Ways to Optimize Operations for Increased Visibility

Every CEO and strategy leader seeks opportunities to make better decisions that will increase efficiency and deliver more value more sustainably. While that is never an easy task, it is especially challenging in today’s volatile environment. How can you sustain profitability and growth when critical factors related to planning, sourcing, manufacturing, and delivering your products are changing rapidly?

It is impossible to control external variables—from geopolitical risks to tariffs and duties. What you can control is the level of visibility you have into your own operations.

With analyses based on data that’s current, accurate, and granular, you can improve planning and make better strategic decisions. You can respond more quickly and effectively to changing market opportunities and competitive threats. Most importantly, you can position your organization for stability and growth over the long term.

1. Cleanse your operations data.

Virtually every organization continues to wrestle with duplicative, disjointed, and “messy” data. By engaging in a data cleansing exercise to standardize how you describe key aspects of your operations—including raw materials, services, suppliers, production, and logistics—you can position your organization to take full advantage of advanced analytics capabilities. Cleaning up existing data sets is only the initial move. The critical next step: establishing governance for maintaining clean, usable data over time.

2. Quantify the fully landed cost of key elements in your supply chain.

Fully landed cost is the direct cost of a given product plus associated transportation and logistics costs plus any tariffs and duties. In other words, a product purchased for $1 per unit could have a fully landed cost of $3 by the time it arrives at a dock door. Given current supply-chain and tariff regime dynamics, these costs may be subject to significant swings, leading to real impact on your profitability.

With a granular understanding of fully landed costs, you are better equipped to make supply-chain decisions that promote diversification, reduce waste and inefficiencies, and position the organization to be more agile—and effective—in responding to complex external dynamics. These insights also enable you to make effective pricing decisions with greater speed and confidence.

3. Consolidate operational insights into a “single pane of glass.”

Automotive dashboards give drivers extensive information about vehicle operations—from speed and fuel levels to alerts about engine temperature and tire pressures. These insights help drivers reach their destinations more safely and maintain the vehicle more efficiently.

As today’s operations teams steer their organizations through complex journeys, they can benefit from similarly integrated insights into the myriad factors that affect costs and, ultimately, profitability. Could a particular raw material be at risk due to a new trade policy? Is a certain vendor or shipping route likely to become significantly more expensive? With early awareness of such risks and their potential impacts, you can make better strategic and tactical decisions.

4. Put AI and generative AI to work on advanced analytics.

Across every aspect of operations—planning, sourcing, making, and delivering—there are opportunities to make greater use of AI-powered advanced analytics. For example, you can use internal production efficiency data to support analysis and improvement of labor productivity, as well as performance related to quality defects and scrap. Consider, too, how you can integrate third-party data about lane rates and other freight information, commodity indices, and tariffs and duties.

Most importantly, identify a platform for aggregating and analyzing this and other relevant data—and then serving up usable, actionable insights. These insights can help sharpen day-to-day operational performance while also supporting longer-term performance improvement initiatives.

Case study: Better visibility powers better decisions

A global manufacturer and distributor was managing multiple product lines, locations and jurisdictions, and customer types—from original equipment manufacturers to small buyers. Company leaders engaged KPMG to identify performance improvement opportunities within this complex web. Stitching together transaction-level data on procurement, piece-price cost, logistics/transportation costs, tariffs, and production, the KPMG team was able to determine fully landed cost down to the stock-keeping unit (SKU) level. The analysis covered costs at every step—from purchasing raw material, to transporting and transforming it, to shipping a finished product to the customer location.

This ability to isolate piece price, tariffs, logistics costs, and other key variables is highly desirable in today’s evolving global supply-chain landscape. With these insights, the company can assess costs by customer, location, and individual SKU. These insights help inform strategic decisions about how to reduce costs, where to buy, and when to develop a new set of suppliers—all of which is key to maintaining or strengthening competitiveness.

Start your journey

Recognizing that every organization operates with a distinct set of challenges and opportunities, KPMG takes a tailored approach to each engagement. We listen carefully to your issues, build hypotheses to identify potential levers to solve them, and then begin testing and iterating to deliver the desired impacts. Our approach is based on the premise that performance improvement doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking to make a significant difference. Each success builds momentum and frees up budget to fund continued initiatives.

CEOs and strategy leaders face increasing pressures to preserve margins, drive growth, and deliver lasting value. To make that happen, many are turning to performance improvement initiatives.

Let’s start a conversation about getting there Improve Your Performance With KPMG

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What sets apart good from great strategy leaders? It's their ability to make better strategic decisions that reduce waste so they can efficiently grow their business.

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