OK, so we may have resorted to hyperbole to grab your attention, but you have to admit the prospect of a major worldwide conflagration has not been more likely for many decades. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, simmering tensions in Taiwan and the South China Sea, plus sabre rattling from a lot of major powers - Russia, China, the (Trumpian side of the) US, Iran, Israel and more - it does sometimes seem like we’re staring down the barrel of a gun held by one trigger-happy autocrat or another. On a cheerier note, though nothing as utterly disastrous as a full-blown global war may occur, a relatively regional conflict like the Ukraine war has shown that the rest of the world - including the UK - is not immune to the adverse effects arising therefrom. So, where are we going with this?
While in reality it would be a dreadful scenario, just imagine for a moment the effect on the freight transport industry should the UK become embroiled in a major global war. To start with, the industry is not in a great state as it is and apart from the current likelihood of inflation dropping in the medium term, there is very little, if any, 'fat' in the logistics sector right now. It takes no great leap of the imagination to imagine that there would be an immediate and explosive impact on aspects such as personnel (who would be conscripted/needed purely for the war effort?) as well as availability, security and cost of food, fuel, trucks and spare parts, to mention a few. And what about constraints on transport-safe times of day, as well as potential damage to highways and roads due to bombing? The industry, never mind our very lives, would change completely overnight and possibly forever.
The key word above is CHANGE. Almost everything in freight industry would have to change, perhaps overnight, from physical operations to systems and personnel management and who knows what else?
In the hopefully unlikely event of such a seismic global crisis, all any freight operator can do is to plan for the best but be prepared for the worst. One easily accessible and cost effective way to prepare for any kind of change is to manage your IT in such a way that all information is instantly available to, and usable by, the requisite parties, something that any SaaS-based* TMS can do for you. Furthermore, absent the dreadful scenario described above, a sophisticated TMS such as CarrierNet will help you significantly improve operational efficiency and therefore your bottom line. To learn more about how it can do this, please contact Bashir at bashir.khan@deltion.co.uk.
*SaaS is the acronym for ‘Software as a Service’. Essentially, it is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. It’s actually a software rental model, sometimes referred to as “on-demand software”. SaaS was made possible by the development of broadband/high-speed internet over the past 20 years or so. Microsoft Office 365 and Adobe Photoshop are two typical SaaS products. In fact, Deltion’s own award-winning CarrierNet was the first internet-based logistics solution and has been recognised internationally as the leading web-based application for supply chain, logistics and transport management.