Supply Chain Innovation: Why the Status Quo is Hurting Business Growth
Today's modern business isn't the company your grandfather used to run. A fast-paced, interlinked world seems to be all but shrinking thanks to new technologies - but it's those new technologies that are leaving some corporations in the dust as they delay transitioning away from manual, paper-based business processes and sluggish supply chains. Companies that cling to "the way it's always been done" are being left behind in an unforgiving economy shaped by speed, adaptability, and above all, efficiency.
Innovation is the key, whether it's through whipping your company fleet into shape with fleet management, keeping close tabs on product through inventory management software or maximizing every square foot of space with improved warehouse management. Innovation is hitting the market as software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that centralize data and provide real-time access to what you need to know, whether you're in the office down the hall or several continents away. Technology is linking vendors to customers to shippers in an interlinked web that promotes the sort of fast, adaptable response that sets a business ahead of its competitors. Today's logistics is mobile, connected and requires much more than the pencil-and-clipboard style of management from years past.
Where is it all leading? More companies will be turning to SaaS solutions and their IT departments to procure and manage new technologies that are proving vital to day-to-day business needs. Bar coding, radio frequency identification (RFID) and GPS tracking are just some of the new innovations that are making the difference between companies that can respond to the demands of a challenging marketplace and companies that are folding under the pressure. Big data is being leveraged to maximize insight into every facet of business operations, meaning the company that can best accumulate, process and analyze their enterprise data will be in the best position to lead their industry.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said the world now creates as much data in a span of 48 hours as all of human civilization managed to produce from the beginning of history until 2003. Leveraging that data to better understand and propel business is paving the way into the future … and we can all agree it’s not exactly something that can be handled with a clipboard. Technology is the key - and the deciding factor in which side of history today’s businesses intend to stay.
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