Let’s assume the global economy is a big puzzle, and you removed Logistics from it. The puzzle collapses! Remember the Suez Canal blockage in 2021? It disrupted global trade and held up more than $9 billion each day. [1]
Logistics and transportation industries play an integral part in other industries, such as Retail, Pharma, Food & Beverages, Hospitality, etc. While keeping up with trends within your own industry, you need to build an integrated digital ecosystem to cater to the modern-day needs of the peer industries.
Challenges with siloed digital ecosystems
Logistics businesses use a variety of digital solutions in their day-to-day operations. They are adopting cutting-edge technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things (IOT), Cloud computing, modern business applications etc. For example, you use a warehouse management solution to track the movement of goods. A route optimization solution helps you find the best route to optimize costs and ensure better service to your customers.
Implementing digital technologies is only half the story. For most logistics companies, the real question remains unanswered – are you realizing the full benefits of digital transformation?
Most logistics executives nod their heads No to this question. Many of them wouldn’t even know the reason why they were unable to achieve the maximum value from their digital investments.
Siloed systems are the key culprits here. Individually, each of your digital solutions might be effective. But they cannot be functioning in silos in a business context.
The power of digital transformation is only with a few levels of employees. For example, only a warehouse supervisor can access the inventory management software. Only the maintenance head can use the maintenance management software. On the field, your frontline employees are still using paper to perform their tasks.
Integrating your applications and connecting the unconnected workforce is a great opportunity for you to transform your logistics operations and gain a competitive edge.
Establishing an integrated digital ecosystem for Logistics and Transportation
An integrated digital ecosystem is a network of applications, systems, and data that work in tandem and includes every stakeholder (from top-level management to frontline staff) to support your business operations.
Within a logistics business, people coming from different educational backgrounds come together to work in different roles. They perform a variety of jobs using a variety of systems. How can you unify the diverse sets of people, business functions, and digital systems to create an integrated digital ecosystem?
To help you find the answers, we have curated five effective ways to establish an integrated digital ecosystem in your logistics and transport business.
Rapid application development
Logistics and transportation companies have little to no IT resources. Even though they have IT teams, they cannot cater to every business requirement. IT resources have technical skills, but the business users understand better what works for them.
If you don’t want to burn your IT budgets or wait for a long time but need tailored business applications, you can consider rapid app development approaches, such as low-code/no-code development.
You can create a customized load optimization and freight management solution, route optimization solution, or fuel-efficiency tracking solution. You can make these solutions available on mobile devices to enable your employees to easily work with these applications.
While choosing the low-code/no-code platform, make sure the platform offers connectors to integrate applications with your existing systems. The integration capability helps you unify your systems and break down silos.
Digital checklists
Logistics and Transportation employ more than 450 million frontline workers around the world.[2] Despite their critical role in delivering the services, most of these frontline workers are not integrated with the business’s digital ecosystems.
If you look around, you might find your frontline workers moving back and forth between the back office and field, carrying bundles of paper.
Leaving behind the frontline workers creates a huge gap in your digital ecosystem and gives room for operational inefficiencies. Consider the time spent traveling between the back-office and field. What if you eliminate the unnecessary travelling? How much valuable time would it save for your staff? What would be the productivity gain?
Proceso helps you integrate your frontline workers with your digital ecosystem through digital checklists. The customizable digital checklists are easily accessible for frontline staff on any mobile device.
You can integrate Proceso with your ERP and other line-of-business systems, facilitating real-time data availability for faster and better decision-making. Learn more about Proceso in the logistics and transportation sector.
Document management system
Keeping documents, such as contracts, bill of lading, etc., easily available for your employees helps them perform their jobs faster and better. With traditional document management systems, logistics businesses are facing challenges in keeping documents accessible.
Cloud-based document management systems, such as SharePoint, help you find and access documents from anywhere on any device easily. You can integrate Proceso with your document management system and enable hassle-free document retrieval for your employees.
Want to see Proceso in action for your logistics business?
Knowledge management system
Knowledge is essential in any industry. Particularly for an asset-intensive industry like Logistics and Transportation, having knowledge available on the fingertips is critical.
Imagine you didn’t know how to fix a breakdown, and help couldn’t arrive until it was so long. Would you wait till a technician reaches you, or would you find the manual and try to fix it by yourself? What if you couldn’t find or access the manual?
To eliminate knowledge/skills gap in your logistics business, integrating a knowledge management system with your LOB applications, for example, Proceso, is highly recommended.
Keeping critical knowledge documents, such as product manuals, quickly and easily accessible for your employees helps you save significant amounts of time and costs. It will also help you achieve better outcomes and strengthen regulatory compliance.
Data and analytics
Imagine your maintenance planner didn’t get the daily fleet inspection data on time and missed a major defect in a vehicle before it set out. How much would it cost you?
Now imagine another instance where your frontline worker performed vehicle inspection and updated the data on Proceso on-field. Proceso pushes the data to your maintenance management system automatically, and you can find it in real-time. You identified the defect and took necessary actions before anything went wrong. You saved your business from significant damage, didn’t you?
For logistics and transportation businesses, getting real-time information on their operations, such as warehouse, fleet maintenance, route planning, etc., is essential. If your frontline employees or the applications are not integrated with your digital ecosystem, you will open doors for errors and inefficiencies.
Using a unifying solution, such as Proceso, can help you get a real-time view of your operations and make better decisions. For example, you can track fuel efficiency and take corrective measures to improve mileage-per-liter (MPL).
References: