Peak Hour for IT solution adoption in Australia. But are our truckers being left behind?

Transport and logistics sector lags behind with IT uptake

Australia's transport and logistics sector is falling well behind other sectors when it comes to the uptake of IT solutions.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), just 31.9 per cent of firms in the Transport, Postal and Warehouse category undertook any innovative activity relating to IT in 2015-16.

This is well behind the average across the entire Australian business community, where the figure came to 49 per cent.

Manufacturing was found to be among those to lead the way on IT innovation, with 58 per cent of firms in the sector deploying new tech solutions during 2015-16.

The retail trade was also rated as one of the top performers last year, along with recreation services industries.

The ABS looked at numerous indicators of IT use among businesses, including their web presence, their visibility on social media and the extent to which they place and receive orders via the internet.

In the transport and logistics sector, just one in five businesses are active on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

By contrast, more than a third of Australian businesses overall have a social media presence.

Similarly, only a quarter of transport logistics providers were found to have an online presence of any kind, compared with half of all Australian companies overall.

The same pattern was repeated with regards to placing orders via the internet.

Just 27.2 per cent of transport and logistics firms in Australia have embraced ecommerce, compared with 57 per cent of businesses overall.

At the same time, only 21.6 per cent of transport and logistics businesses received online orders in 2015-16, compared with 37 per cent of businesses overall.

Significantly, Australian businesses obtained $321 billion in income from the online orders they received during this period.

This suggests that transport and logistics firms could be missing out on a potential revenue stream by failing to embrace technology as much as they could.