Setting up a Virtual Control Tower

"If you know what is happening around you it is easier to make informed decisions" - I realized this while I was drinking water from a bottle that was opaque. Usually when I am playing tennis, my partner gets transparent bottle, so I am able to keep a track of how much water I have to drink and how much I need to keep for my partner. While drinking from the opaque bottle, the information of how much water is left in the bottle was not available to me and I was not able to make a judgement whether enough water was left for my tennis partner or not. 

I am now able to relate to the scenario even while working and I am able to understand that many a times, when I do not have full information it is like the opaque bottle of water, I am not able to decide whether I should go ahead with one thing or the other. Similarly business managers while doing any kind of task / activity are under this dilemma unless they have data that they can access.

The concept of the “control tower” is increasingly becoming prevalent in the supply chain management and that means having the ability to track deliveries in real time, which in return helps make the delivery process more efficient. 

In simple terms a control tower is a hub for visibility, decision-making, and action. With visibility acting as initiator for rest of the actions and processes. An organization can adopt this philosophy and also configure their projects, activities and tasks around this idea to be able to take more informed decisions and take relevant actions. 

We have taken the first step towards this concept and built our own task management application, with the vision to develop a virtual control tower that can help organisations in making informed decisions. During this time we have realized small day to day tasks provide lot of insights into what is actually happening on ground and at clients place, which can be acted upon to improve delivery of service / product to the customer, reduce delivery lead time and take actions that are right the first time (which in turn reduces, reworking or over working).