To stay competitive in today’s cut-throat business environment, supply chain agility is important for organizations. Hence, the need for business intelligence software for logistic company can’t be denied. Nowadays, ventures have started deploying Business Intelligence software in Supply Chain Management to improve supply chain agility. But do you know what is business intelligence software? According to Wikipedia, Business Intelligence is a set of techniques, procedures, models, and advancements that change crude information into important and valuable data. Business Intelligence inside the supply chain improves inward efficiencies and responsibility while sparing time and taking out expenses. It enables organizations to empower increasingly unsurprising business execution by putting significant data under the control of key decision-makers. Today, many companies are embracing business intelligence tools. These tools have become a must-have for the transportation and supply chain sector.
Role of BI in Transportation and Logistics
BI software, when used in Transportation and Logistics, provides useful insights, i.e., –
- Detailed monitoring across the entire supply chain, such as on-time delivery, identify delivery issues.
- A better understanding of fuel and accessorial costs, review the volume of work-orders.
- A detailed evaluation of vendor performance of on-time deliveries and work order performance.
- Visibility into events that affect on-time conveyance and resource usage for better basic leadership and risk moderation.
- Understanding into what drives expenses and benefit inside the supply chain.
- The capacity to refresh technique rapidly to remain ahead of the competition.
Business Intelligence tools when used in transportation and logistics operation can improve profitability to a large extent. It has become easier for a business person to track supplier performance against service level agreements.
Challenges for transport and logistics companies
Due to the globalization of markets, transport and logistics companies are constantly facing new challenges. The demands of logistics processes are becoming increasingly complex. Digitalization is also playing an increasingly decisive role in this industry. Presently, up-to-date information is required in every field for making fast and safe business decisions. To be able to present this information as required, it is important to invest in industry-specific business intelligence software. Let’s see the challenges which have become a headache for transport and logistics companies –
- Identify and highlight problem areas in good time
- Analyze transport volume and make optimum use of it
- Display and plan storage capacities
- Manage and steer vehicle fleets
- Determine costs and apportion them to the project
- Provide tracking and tracing data for customers
Advantages that BI tools can give to supply chain industry
Reduced Labor Costs
Business Intelligence tools can reduce human resources time and effort to produce various and several separate reports, daily, weekly or monthly. BI helps to reduce labor costs through the data collection process as reports are generated automatically.
Information Bottlenecks are Reduced
BI systems can identify waste in your overall operations and they do this by pinpointing pain points, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies in manufacturing, operations, and sales. Business Intelligence tools provide KPI and other relevant info and thus reduces information bottlenecks as users can build individualized operation-specific dashboards relevant to their operational area. In fact, no IT assistance is required for data analysis.
Actionable Data
Business Intelligence tools provide information through one data model to allow the prevention of conflicting definitions and incomparable report data, therefore, allow the data to be more actionable. The reports and information can be provided real-time to show the state of the business at the moment.
Better Decision Making
BI tools make decisions quickly and effectively is critical for any business so the faster information is available the faster decisions can be made. Business Intelligence systems allow for better decision making since up to date real-time information allowing the user to react on anomalies.
Business Objective Alignment
Business Intelligence systems help you to align all areas towards business objectives, by KPIs which are presented intelligently so that benchmarks, actual achievement, and related trends can be viewed in one view. To measure the progress towards achieving/not achieving goals, KPI targets can be assigned to each business unit.
So, if you want to effectively manage your supply chain then you should invest in BI software. In the market, there are various excellent business intelligence solutions available which help owners/managers to plan their Business Intelligence strategy in line with and according to their specific business needs. BI tools have become an integral part of the logistics industry.
Final Thoughts
There is a range of benefits associated with business intelligence software for supply chain. With these tools, users can gain targeted insight into the organization’s past, present and future to make informed business decisions. Do you want to know more about the impact of BI tools on supply chain or want to leverage business intelligence solutions for your business? If yes, connect with us today.
