How is Automation Critical to Supply Chain Resilience?

Gone are the days of a world primarily driven by globalization and economic factors. The disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a harsh lesson in supply chain management. While geopolitical tensions are on everyone’s radar in 2024, from Deloitte to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), dictating new realities.

In this new world, a single company’s supply chain is a vast, intricate network spanning multiple countries and stakeholders. Resilient companies excel. They anticipate, withstand, and swiftly recover from disruptions, maintain operations, and adjust to dynamic customer needs. Building this level of resilience requires deep visibility for companies in the supply chain. But why is this such a challenge? And why is automation the key?

Why is supply chain resilience so challenging in 2024?

Gartner reveals a shift in focus from pure cost optimization towards resilience and sustainability. Why? Pursuing lean, cost-centric supply chains through single-sourcing and minimal inventories often leaves companies vulnerable to shortages, stoppages, and losses during ongoing disruptions.?

In addition to improving business continuity and profitability over the short and long term, pursuing resilience dovetails with sustainability goals like diversifying suppliers, nearshoring, circular economies, and meeting changing consumer expectations.

However, achieving resilience within freight, logistics, and supply chain organizations is challenging for several reasons:

1. Disruption is amplified in globally interconnected supply chains.
2. Supply chain visibility and data management are difficult due to scattered data systems.
3. Legacy processes make it difficult to react to shifts in customer demand, supply chain disruptions, or emerging trends.
4. A reliance on manual tasks creates inefficiencies that increase the risk of delays and errors.
5. Limited resources prevent companies from making the necessary investments
6. Unpredictable threats force companies to take reactive positions, leaving little room to pivot to proactive risk management.

How does automation boost supply chain resilience?

While these hurdles seem daunting, they present an opportunity for transformation. Organizations can fundamentally change how they operate by adopting technologies that enable real-time visibility, intelligent automation, and adaptive capabilities.

Real-time visibility into supply chains

Automating data management allows data to be gathered and analyzed in real-time across the supply chain (internal systems, APIs, EDIs, and external sources). This visibility exposes potential bottlenecks or disruptions before they become crises and allows on-the-fly adjustments to minimize impact.

Predictive analytics increases agility

AI-powered automation leverages a supply chain company’s historical data to identify patterns and forecast potential risks. With this visibility into their supply chain, companies can diversify suppliers, adjust inventory levels, or create contingency plans, enhancing their readiness during unexpected events.

Agility & speed

Route planning, carrier selection, and document processing are three of the most time-consuming processes in the supply chain. By intelligently automating these intricate processes, organizations can respond with unparalleled speed and agility. Automated systems can also rapidly evaluate multiple scenarios, identify the optimal solution, and execute changes on autopilot–instantly.

Data sharing between supply chain partners

Automation promotes seamless data sharing, allowing real-time communication between supply chain partners. When disruptions inevitably occur, automation makes coordinated recovery actions possible, minimizing the duration of stoppages and ensuring business continuity and uninterrupted customer orders.

Improved customer experience

Resilient supply chains can maintain reliable delivery times even during disruptions. This builds customer trust and loyalty. In an age where expectations for last-mile delivery have no ceiling, the need for predictable service levels has never been greater.

Stargo: Your all-in-one data automation solution

Resilience hinges on data-driven insights in today's densely connected, high-speed supply chains. Stargo delivers these capabilities in real-time.

Data extraction, cleansing, and structuring

Stardox, our GenAI-powered engine, sits above disparate sources such as WMS, TMS, and ERP systems to extract, cleanse, structure, and enrich data. It provides a single source of truth to enable resilient planning and decision-making.

Predictive analytics

Stardox analyzes historical data and identifies patterns, trends, and potential risk areas to anticipate supplier issues, capacity shortages, port delays and more. Armed with these insights, you can create contingency plans, adjust inventory levels, and diversify sources, making every stage of your operations more resilient.

Real-time visibility

Track your supply chain from the initial purchase order to the final customer delivery.?

• Real-time tracking visibility improves from 20% to 100%, allowing for continuous monitoring and updating of order status.
• Limited visibility of loading lists increases to 100%, streamlining transport planning and reducing delays.
• The limited visibility of buy prices increases by 100%, minimizing cost and risk.

Optimized resource deployment

Stardox’s automated load optimization, carrier selection, and route planning tools adapt quickly to disruptions, redeploying resources to ensure the flow of goods.

• Automated scheduling reduces productivity loss from 50% to 0%.
• "RFQ generation time drops from 60 hours to 40 seconds.
• Buy Price (Spot) processing time is reduced from 5 hours to 3.6 seconds

To us, customer experience is a core focus of resilience

We recognize the link between resilience and exceptional customer service. With real-time tracking, automated shipping document generation, and proactive alerts, Stardox allows you to talk to customers ahead of the issue and manage their expectations accordingly.?

Ready to transform your supply chain into a model of resilience? Contact Stargo today to schedule a demo and discover the power of data-driven adaptability.