Starting a company from the ground up is not easy these days. Small and midsize businesses need every advantage they can get to compete and more of those businesses are looking at supply chain efficiency as a competitive advantage.

Daniel Swimm co-founded the online version of CandleScience two years ago with his brother after closing out a career in software and mathematical modeling. The Durham, N.C.-based company is an online supplier of candle-making supplies that ships primarily to candle makers in the U.S. and some personal home care product makers. The company's business model is somewhere between distributor and supplier. It serves as a manufacturers' representative for several European firms in addition to distributing supplies.

"Supply chain efficiency was a matter of survival for us from day one," says Swimm, whose responsibilities include procurement, staffing and logistics at CandleScience. "We do a lot of importing and exporting, we didn't want to just resell Asian products in the U.S. "

On the import side, CandleScience brings in product from both Asia and Europe into the U.S. in everything from small parcel to ocean container. "We work with a variety of different suppliers, some more advanced than others in supply chain practices," Swimm says. "So for us, tracking shipments from suppliers was a major challenge."

Given its variety of shipment sizes, types and modes, CandleScience partnered early on with logistics provider UPS for a variety of logistics and supply chain services. But there was one value-add that Swimm's UPS representative brought to the table that hit home more than most.

ABOUT A YEAR AGO A UPS technology contact showed Swimm the QuantumView system, which provides a dashboard view of shipments from point of origin to point of destination. But more than that, the system can provide e-mail notices if shipments do not leave the origin site on time or get delayed at any point in the journey, which allows a shipper to make improved decisions on individual shipments.

"I could see the benefit of this immediately, especially for some of our less reliable suppliers. It's the weakest link in the supply chain that can really hurt you and this system requires nothing from them other than shipping via UPS."

Swimm says traditionally when companies—especially smaller companies—didn't receive shipments from a supplier, the thinking was "Well the shipment was supposed to be here today and it's not, so we better call our supplier to find it."

"We've been able to sidestep that way of thinking by building our company around these kinds of tools. If a shipment didn't ship on the right day, we can immediately make plans rather than when the shipment doesn't arrive—we can expedite a shipment if needed to avoid customer impact."

Most importantly, CandleScience has been able to limit the inventory it holds thanks to the improved supply chain visibility. Some shipments even go direct from supplier to the customer.

"Now we keep zero inventory on some accounts because we know we can get the product to the customer reliably. And if there is a problem, we know it will show up early," Swimm says.

The improved visibility has also let CandleScience perform some modal shifts where it makes most sense. Swimm says in the past, the company's less-than-container import shipments have sometimes been slowed at customs because of other items in the container. So whenever possible, shifting to small package shipments can mean a smoother (or at least more predictable) importing.

"We have more confidence on imports than we used to," Swimm says. "Importing can be daunting for small companies."

Supplier performance has also improved since implementing the system. When suppliers know their shipments are being closely tracked by a given customer, they are more likely to ship them on-time than the shipments to a customer that does not closely monitor them. "I think they know that with this system they don't get any wiggle room from us," he says.