The ever-changing retail landscape looks vastly different than it did a decade ago, and it will look completely different still in another 20-30 years. Businesses have had to adapt and change their business models to thrive in this new world. It all comes down to implementing and maintaining a healthy supply-chain-visibility plan for your business that connects people and the business systems in a meaningful way. In other words, it all depends on digital supply chain management, and business leaders need to know why.
Common Challenges in Disparate Supply Chain Systems and Disjointed Management Strategies
The primary reason for implementing a supply chain visibility system is to advance and strengthen the supply chain and improve communication lines from start to finish. New technologies can help overcome some of the common challenges that a disparate supply chain system and a mismanaged operational system can experience:
- Managing rapid change in a complex marketing world. The inability to keep up with the times and keep effective day to day operations and management is the biggest downfall of not having good visibility and transparency.
- The unrelenting push to meet customer needs. A good management strategy connects to the customers and addresses their wants and needs, from ordering to delivery.
- Bringing multiple channels together to maximize efficiency. The goal of supply chain management is to unite everyone and tie every system together to create a streamlined process that involves numerous integrations.
Through digital supply chain management, the challenges fall away, and benefits all add to easier freight management. It lets users manage thousands of updates, track hundreds of carriers, and review data from dozens of supply chain management systems. And having the ability to control it all within this one platform results in greater worker efficiency, less stress, better information distribution and customer experience.
Unified, Digital Supply Chain Management Streamlines Everything
As the world continues to change and consumer needs shift and processes and systems adapt, those who can respond quickly to increasingly unpredictable consumer demands and the increasingly complex markets will have the most excellent chance of adapting and thriving. Supply chains will need to ensure that their merchandising plans, logistic protocols, and operational processes are more integrated than ever before. A 2017 article from Supply Chain 24/7 highlighted this concept nicely:
“This next generation of real-time supply chain visibility enables shippers to improve customer service and cost controls through the management of inventory in motion, proactive status updates, limiting disruptions and risk mitigation, [while] access to real-time global visibility, combined with new supply chain insights, empowers shippers with new agility, accuracy and real-time decision-making to stay a step ahead of the competition.”
Best Practices to Deploying a Single Pane of Glass Solution to Improve Efficiencies
Remember that digital supply chain management’s goal is to help shippers, carriers, and LSPs identify ways to unify and clearly and concisely see everything within that one platform. From that goal, supply chain leaders can derive these core best practices to achieve a more unified operation:
- Use APIs to connect the full supply chain to a single pane of glass. This streamlined approach allows for faster integration and real-time data sharing to keep IT costs under control.
- Connect the system to analytics platforms to track and measure the health of the business. When data is easier to access and share, users can quickly and efficiently address problems to save time, resources, and money.
- Track the entire order-to-cash cycle for shipments. The ability to see the end-to-end process makes it easier to spot problem areas and identify slowdowns within the shipment cycle.
- Ensure driver compliance with tracking requirements. Being able to see updates quickly and easily can allow for faster correction of mistakes, and reinforces acceptable practices and actions for drivers and handlers.
- Eliminate check calls with an intuitive driver app. Freeing up drivers to focus on the tasks at hand and allowing other employees to do their work rather than changing down drivers on the phone can boost productivity significantly.
- Ensure the system auto-tags shipments and auto-populates data across all supply chain partners. The ability to auto-tag and update information on deliveries and orders and processing points can help reduce miscommunication.
Unify People and Systems Through Digital Supply Chain Management With Turvo
The right strategy for using your tech stack may not always seem ideal. However, a unified tech stack that runs autonomously through a single-pane-of-glass dashboard is the go-to strategy for success. Stop haggling over disparate systems and endless logins. Learn more by visiting Turvo online today.
