Control Towers Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Type (Analytical, Operational), By Application (Support Chain, Transportation), By End-use, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2020 - 2027

Report Overview

The global control towers market size was valued at USD 5.28 billion in 2019 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.7% from 2020 to 2027. Control towers are increasingly becoming predominant in the supply chain and transportation ecosystem, making it easier to track deliveries in real-time and making the delivery process more efficient. For businesses, last-mile delivery is still a challenge owing to issues related to lack of visibility, allocation, inefficiency, and speed of drivers. By creating an ecosystem that focuses on transparency, businesses can gain better visibility of the real-time status of an order and lessen the risk of possible issues as well as acquire data on how to manage orders more competently. 

Companies can primarily benefit from control towers as when any issues arise, the use of technological interventions such as delivery management software to get live information about the order without relying on a third party. Improved visibility ensures that the company has the necessary data to know precisely which actions to take at every step of the process. With a control tower, the staff can perform analysis to optimize decisions, identify a process breakdown, and control orders better based on cycle times. Teams that monitor control towers can make better decisions based on feedback obtained from this system. By gathering data from daily delivery processes, they also help deliver unique insights into their performance.

Control tower solutions are gaining momentum and are witnessing high demand from enterprises across different industry verticals. Manifold benefits offered by these solutions, such as accurate forecasting and Business Intelligence (BI), help optimize the supply chain, minimize wastage, and increase organizational revenues. These solutions also help enterprises and organizations in identifying business growth opportunities and determining areas for cost-saving. Additionally, the growing adoption of the latest technologies, such as the IoT, cloud computing, and AI, in various industry verticals is further driving the growth of the market.

Suppliers and distributors often struggle to understand customer demand and consecutively maintain adequate inventory levels and avoid stock-outs. As a result, suppliers end up either falling short of supplies or hosting expensive excess stocks that can hamper their profitability and cause customer satisfaction levels to drop. To avoid this, effectively determining and predicting demand remains crucial for manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. Control towers help resolve these issues by improving a business’ decision-making capability, competitive advantage, and the ability to provide services to all functioning areas, keeping operations running efficiently.

Despite the acknowledged advantages that control towers offer, enterprises encounter several issues in adopting them. Data security is a major issue hampering the adoption of control towers. The market is characterized by collaborations among numerous vendors operating at different levels of the supply chain. A control tower demands an exchange of data and sensitive information among companies and their partners operating at different levels, all of which may have a variable ability to ensure data security and protect sensitive information from unauthorized individuals. Hackers may try to access the information, thereby putting the entire operation in jeopardy. To counter such threats, vendors must increasingly focus on data prevention by keeping critical machines away from external networks and protecting them from malicious hackers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on businesses, stifling innovation, suppressing profitability, and drying up cash flows and financial reserves. Companies, buyers, and suppliers are equally affected by the outbreak and the market is also likely to be impacted in due course. Demand and production schedules are at risk owing to supply chain disruptions, thereby posing financial threats to financial markets and firms. While lockdowns are slowing down supply chains, innovative technologies like control towers are also seeing trouble in the short term. Nevertheless, the pandemic is also acting as a catalyst for the development of better distribution and production networks to better cater to global demand. To bring in these changes, companies are focusing on the adoption of these solutions to better predict and respond, and even forecast supply chain issues.

Type Insights

The operational type segment dominated the market with a revenue share of over 80% in 2019. Operational control towers are used for both analysis and implementation purposes. They issue alerts about any exceptions or problems as and when they arise, allowing authorized operators to resolve the problem in real-time. It helps in resolving problems and providing solutions as per the nature of the problem and provides visibility and control in the entire supply chain. Flexibility, agility, and empowerment are crucial in today’s business environment and users need real-time visibility into operational activities taking place in the supply chain. The benefits of operational control towers in ensuring all these are leading to their increased adoption.

The analytical type segment is expected to witness the fastest CAGR over the forecast period. A purely analytical control tower can provide valuable insights using real-time analytics. It can help manage and monitor decisions and implementation across functions and companies to optimize the entire network. Together with the ongoing requirement for a unified cost-saving solution, the rising volume of data across supply chains is expected to drive the demand for analytical control tower solutions across industry verticals. Hence, the use of data improves the analytical power of such solutions and offers companies useful insights into the root causes of missing productivity and diminished velocity.

End-use Insights

The manufacturing segment dominated the control towers market in 2019 and accounted for a revenue share of more than 20%. The increasing demand for on-time delivery of products is encouraging improvements in the efficiency of supply chains. This is expected to drive the growth of the manufacturing segment over the forecast period. Manufacturing companies are emphasizing ensuring product availability and timely delivery while preserving their margins. Control tower solutions can help in enhancing performance as they offer access to real-time data throughout the value chain and indicate updates made to any process throughout the company in real-time.

The high technology product segment is expected to witness significant growth over the forecast period as these products are complex to move and need better visibility and tracking. Furthermore, control towers offer greater customer satisfaction to organizations and end-users and enable the minimization of operational costs. The healthcare segment is also expected to show substantial growth owing to the growing demand for improved outcomes and the cost-effectiveness of supply chain management. Moreover, control towers enable effective and efficient management of end-to-end supply processes, thus, boosting the market growth.

Application Insights

The supply chain segment dominated the market in 2019 and accounted for a revenue share of more than 60%. Control towers concentrate on multi-enterprise supply chains, guaranteeing command, and visibility across external and internal end-to-end processes and targets. This can also include sales and purchase orders, manufacturing, maintenance, inventory across external and internal suppliers, and repair. As they offer correct end-to-end visibility and in-app control throughout the entire supply chain network, control towers provide broad, real-time collaboration with partners and suppliers. All these factors are driving the adoption of control towers across supply chains.

The transportation segment is expected to register significant growth over the forecast period. Control towers mainly provide insight into inbound and outbound shipments, along with visibility into deliveries, track, and trace, ASN, on-time delivery, freight spend, and other similar details. Owing to their limited focus on transportation, they tend to be procured as an add-on or incorporated within a transportation management system. Their narrow focus suggests that they are siloed from additional supply chain processes, offering granular visibility into transportation, and thus lacking in end-to-end visibility and orchestration abilities beyond shipping. However, this becomes beneficial for firms that are looking only for transportation visibility, thereby saving costs.

Regional Insights

The North American regional market dominated in 2019 and accounted for a revenue share of over 40%. Organizations in North America are increasingly adopting to better manage the increasing volumes of data generated from value chains and use the data to gain business insights. Intense competition and rise in operations costs are also encouraging the adoption of control towers in the organized retail sector in the region as companies look at ways of controlling costs and enhancing profitability.

The Asia Pacific is expected to emerge as the fastest-growing regional market over the forecast period. Organizations in the region are steadily adopting digitization and other advanced technologies. At the same time, the retail and e-commerce industry is thriving in the region, which is one of the largest contributors to the supply chain industry. The launch of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is likely to play a major role in regional economic integration and establish regulations for the growth and development of trade across the region. Control towers will have a major role to play in the development of cross-border supply chains among APAC countries.

Key Companies & Market Share Insights

Prominent players in the market are focusing on offering control towers that can help organizations improve operational efficiency and enhance work environments. The market players are investing aggressively in expanding their capabilities as part of the efforts to increase their market share. They are also actively pursuing various initiatives, including the expansion of existing product and type portfolios. For instance, in April 2020, One Network Enterprises announced the availability of Telematics-enabled control towers along with real-time tracking via its Telematics Network. For freight forwarders, global carriers, and other logistics service providers, this solution comprises pre-integrated connections to telematics services, thus making it easy to collaborate with shipping partners. Prominent players in the global control towers market include:

• Blue Yonder Group, Inc.

• E2open, LLC

• Elementum

• Infor

• Kinaxis

• Llamasoft

• One Network Enterprises

• PearlChain

• SAP

• Viewlocity Technologies Pty Ltd.

Control Towers Market Report Scope

Segments Covered in the Report

This report forecasts revenue growth at the global, regional, and country levels and provides an analysis of the latest industry trends in each of the sub-segments from 2016 to 2027. For this study, Grand View Research has segmented the global control towers market report based on type, application, end-use, and region.

• Type Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

  • Analytical

  • Operational

• Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

  • Supply Chain

  • Transportation

• End-use Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

  • Aerospace & Defense

  • Chemicals

  • Retail & Consumer Goods

  • Healthcare

  • Manufacturing

  • High Technology Products

  • Others

• Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2016 - 2027)

  • North America

    • The U.S.

    • Canada

  • Europe

    • Germany

    • The U.K.

  • Asia Pacific

    • China

    • India

    • Japan

  • Latin America

    • Brazil

  • MEA