It’s an all too familiar scenario in the logistics industry…
The day begins and within a few minutes, you have four different spreadsheets open, each for a different department. Goods are coming in and goods are moving out but none of these spreadsheets are communicating with each other. In short, you don’t have a clear picture of your operation.
Then there are the systems. One for transport, one for warehousing, one for invoicing. And again, there’s no cross-communication. What that does is, it puts you on the back foot, pushing you further and further behind. It forces you to be reactive rather than proactive.
To make matters worse, just as you start trying to catch up on what is actually happening, the phone rings.
It’s a disgruntled customer. “Hi, did you know that this order hasn’t been delivered?”.
It’s one thing when you need to contact a customer to tell them an order will be late but it’s far worse when it’s your customer telling you what’s going on.
IMPACT OF SYSTEMS THAT DON’T COMMUNICATE
Now, because none of your systems communicate with each other, everything has to be done manually.
You need to call the transport division – “Do you know this delivery is late?”
They think so, but they’re not sure because they can’t see anything on their system. The driver hasn’t arrived back from his night shift. So transport gets in touch with the driver and after checking his documents, transport gets back to you with the details. You’re now able to confirm with the customer what they already knew.
Two hours wasted, and you then still need to fix the problem. Plus, by then, several new orders have come in. You’re not sure where the vehicles are. And do you even have enough space? And around and around it goes.
These types of issues are hugely damaging to customer experience and the company brand.
A JOURNEY TOWARDS COMPLEXITY
There is enormous potential in logistics to make better use of new technologies.
Technology can enable people to get a clear picture of the entire supply chain. That means they can spend more time on fostering high-value customer and partner relationships and less time on routine tasks or fixing problems. We can be proactive and not reactive.
However, as we know, supply chains can be extremely complex.
They have many moving parts that all need to come together for just a single order to be delivered on time. So once you’re dealing with a thousand orders or 100 thousand orders, you need to leverage all the tools you can to make sense of that complexity.
This complexity is further explained by McKinsey research. Their research highlights that because supply chains are so specific to each company’s product range or customer needs, no one template can be applied across multiple organisations. For example, not all car manufacturers can just copy the successful production template developed by Toyota.
So if no one template can be followed, what is the solution to overcoming complexity and these kinds of challenges?
HOW TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP YOU PLAN AND OPTIMISE YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN
You should aim to develop a system whereby you instantly know that something has gone wrong. Or even better, having the insight to know that there may be an issue about to occur.
So in an ideal world, you know exactly how many orders you have, how many drivers are available for the day, and how much space is available on each vehicle. Then with just the click of a button, everything is optimised. There’s no uncertainty around whether something may be late because you already know. You have the control, accountability and visibility of your entire operation.
The good news is that the technology to do all this already exists.
Yojee is a software platform developed specifically for the logistics industry to deal with these types of challenges. The challenges can be simplified into three categories – visibility, accountability, and control.
Visibility means knowing at any time where your orders, drivers, and vehicles are. It also involves understanding how that capacity and space can be allocated most efficiently. Accountability refers to knowing that your drivers and partners are doing what they agreed to do. This leaves control, which means having the ability to make changes or decisions that can optimise your assets. Is something late? What needs to be done to prepare for peak periods effectively?
The Yojee platform is designed in a way that means everyone can see what’s happening. So you are providing the visibility – but across all parties. It creates a single source of truth. With that comes accountability, so that you, your suppliers, and partners know what is being delivered, what has and hasn’t been done, and the location of all assets. Only once you have visibility and accountability can you then progress to having control.
Routing can be optimised thanks to predictive AI. Cutting edge technology means that everything can be calculated in real-time – drivers, schedules, vehicles, capacity, and timing. These calculations are extremely maths heavy and complex, taking many hours for humans to calculate. But this is just the kind of maths that our technology loves. In just seconds, it’s done.
Your customers have expectations that things are going to be in the right place at the right time. So if you can’t solve that for them or provide visibility, then the customer relationship is going to break down quickly.
Instead of starting your day with four spreadsheets and systems that do not communicate with each other. You need to be able to move away from spending all your time-solving problems and towards a tech integrated system where you live visibility, accountability, and control day in and day out. The Yojee platform can get you there.
Our Senior Sales Executive, Marie-Louise goes into a deep dive on this topic in the video below.
About Yojee
Helping businesses overcome their complex supply chain challenges has always been Yojee’s core value. We connect land freight players through our proprietary platform, providing supply chain visibility and enabling seamless communication between shippers and their customers.
Since our founding in 2016, we have worked alongside the world’s largest 3PLs, global freight forwarders, transportation companies, and brand owners to develop logistics solutions that meet their first-mile and last-mile delivery needs.
How Yojee stands out from other logistics providers is our multi-carrier management feature, which allows collaboration between land freight players to meet demands. Coupled with our last mile delivery app for drivers, logistics providers can now efficiently move freight from point A to point B with optimal resource usage. We do all this with one goal in mind: fewer carbon emissions and sustainability.
