Control Tower for Comex: the complete guide

The operations director who walks into the S&OP meeting with the dashboard open on their laptop doesn’t have more information than everyone else — they have a different mechanism to access it. While the team around them waits for the forwarder to reply and checks spreadsheet after spreadsheet, they filter by lane, see the open exceptions and respond in real time.

A Control Tower is not a specific piece of software, nor an 18-month project. It is the operating model in which events, documents and alerts from across the chain arrive at a single point — before they turn into cost, delay or an unanswered question in the meeting.

FollowNet One is e.Mix’s Control Tower platform: it centralizes the import and export operation so the team handles what is an exception before it becomes a problem. This guide explains what a Control Tower is in Comex, how it works in practice, what separates an implementation that delivers results from one that becomes “just another system” — and how to build it without an endless project.

• → The problem: visibility fragmented across systems, spreadsheets, emails and partners’ WhatsApp messages.
• → The cost-risk: late decisions, invisible demurrage, S&OP with no reliable data and dependence on key people.
• → The mechanism: centralized events + exception-based alerts + a consolidated real-time dashboard.
• → How to start: one critical lane, 10 events mapped, first alerts in under 30 days.

What a Control Tower is in Comex

A Control Tower is the central point of visibility and control over a logistics operation. In Comex, it means having on a single dashboard: every active process (import and export), the events of each stage, the deviation alerts configured per lane, the linked documents and the deadline and cost KPIs — without having to check the forwarder, the customs broker or each partner’s system individually.

The concept is not new. What changed is that, with platforms like FollowNet One, a mid-sized operation can implement a Control Tower without complex integration, without an IT project and without depending on a team of data analysts.

Why your ERP doesn’t replace a Control Tower

The ERP was designed to record what happened — invoice issued, payment posted, stock updated. The Control Tower was designed to alert you about what is about to happen: a delayed shipment, free time running out, a document pending before the customs channel.

Operations that try to use the ERP as a Control Tower hit three structural limits:

• The ERP has no real-time logistics events. Vessel arrival, customs-channel assignment, clearance — these events depend on integration with customs systems (Siscomex, in Brazil), carriers and terminals, which a standard ERP does not do natively.
• The ERP does not generate proactive exception alerts. It records what was typed in. If the booking wasn’t confirmed, the ERP doesn’t know — and doesn’t alert. The Control Tower monitors the absence of the event and alerts when the deadline passes with no record.
• The ERP does not consolidate multiple partners. Each forwarder, each customs broker, each terminal has its own system. The Control Tower connects that data into a single flow — with a single key per process.

The 3 pillars of an effective Control Tower in Comex

1. Single key per process

Every shipment needs a unique identifier that connects all the events, documents and partners of that process. Without a single key, the same shipment exists in four different systems with four different references — and the manager cannot consolidate the status without checking manually.

The single key is what lets an analyst open a process and see: current ETA, pending documents, open alerts, event history and accumulated potential cost — all on one screen, without switching between systems.

2. Management by exception with traffic-light flags

A Control Tower that shows everything is as useless as one that shows nothing. The value is in the triage: the dashboard hands the analyst only what needs action today — a red flag. Whatever is within standard stays green and requires no attention. The analyst starts the day on the exception queue, not on the list of every process.

Effective flags are configured by lane and criticality: critical raw material has tighter thresholds than an administrative replacement part. The logic is not “everything the same” — it is “each operation with the level of attention it deserves”.

3. Auditable trail of events and decisions

A Control Tower that keeps no history doesn’t learn. Every event, every alert raised, every action taken has to stay on the process trail. When demurrage shows up on the invoice, the trail shows: was the alert raised 72 hours in advance? Who received it? What action was taken? Without a record, the root cause isn’t identified and the problem repeats.

Field proof: from multiple systems to a single dashboard

Before: manual input scattered across different systems — every input opened the door to error, and the history vanished along with the information.

After: productivity on both sides — the operation delivers faster and with higher quality, and the client checks the status of the process without having to call or email.

Antonio Dantas — General Manager — Crane Worldwide. Watch the video →

How the Control Tower works inside FollowNet One

FollowNet One was built with Control Tower logic as its foundation — not as an add-on feature. Every process recorded has a single key, events configured per lane and alert thresholds defined by the e.Mix team together with the client.

The result: the analyst starts the day by opening the exception dashboard and spends time only on the processes flagged amber or red. The rest are within standard and need no action. The S&OP meeting becomes a decision session with data in hand — not a status-update session.

If your manager still starts the day asking “what needs attention today?” instead of getting that answer automatically, the Control Tower isn’t active in the operation yet. See how FollowNet One works for industries: See FollowNet One for industries →

Control Tower for multinational operations

Operations that manage imports across multiple countries have an added challenge: each country has its own regulation, local agents with different systems and time zones that make real-time communication hard. Without a Control Tower, the regional manager depends on reports consolidated manually by each local team — arriving late and in different formats.

With a Control Tower, the model changes: each local operation feeds events into the platform, and the regional manager sees the consolidated dashboard of every country in real time — with the same exception thresholds, the same flags and the same auditable history.

How to build a Control Tower without an endless project

Owner: Comex Manager or Director — responsible for defining the exception thresholds for each lane and ensuring every active process has events recorded on the platform.

Cadence: daily — review the exception dashboard before the working day; weekly — review KPIs per lane and adjust thresholds when needed.

Flag KPI: percentage of processes with status updated in the last 24 hours — target: 100%. Any process without an update for more than 24 hours is a visibility exception.

First slice: the lane with the highest volume or the highest historical demurrage cost. Map 10 critical events, configure the flag thresholds and switch on the alerts. Visible results in the first two weeks.