Amit Maheshwari, Softlink Global CEO
Logistics and freight businesses have never been more dependent than now on technology to help them deliver quality services to customers.
Technology has a vital role to play when it comes to innovation and meeting customer expectations. As supply chains become increasingly global, the demands on logistics and freight businesses are greater than ever before. Logistics and freight businesses must be ready to address such demands. We find though that many are simply not prepared technologically, leaving them wide open to risks and setbacks.
The increasing demand of the ever-expanding supply chain is only going to expose logistics and freight businesses to more challenges as they struggle to gain complete visibility and control of their business activities. A lack of visibility within the organization makes businesses susceptible to competition. This leads to businesses’ inability to identify and mitigate operational obstacles and overcome challenges that prevent them from functioning efficiently.
One way businesses can better prepare for present and future challenges is by having the appropriate technology in place. While some logistics and freight businesses have the appropriate technology capability, many are unprepared. Few have fully developed and implemented appropriate technology plans.
In order to effectively prepare for challenges, it is vital that businesses fully understand the technology that most appropriately suits their business environment. It’s imperative that businesses are able to prepare and respond to the challenges, possible only through appropriate technology that grants visibility and control across the organization.
So what is appropriate technology?
Random use of technology defeats its very purpose: that of fortifying capabilities of the business to address present and future challenges. Technology is not only for automating the business but for making it seamless. Any software that does not cover the business end-to-end can be a chink in the business armor, causing great injury and loss.
Equal weight must be given to every aspect of the business be it sales and marketing, or operations like freight, transport warehouse etc. finance, accounting and customer service. An appropriate option is a single solution that covers the entire organization requirements end-to-end. Absent this, the performance of the company and its ability to mitigate obstacles and overcome challenges could be drastically impacted.
The disadvantages of working with multiple software—even if they are seemingly joined together to work as one—far outweighs the merits of deploying best-in-class software for different operations of the company.
The only way forward is to bring the entire organization under a single software platform, thus equipping the business to be future-ready.
One of the challenges that the industry faces is a lack of understanding on how to modernize their business. The age old adage of ‘why fix something that is not broken ‘ continues to exist in a lot of organization. For a country where labor cost is cheaper when compared to others, most business owners hesitate upon finding out the cost to modernize their enterprise. They therefore keep the same old way of doing things and turn a blind eye to the future.