England has begun a 4-week lockdown but, as happens every year, planning and building up stocks for the Christmas period must still take place. The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on this process cannot be understated but that is also exacerbated by the fact that the final act of Brexit will follow just a few days later.
The double whammy of Christmas and Brexit means that transport providers will need to juggle festive stock building and Brexit challenges at the same time, not to mention that changes in customer behaviour must be anticipated and met. Supply chains will be severely tested – and even bent out of shape – by competing requirements and waves of change will surge through the logistics industry.
For a transport operator, one area in which the impact of such momentous events can be minimised is in your IT system, specifically your transport management system (TMS). If you employ a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based TMS such as Deltion’s CarrierNet, you will be able to accommodate any major disruptions in planning, reporting, data handling and client service delivery.
CarrierNet will:
Enable collection of a huge amount of data – and filter it to show only what is necessary to particular users Allow delivery to every kind of customer whatever their profile: retail, home or office
Flex to changing customer requirements and integrate with other systems to automatically update order status. (In lockdown, changes to orders will happen but a SaaS TMS can accommodate that without causing undue stress on customers.)
Ensure transparency at all levels of management, enabling them to deliver on their customer promise
Be accessible to users via the internet from any location (both providers and customers are likely to change their access requirements without much notice)
Deliver all of this without any additional capital spend
Having an efficient and highly adaptable TMS may not solve all your supply chain worries but it will relieve one of your major headaches.
If your TMS is unable to deliver the above functionality, please contact Bashir Khan: bashir.khan@deltion.co.uk