Freight Management Systems and Challenges of IT Revolution
The current economic environment is challenging for many Australian companies. According to the IBIS World reports industries such as Pharmaceuticals, Wholesale Trade are facing decreasing profit margins with increased competition from the consolidation of major players.
In this kind of environment transportation and logistics costs becomes more and more essential for maintaining levels of companies’ profitability.
Major industries players invest considerable funds in Transportation & Logistics technologies. These investments allow those companies to become even more competitive and, as a result, to acquire higher market share from smaller players.
To win this battle with huge enterprises and keep or increase their market share, Australian small and mid-size businesses need to simultaneously invest into IT technologies and audit the effectives of their Transport and Logistics.
However, companies face several challenges to implementing these actions. Among those challenges are:
Resource shortages – developing and implementing systems are expensive and time consuming preventing small/medium companies from investing in development.
Unwillingness to adopt new technologies - management of some companies, especially in such conservative industries as freight transportation not ready to adapt to the changing technological environment. Some companies continue to use manual processes for managing T&L processes where IT solutions can help. Often this means changing employee habits, particularly when IT solutions completely replace employees.
Inability to compare and chose the best service - experience shows that majority of companies can’t monitor their T&L costs and so don’t choose the best providers for particular needs or destinations. With mountains of data from numerous shipments, and without the right skills in the team, it's hard to analyze the data, the options and take the appropriate action.
The industrial revolution has been replaced with the IT revolution. Increasingly, to be competitive and win future markets, companies must be part of this revolution.
This post is an introduction to a series of articles designed to help small to medium sized businesses to reconsider their T&L processes and systems, and, as a result, to become more competitive.