COVID-19 revealed the delicate nature of the global supply chain, prompting logistics and transportation professionals to start searching for resilience. Where a need exists, innovation fills it, and supply chain stakeholders are turning to the digital supply chain to build resilience. There is no denying that digital supply chains are changing things and are here to stay.

Experts proclaim that up to 70% of digital supply chain transformation efforts are doomed to fail, making it essential that shippers choose the right partner to digitize their business. Yet, global companies are investing rapidly to realize the benefits of supply chain visibility.

It’s crucial to understand the digital supply chain and the strategies and critical components of an effective move to digitization when choosing the right digital supply chain solutions partner.

What is a Digital Supply Chain?

The digital supply chain is the integration and application of digital technologies and data-driven strategies throughout the supply chain. The digital supply chain comprises advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), GPS, automation, and analytics. By unifying these technologies, companies streamline and optimize supply chain activities like procurement, production, inventory management, logistics, and customer fulfillment.

The digital supply chain improves visibility, efficiency, agility, and collaboration by leveraging digital solutions and real-time data. It enables organizations to make informed data-driven decisions, enhance their operational performance, and meet the needs of demanding customers.

The digital supply chain keeps organizations ahead of the game in today's rapidly evolving business landscape. The future is now.

Shippers Realize Tremendous Benefits

Shippers that adopt a robust digital supply chain solution realize excellent benefits that enable them to take control of their supply chains.

• Improved visibility: The most significant deterrent to efficient and resilient supply chains has been an inability to know where freight is in the process and determine ETAs. Before freight visibility, it took calls and inefficient communication to estimate a location. Also, data points couldn’t be accumulated without true visibility to know partners' efficiency accurately.
• Improved reactivity: When shippers know where freight is and when exceptions happen, they can react immediately, not when a problem is identified hours later. Knowing now could be the difference between an on-time shipment or days of delays.
• Proactive rather than reactive operations: Shippers cannot plan for events they don’t know have happened in the past. The ability to create carrier scorecards and predict supply chain disruptions based on past data lets shippers assume a proactive approach to their supply chains.

Digital Supply Chain Management Revises the Entire Supply Chain

Shippers use digital supply chain management to develop informed strategies from knowing their KPIs. The supply chain becomes manageable.

Building Digital Supply Chain Management Strategies: Three Steps

Building a proper and reliable digital supply chain management strategy involves three essential steps.

1) Partner With Experts

The digital supply chain market is booming and accelerating post-COVID-19. Going from $3,918 million in 2020 to a projected $13,679 million by 2030, has the market growing at a CAGR of 13.2%. The desire to emerge from being controlled by supply chains to managing them is becoming a big business for good reason.

As the market booms, many players enter it hoping to capitalize early on. Choosing the right digital supply chain management solution provider that will be there years down the road and grow with the company is crucial.

2) Prioritize Scalable Solutions

The market is dynamic, meaning visibility across all operations is vital for every shipper. Shippers cannot know what they can’t see.

The need for visibility makes scalable solutions critical. The strategies must adapt as the organization grows.

3) Embrace the Tech

Integration now gives shippers an advantage as their teams get to know the tools early. Working with experts integrating these tools into operations, shippers bolster their supply chain resilience and ensure an optimum return on investment in digital supply chain management.

The Three Biggest Benefits to Shippers

Shippers that move to a digital supply chain with the right partner realize three primary benefits.

End-to-End Container Tracking

Real-time tracking across all modes of transport, including ocean and rail, enables shippers to locate their freight, manage exceptions as they happen, and know their ETAs.

They are alerted with each milestone in the journey or if an exception occurs, and shippers can share this information with all stakeholders. This prompt communication eliminates the need for inefficient and unreliable calls to carriers and customers, allowing staff to focus on higher-value activities.

End-to-End tracking that includes rail opens up intermodal freight transportation. With intermodal, shippers realize cost savings, more sustainable operations, and higher cargo safety.

 Using port and terminal visibility, shippers can see where cargo is and know how long it has been in port, enabling them to mitigate costly demurrage and detention fees. This visibility also helps shippers significantly reduce deadhead miles.

When tracking is genuinely end-to-end, there are no voids in the process and no lag before learning about and managing exceptions.

Data Enrichment and Analytics

The global supply chain creates millions of data points daily, including hundreds along the cargo's route. Trying to standardize and understand this information, especially how it unveils the shipper's KPIs, seems impossible to do in-house, not to mention it’s costly and wastes valuable time and staffing resources.

Data analytics standardize the data points and give shippers an accurate picture of past performance and where issues exist along their supply chains. Shippers can use this data to create carrier scorecards and know their KPIs. Armed with this information, shippers gain the ability to predict future problems and disruptions, building supply chain resiliency.

Beyond the shipper’s supply chains, they can see the performance of the global supply chain, opening up performance monitoring and the ability to benchmark the entire industry worldwide. With this unparalleled visibility into international trade, they see the impacts of unexpected events, identify new trade network designs, and understand how network health fluctuates in real time.

All of this adds up to actionable insights that foster supply chain resilience. Analytics and data enrichment empower shippers, giving them control over their supply chains instead of being controlled by them.

Streamlined Integration

Creating an in-house solution is expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating. Shippers’ time is best spent optimizing their operations and utilizing an easily integrated solution.

An API plugs into a shipper’s existing tech stack, saving time and money and giving the shipper the power to start understanding their supply chains and freight movements immediately. Shippers need data now, and an API provides it.

The Digital Supply Chain Is Here To Stay

The digital supply chain helps shippers build true supply chain resiliency when they work with an established partner that provides an easy-to-integrate API with end-to-end visibility and complete data analytics.

Shippers that join the digital supply chain know where their freight is, its ETA, and if an exception happens. They save the time and confusion that comes from contacting supply chain stakeholders instead using push notifications.

With real-time tracking, intermodal freight transportation is opened up to shippers along with the savings, safety, and sustainability that come with it.

Using the data collected during their freight movements, shippers gain the ability to know their KPIs, create carrier scorecards, and apply the data to future predictions. They take control of their supply chains, streamline them, and build resilience.

VIZION API easily integrates with an existing tech stack, giving shippers freight visibility across all transportation modes and the ability to see their supply chain performance. They can know their KPIs, rate their carriers, and analyze the entire global supply chain.

With VIZION API push notifications at milestone events, all stakeholders keep up to date on freight movements and ETAs. The service needs of demanding customers are exceeded, and the freight stays on track to meet the delivery time frame.

Book a demo with VIZION API today to see how the digital supply chain brings supply chain resilience to your organization.