A control tower that fixes things, not just watches them.
Orkestra connects your ERP, TMS, WMS, carriers, and suppliers into one live operational view — then turns every exception into an owned, tracked action. Built for shippers and logistics providers moving 2,000+ international shipments a year.
What is a supply chain control tower?
A supply chain control tower is a central operational layer that connects the signals from your ERP, TMS, WMS, carriers, and suppliers into one live view of orders, shipments, and inventory — so the people running the supply chain can see problems early and act on them from the same place.
The first generation of control towers stopped at visibility: a wall of dashboards and alerts, with the actual fixing still happening over email, spreadsheets, and carrier portals. The result was a familiar failure — teams could watch a shipment go wrong in high definition and still coordinate the response by hand.
A modern control tower closes that gap. Detection, ownership, and resolution live in one workflow: an at-risk shipment becomes a case with a named owner, a recommended action, and a tracked outcome. That is the difference between a control tower and a report — and it's the difference Orkestra was built around.
Control tower vs. supply chain orchestration
The two terms get used interchangeably; they shouldn't be. The control tower is the watchtower — one live picture of the network, with the KPIs and alerts that tell you where to look. Orchestration is what happens next: coordinating the response across systems, teams, and partners so the exception actually gets resolved — rebooking the shipment, notifying the supplier, updating the promise date, documenting the decision.
Orkestra delivers both in one platform: control-tower visibility on top of the systems you already run, and an orchestration layer where AI agents monitor continuously, summarize what needs attention, and trigger workflows once a person approves. Visibility shows you the issue; orchestration resolves it.
The 12 metrics a control tower must surface
If a vendor demo can't show these live, you're being sold a dashboard. Use this as your evaluation checklist.
OTIF (On-Time In-Full)
The customer-promise number retailers penalize you on. If the tower can't show it live, it's a report, not a control tower.
Exception time-to-resolution
How long between 'something is wrong' and 'someone fixed it.' The single best measure of whether the tower changes outcomes.
Open exceptions with an owner
An alert without a named owner is noise. Track ownership coverage, not alert volume.
In-transit ETA confidence
Not just the ETA — how reliable it is per lane and carrier, so planners know when to trust it.
At-risk shipments and orders
Ranked by business impact (line-down risk, penalty exposure, shelf life), not by lateness alone.
Expedite and detention spend
The cost of firefighting. Falling expedite spend is the clearest financial proof the tower works.
Supplier PO confirmation rate
Upstream discipline: how many purchase orders are confirmed, changed, or silently slipping.
Carrier performance by lane
On-time performance, tender acceptance, and data quality per carrier — the input for allocation decisions.
Inventory at risk
Where inbound delays will breach safety stock — connecting transport reality to inventory decisions.
Proof-of-delivery coverage
Percentage of shipments with clean, on-time PoD. DLA raised this 83% in four weeks.
Data freshness per source
How old each system's signal is. A tower on stale data confidently reports yesterday.
Time saved per planner
Hours per week not spent in portals and email. Adoption's honest scoreboard.
Build vs. buy: the honest comparison
Many teams consider building a control tower on their BI stack. Here's where that goes — and the one case where building wins.
| Build internally | Deploy Orkestra | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first value | 12–24 months (data platform, integrations, dashboards, workflows) | Weeks — pre-built connectors and a proven data model |
| Integration burden | Custom connectors for every ERP, TMS, WMS, and carrier — maintained forever | 200+ pre-built connectors, maintained by the vendor |
| Data normalization | Your team writes and owns the mapping for every format | Normalization layer is the product — one operational record |
| Execution workflows | Usually descoped — most internal builds end at dashboards | Exception ownership, escalation, and action are built in |
| Total cost of ownership | Engineering team + infrastructure + opportunity cost, indefinitely | Subscription; your team spends its time operating, not building |
| When build wins | You have a large data engineering org and truly unique workflows | Every other case at $50M–$5B scale |
Running in live operations today
83% increase in proof-of-delivery visibility
Deployed in 4 weeks across dozens of carriers
Defense Logistics Agency
18% supply chain cost reduction
Factories in Europe and Mexico, customers in North America
DBW · Automotive
60% faster exception resolution
Multi-client 4PL operation on one platform
OIA Global
On top of your stack, not instead of it
200+ pre-built connectors for ERP, TMS, WMS, and carriers pull your operational signals into one normalized record — no custom development, no migration, and your core systems stay exactly as they are. Full details on the integrations page, and the numbers it produces live on the analytics page.
Built for operations moving 2,000+ international, multi-modal shipments a year. If your freight fits in one system and one country, you don't need a control tower yet.
