Stop managing by spreadsheet. Start managing by exception.
If I asked to see your company’s financial records, you wouldn’t open a shoebox full of crumpled receipts. You would open QuickBooks, NetSuite, or SAP.
Yet, when I ask to see how a company manages millions of dollars in inventory moving across the ocean, what do I see?
An Excel spreadsheet.
It’s usually colorful. It has 40 columns. It’s shared by five people. And it is almost certainly wrong.
The Problem with Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are phenomenal calculators. They are terrible operational platforms.
A spreadsheet is a snapshot in time. It is only as accurate as the last time someone manually updated it. It doesn’t know that a vessel changed course at 2 AM, or a Customs Hold was placed at 4 PM on a Friday.
A spreadsheet cannot tap you on the shoulder and say, "Hey, you need to look at this right now."When you manage your import operations on a spreadsheet, you are not managing; you are reacting. You are constantly chasing data that is already obsolete.
The Visiwise Co-Pilot Approach: Managing by Exception
You don’t need a longer list of containers. You need a Co-Pilot.
A Co-Pilot is a system that actively monitors the journey for you and only alerts you when something goes wrong. It allows you to shift from "managing by spreadsheet" to "managing by exception."
Here is the difference:
| The Spreadsheet Way (Reactive) | The Visiwise Co-Pilot Way (Proactive) |
| You log into 5 carrier websites every morning to check ETAs. | Visiwise monitors all carriers 24/7 and sends you one alert if an ETA changes. |
| You manually calculate Last Free Days (LFD) in a column. | Visiwise calculates the LFD automatically, accounting for weekends and holidays, and shows a live countdown. |
| You scroll through 200 rows to find the 5 that are “hot.” | Your dashboard only shows you the 5 “At Risk” shipments. The other 195 are invisible until they need attention. |
Seeing is Believing
Below is a screenshot of the Visiwise dashboard. Notice what you don’t see. You don’t see an endless list of "In Transit" containers. You see a prioritized list of exceptions: containers with Holds, ETA changes, or upcoming deadlines.
This is the power of the Co-Pilot. It turns a wall of data into a simple to-do list.
If you’re ready to upgrade your supply chain’s operating system from Windows 98 to the modern era, let’s talk. Your Co-Pilot is waiting.
