On September 10, 2001, I became a founder of my third software company. The next day, as I came to learn that the world had changed forever, I experienced one of the key lessons that many founders learn on their journey to build a new venture—despite what you think you know, there always comes a moment when you realize you know very little.

What's the single biggest challenge of supply chain management? Well, it depends on your view of the business. Webalo believes it's the end to end visibility of the supply chain--in other words, understanding the cause and effect of activities that may occur to impact supply chain performance: whether it's insufficient incoming supply, unexpected performance within manufacturing (low yields, quality issues, equipment downtime) or problems downstream (within the warehouse or in transportation--either orders not being delivered, or incorrect orders being shipped).  

Visit an industrial plant - a mine, power generation plant or manufacturing facility for example - and automation, mechanical and digital, is everywhere. Millions of dollars are invested in machinery, robotics, enterprise and industrial software systems that run and operate a plant. However, chat with the workforce, the frontline workers themselves, and you’ll find that they’re largely disconnected from all of this automation – when they do their job, it's paper, voice or experience-based and rarely digitized.