Despite what some technology companies’ marketing content may suggest, supply chain visibility is not a commodity. The accuracy and even legitimacy of real-time supply chain tracking data varies wildly by mode and geography. Take the continuing growth of strategic freight fraud and cargo theft in North America today, where bad actors are impersonating legitimate carriers or brokers and sending spoofed tracking feeds that attempt to show compliant location updates while the physical load moves off network.
At the same time, the long tail of small fleets chooses not to connect their electronic logging devices to visibility platforms for a variety of reasons and often lacks a transportation management system, leaving visibility dependent on driver mobile apps and manual status updates with higher risk of gaps and errors. In this environment, undifferentiated visibility, especially without fraud sensing, is low value and risky.
Supply chain visibility continues to rank among the most critical transportation management capabilities in the industry today, and studies show that financially leading companies are actually increasing technology investment and automation to turn this data into a competitive weapon.
Looking ahead to 2026, tightening capacity and likely rate inflation will push shippers and logistics providers to invest in technologies (that leverage supply chain visibility data) to optimize networks, streamline processes, review private and dedicated fleet deployments, and secure reliable carrier partnerships to maintain service levels and mitigate cost impacts. Agentic AI and automation will also grow in adoption, orchestrating end-to-end transportation workflows that are triggered from events in visibility platforms.
Accurate supply chain visibility is not a given today, and technology only adds value when it converts noisy — and sometimes manipulated— signals into trusted, actionable intelligence that improves safety, cost, and service, and that reduces the risk of fraud. Differentiation comes from combining quality visibility data with other systems, empowering logistics professionals to take meaningful action.