the ladder doesn’t happen overnight. It starts with recognising the blind spots:

• Are replenishment forecasts based on stocking your own business to service what customers actually need in their own future reality?

• Do you know when range changes are coming, or do they take you by surprise?

• Is your data dependable, or full of errors that people “work around”?

• Is your planning process disciplined, or dependent on the loudest voice in the room?

The answers to these questions will tell you more about your visibility maturity than any dashboard can.

The Bottom Line

In consumer goods, the companies one step ahead are those who can see furthest ahead.

Supply chain visibility is one of the 3 main elements to help reduce excess and improve customer service levels. It’s about giving your business the clarity of future reality needed to protect profitability, serve customers better, and make smarter decisions faster.

The maturity ladder isn’t a metaphor. It’s a mirror.

Interested in getting a diagnostic of your own company's maturity and how to improve it?

Lets talk.

Email Neil Marchant (info@metsupplychainconsulting.com)