Savi Group

Today’s supply-chain information providers must deliver more than just visibility of their customers’ shipments and mobile assets. This year should see the emergence of more sophisticated services that bring greater decision-making intelligence and returns on investment to shippers and logistics companies. The global economic downturn requires information providers and their customers to innovate new information services that cut costs and improve efficiency without sacrificing operational performance. Information capabilities will continue to become more broad and robust, with more impact on the bottom line. They must increasingly address better ways to optimize inventory levels, reduce transportation costs, including detention and demurrage, improve asset utilization and lifecycle management, enhance customer service, reduce security risks, meet regulatory requirements, cut capital investment, and improve forecasting and planning, among others. Information integration is the key to this competitive advantage — integration of real-time wireless tracking systems, ranging from bar codes and RFID to global positioning system and cellular networks; integration of siloed information systems and software applications for a common view and single version of the truth; integration of business processes with the flow of information on the physical location, security and condition of cargo shipments and assets. Anyone in this business understands the staggering complexity of global and local supply chains. The information systems that support the supply-chain community can be equally complex. The movement of a single container from its origin in Asia to its destination in the U.S. can change hands — and information systems — two dozen times. As a result, another imperative this year is to provide capabilities that distill and simplify this supply-chain data into actionable information in a simple, easily accessible format, whether it’s a customized solution or transaction-based, information-as-a-service. This is no easy task, requiring the marriage of deep technological expertise in IT systems and architecture with domain knowledge of the supply chain. Anything less will not meet the challenges ahead.