Why Omnichannel Visibility Keeps Slipping Through Your Fingers

The Data Mirage Every Brand Eventually Runs Into

There comes a moment in every growing brand's life when the data stops making sense. The dashboards still glow, the numbers still move, and the charts still look impressive, but something underneath feels wrong. You check Shopify and see one story. Amazon tells a second story. Walmart provides a third, far less generous version of events. Meanwhile, your warehouse claims everything is fine. At this point, you begin to suspect that visibility in omnichannel is not really visibility at all. It is more like watching shadows in a cave and pretending you understand the source of the light.

This confusion is not your fault. Visibility collapses because modern commerce has become a network of overlapping behaviors and competing requirements. A 2024 operations trend study found that brands selling across four or more channels reported visibility gaps in more than 45 percent of their weekly reporting cycles. Those gaps lead to poor forecasting, bad purchasing decisions, channel penalties, and customers wondering why their perfectly reasonable expectations were not met.

Visibility used to mean knowing what you had. Today it means knowing where it sits, how fast it moves, which channels affect it, which rules apply to it, and how likely it is to behave the same way tomorrow. That level of insight cannot come from a spreadsheet or an app that refreshes every few hours. Omnichannel visibility requires a system that sees everything at once and a team that knows what to do with that sight.

Why Visibility Breaks the Second Channels Multiply

Channels do not behave like neighbors. They behave like siblings fighting for attention. Shopify wants priority updates. Amazon demands precision. Walmart expects certainty. Retailers expect flawless ASNs, carton IDs, pallet labeling, and delivery windows that shrink every year. Wholesale orders ignore the pacing of everything else. Every channel pulls on your operation from a different angle, and the moment one system updates faster or slower than another, visibility cracks.

Most 3PLs try to provide visibility by layering dashboards on top of disconnected systems. One system shows ecommerce orders. Another shows B2B. Another captures inbound receipts. Another contains inventory. These tools do not speak the same language, so you end up playing translator. You spend more time interpreting your own data than using it.

Visibility breaks because most providers mistake access for insight. They hand you portals and reports and expect you to reconstruct the truth manually. But omnichannel visibility is not about having more data. It is about having data that agrees with itself.

How Inventory Confusion Becomes Visibility Confusion

Inventory is the root of almost every visibility problem. When inventory is fragmented, every system becomes unreliable. If Amazon pulls from one bucket, Shopify pulls from another, retail POs pull from a third, and your WMS receives updates slower than your channels sell, visibility turns into a guessing game.

A brand cannot make good decisions when its data contradicts itself. If you do not know how much inventory you truly have, you cannot forecast correctly. If you cannot forecast correctly, you cannot purchase correctly. If you cannot purchase correctly, you cannot fulfill correctly. And if you cannot fulfill correctly, you cannot grow, at least not with your sanity intact.

Visibility is not bright graphs or fast syncing tools. Visibility is one truth. Everything else is decoration.

Where G10 Rebuilds Visibility from the Ground Up

G10 does not treat visibility like a reporting add-on. It treats it like the foundation of an omnichannel operation. Since 2009, the company has worked across B2B, D2C, ecommerce, wholesale, retail, and fully compliant HAZMAT fulfillment. That means G10 has lived through every possible visibility disaster and rebuilt its systems so brands never have to deal with them again.

The backbone of this approach is ChannelPoint, G10's proprietary WMS. Unlike most warehouse systems that bolt reporting onto the side, ChannelPoint captures every unit, every movement, every pick, and every inbound at the scan level. It does not guess. It records. It does not compile slowly. It updates in real time. Every channel sees the same data because there is only one system feeding every channel.

As Bryan Wright, CTO and COO, puts it: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point you touch it. At any moment I know where the product sits, how it moved, and what it is connected to." That is visibility. Not charts. Not dashboards. Truth.

Real Visibility Requires Real Integrations

Visibility breaks when integrations lag or fail. If your provider uses outdated sync windows or relies on connectors that act more like translators than systems, your visibility will always be one step behind reality. Omnichannel does not tolerate delay. When customers click buy, the system must immediately adjust. When Amazon spikes, your ATP must react instantly. When a retail PO closes, your available inventory must reflect that within seconds, not hours.

This is why G10 treats integrations as a core competency rather than a convenience. As Connor Perkins, Director of Fulfillment, says: "We have experience with omni-channel integration setup and we are capable of doing any EDI, API, flat file, or XML integration needed throughout the omni-channel." That flexibility ensures that every channel feeds and receives information from the same operational truth.

Visibility Across a Distributed Network

It is easy for visibility to collapse when warehouses are scattered across different software stacks. One facility runs one WMS. Another runs a different one. Another uses spreadsheets because someone thinks it is still 2007. You cannot have omnichannel visibility when each facility lives in its own digital universe.

G10 eliminates this problem entirely. Its facilities in Wisconsin, South Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada all operate on the same WMS, the same scanning logic, the same real time update framework, and the same operational rules. The network behaves like a single warehouse stretched across the country. That is what enables accurate two day coverage with predictable performance instead of geographical chaos.

As Director of Operations Holly Woods explains it: "Having strategically placed warehouses lets inbounds come in faster, which means we can get it distributed faster." Speed is not just a shipping issue. It is a visibility issue. Fast inbound equals fast accuracy. Fast accuracy equals stable forecasting.

The Human Layer Visibility Always Needed

Visibility does not matter if you cannot act on it. Too many 3PLs bury customers under ticketing queues or automated replies. When something confusing appears in the data, brands need someone who understands the operational story behind it. Without that human layer, visibility becomes noise.

G10 avoids that trap entirely. Every brand receives a direct point of contact in Delavan, Wisconsin who oversees the account, understands each channel, and sees issues before they become problems. As Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience, puts it: "Every account at G10 has a direct point of contact. You only have to reach out to one person, and they work with the teams internally to make sure we execute for you the right way." That is visibility with context, not just visibility with numbers.

The Moment Visibility Turns Into Power

Omnichannel visibility is not about seeing everything. It is about seeing the right things at the right time and knowing exactly how to act. When your systems are unified, your inventory is truthful, your integrations are real time, your network is distributed, and your support is human, visibility becomes a competitive weapon. You stop reacting. You start steering.

And when you are ready for visibility that does not flicker, drift, or contradict itself, G10 can give your brand the operational clarity it needs to grow without losing sleep, money, or momentum.