In the past two years, we’ve seen an acceleration of digitalization across the logistics industry. However, as we all know, we still have a long way to go.
Paper and human readable ePaper still plays a far too major role across the supply chain. And sending something by email, only to be printed or manually rekeyed, is not true digitalization of a process. However, the growing wave of digital solutions offers a real opportunity to drive lasting change by building and embracing digital documentation and straight through digital processing (STDP). We’ve seen some progress in the adoption of the electronic bill of lading, e-documents, and digital communications; however, there is an important and valuable need for supply chain participants and logistics businesses to manage all their operational and reference data globally and entirely digitally.
According to a recent McKinsey & Company report, documentation for a single shipment can require up to 50 sheets of paper that are exchanged with up to 30 different stakeholders. This is slow, inefficient, and error prone. As we move toward a paper-free future, we need to innovate for the full replacement of paper and e-paper as primary and move to computer-readable documents and fully digital workflows as primary. Human-readable documents should be an option used only when absolutely required by law or technical impediment.
There has been a surge in the use of data entry automation software in logistics, but there is a missed opportunity in realizing true operational benefits of this technology. We need to remove the need for human rekeying in data capture to reduce the risk of incorrect data entry and rekeying of data, as well as lower the costs associated with data exchange and reduce the opportunity for fraud.
We’ve made this fully digital future a priority development area at WiseTech. Data is at the core of any supply chain or logistics process and speed, accuracy, and cost is paramount to improve outcomes. Developing solutions that will provide rapid, accurate, and complete data transfer, allowing real-time data processing, and streamlined operational processes and decision-making are a win–win for everyone involved.
WiseTech Global is committed to this fully digital future and is investing heavily in the innovations required, most recently acquiring Bolero and Shipamax, along with a substantial internal development program to enable and empower our customers and the industry at large. As we progress this fully digital future, we intend to license our innovations, standards, and schematics to other participants and supply chain and logistics technology vendors to create common standards and consensus in this space.