Most logistics businesses believe they have a visibility strategy.
They have GPS devices installed across their fleets. They have dashboards displaying vehicle locations. They have tracking systems generating thousands of data points every day.
Yet when something goes wrong, many discover they don’t actually have visibility at all.
Rory Atkinson, Director at Orange Logistics and an electrical and electronic engineer by profession, believes there is an important distinction between tracking and visibility that many organisations overlook.
“Most businesses focus on where their assets are. The bigger question is whether you still have visibility when conditions become difficult.”
For Orange Logistics, which specialises in moving FMCG goods across South Africa, this distinction became increasingly important as operational risks continued to evolve.
Like many logistics operators, the company had invested in traditional tracking technologies. Vehicles were connected. Data was flowing. On paper, everything looked under control.
The challenge emerged when visibility was needed most.
In South Africa, organised cargo theft has become increasingly sophisticated. Criminals are no longer simply targeting vehicles. They are targeting the technologies businesses rely on to monitor them.
Signal jamming has become a common tactic, disrupting GPS and GSM-based tracking systems and effectively creating blind spots at critical moments.
“When a vehicle goes quiet, that’s not a technical issue. That’s the moment risk becomes real.”
The implications extend far beyond recovering a stolen vehicle.
A delayed shipment can affect inventory availability, customer commitments, production schedules and service delivery across an entire supply chain. The longer it takes to identify a problem, the greater the downstream impact.
This is why Atkinson believes visibility should be viewed as a business capability rather than a tracking function.
Modern supply chains depend on consistent information to support decision-making. Route deviations, unexpected stops, prolonged delays and asset movement patterns all provide valuable operational intelligence. But that intelligence is only useful if the data remains available when conditions are less than ideal.
Orange Logistics’ experience reflects a challenge faced by many enterprise organisations. It is not a lack of data that creates risk. It is the loss of reliable data when it matters most.
The video below explores how Orange Logistics approached this challenge and why resilient visibility has become a key part of its operational strategy.
Watch the Orange Logistics customer story:
To address this challenge, Orange Logistics introduced Sigfox 0G technology as a complementary connectivity layer within its tracking environment.
Rather than replacing existing systems, the objective was to create greater resilience.
“If your system depends on one network, you’re exposed the moment that network is disrupted.”
Sigfox operates independently of traditional GSM infrastructure and is designed to transmit small but critical data messages over long distances using minimal power. This allows businesses to maintain visibility even when primary communication channels become unavailable.
The value is not necessarily in receiving more information. It is in receiving consistent information.
This approach is increasingly relevant as businesses expand their use of connected technologies across logistics and supply chain environments.
While Orange Logistics focuses on FMCG transportation, the same connectivity can support broader asset tracking applications, including returnable assets, high-value goods, infrastructure monitoring and other operational environments where reliable visibility is essential.
“The difference between loss and recovery is often just a few minutes of visibility.”
Improved visibility has enabled faster response to operational issues, reduced exposure to loss and supported more proactive decision-making.
For enterprise leaders, the benefits extend beyond operations.
Consistent visibility improves customer communication, strengthens risk management, supports insurance validation processes and provides greater confidence in the data being used to make business decisions.
Perhaps most importantly, it builds trust.
Customers increasingly expect more than delivery confirmation. They expect transparency. They expect businesses to know where their assets are, what condition they are in and whether any issues have occurred along the way.
That expectation is only going to increase.
As supply chains become more connected, more distributed and more dependent on real-time information, resilient visibility is emerging as a strategic requirement rather than a technical feature.
For Atkinson, the lesson is simple.
“You don’t need perfect systems. You need to know you’re never completely blind.”
Because in modern logistics, the biggest risk is often not what happens to an asset.
It is the moment you lose sight of it.
To learn more about how Sigfox South Africa is helping organisations build resilient visibility across logistics, asset tracking, utilities and infrastructure environments, visit www.sigfox.co.za.
For more information about Orange Logistics, visit www.orangelogistics.co.za.
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