Is technology a boon or a bane for your Supply Chain?

As per a study conducted by Mckinsey, “companies that aggressively engage in supply chains digitization can expect to boost annual growth of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) by 3.2 percent and annual revenue growth by 2.3 percent.”

The study also states that the implementation of end-to-end supply chain digitization with advanced robotics, Internet of things (IoT) and other advanced analytics of big data in your supply chain will increase your EBIT score by 75 percent.

For instance, Walmart made a tremendous change in retail operations by using cutting-edge technology in its existing supply chain digitization efforts which made them the second “largest online retailers” in the world.  

But how will technology benefit my supply chain?

You need to understand that your customer’s expectation is growing as they have a multitude of options. To satisfy their expectation, you need to have a technology which can address the challenges in your supply chain. With supply chain digitization, you will be able to get the following benefits:

• Time-Saving: For B2B/B2C organizations, few things are important – you need a right forecasting model which can make sure that the right resource is used at the right time to pursue the right prospects. New technologies like advanced forecasting approaches/or predictive analysis have the ability to provide you with internal/external data, statistical algorithms and more. These will save you time and mitigate unnecessary investments.
  How will it help my organization? If you understand the behavioral tendencies of your customer, you can find an effective way to focus on marketing and merchandising efforts. Earlier, Amazon has obtained a patent for ‘Anticipatory shipping’ which means that the products are shipped before the customer makes an order. It is to ensure that the goods will be stored and delivered when the customer makes an order. These new approaches can reduce the delay in last mile delivery of the product and provide a one-stop shopping solution to their customers.

• Flexibility:  Most of the customers expect increased flexibility in the delivery of products to their convenient destination. But, to achieve this, you need to have a better ad hoc and real-time planning to avert supply chain constraints. In recent years, leading companies are re-evaluating their business models by partnering with supply chain solution providers in order to gain flexibility in the supply chain. Supply chain as a service (SCaaS) offers your organization with end-to-end supply chain management services from strategy to product delivery.
• Define SCaaS? It is a virtual supply chain team which is enabled by cloud software to support your supply chain operations. It helps you to execute manufacturing, procurement, warehousing and many more.

• Accuracy:  Most of the organization are implementing a ‘performance management system’ which can provide real-time, end-to-end transparency to all the stakeholders in the supply chain. A performance management system integrates data of suppliers, service providers, and so on in a “supply chain cloud.” This process can help you in identifying risks or exemptions without any human involvement and will change the parameters in a closed-loop approach to mitigate them.

• Efficiency: New Yorker magazine states that “JD.com, the third-largest tech company in the world in terms of revenue is expanding its consumer base with drone delivery.”  With supply chain digitization, you can reduce many errors and save lots of driving time over a period of time. If you want to be a key player in the supply chain, then you must automate both your physical task & planning. Robotics can automate the entire supply chain process from handling the materials (receiving/uploading, pick & pack) to shipping to delivery.

Logistics has undergone a tremendous change in recent years as there is a rise in the number of digital solutions. 20Cube Logistics is one of the leading third-party logistics service providers. We provide end to end logistics service and also an integrated operations platform called “MyHub” which also provide high visibility.