Ask any firm, be it small, medium, or large-sized about the biggest hassles they face in their business processes, and supply chain management would surely embellish the top half of the list. Studies have found out that businesses leak huge chunks of resources to create an adequate supply chain, monitor their processes, and ensure streamlined governance. Though the advent of multiple technologies has added a breath of fresh air to the complex supply chain, a plethora of issues still plague firms that need to be duly addressed.
No doubt logistics is the burning topic that begs a solution in the whole supply chain sector. Faulty transportation, monitoring of in-transit goods, logistics workflow management are but some of the places that plague all companies. Unsurprisingly, hence, businesses all over the world are increasingly adopting the services of specialized consultancies and strategy firms that command expertise in logistics management to streamline this hassle-prone department. For India, one of the biggest developing economies in the world, logistics management is a very challenging sector. This has prompted the rise of strategy consulting firms that can hold their client’s hands and sail them through the ups and downs, hiccups of logistics. Here’s a detailed list of the usual problems that businesses face in logistics management in today’s world—
Transportation prices
One of the obvious prime challenges is in transportation prices. Higher fuel costs automatically translate to higher transportation costs and that is a headache for firms. While fuel cost is one thing that no consultancy in the world can help you with, they can help business streamline or smarten their other adjoining processes so that the overall cost is kept in check even though when the fuel price rises.
Business Process Improvement
The whole workflow of logistics is very fragmented, disoriented, and decentralized. Hence, workflow management from the source location to the destination is a huge hassle and so is monitoring of the sub-processes involved. Though there are a lot of technology solutions available in the market to cater to this solution, often re-vamping a firm’s logistics line and on-boarding a holistic digital platform is a daunting task. It’s not very uncommon to see business consultancies partnering with big firms to streamline the digital transformation of their logistics work flow.
Regulatory Issues
A supply chain moves beyond geographical borders and it may stretch across cities, states, and even countries. When such a thing happens, there are multiple legal issues that come into play. Regulatory concerns in case of cross border logistics demand a lot of acumen to duly address and strategic consultancies can help these firms to address all regulatory issues in their supply chain and ensure smooth functioning of the same
Customer Service
This is a problem for many firms who engage in the online delivery of goods or e-commerce. Customers want full visibility of their transported goods and it’s not very easy to do that. Sure, technological solutions are flooding the market as ‘logistics management platforms’, but it requires a lot of extra effort to adopt those platforms and streamline the entire process so that the end customer can have full visibility. Customer service improvement in logistics is certainly a very daunting task that needs to be solved by firms.
Such reasons give more clarity as to why logistics is a red area for firms that need huge care and dedication to streamline. In India, this has fuelled the need for efficient management firms to take care of a business’ logistics department as a whole. Strategy consulting firms adept in logistics management services have been assisting companies of all sizes to gain peace of minds in logistics and give more focus on their core operations instead.