They say life is a journey, not a destination. That’s also truthful when it comes to attaining a truly digitized supply chain.
 
While many businesses view a fully digital supply chain as a pipe dream, they can start their journey through a small and non-intimidating step: utilizing work-flow automation. Initiating small with workflow automation allows organizations to streamline simple manual process like contract signatures and work right up up to more complex tasks, such as supplier performance management.
 
Those who take the first step see the organizational payoff quickly. For instance, IBM and Maersk have automated inefficient processes to the point of using blockchain technology to reduce documentation mistakes. Shippers used to waste countless hours delivering documentation from side to side across the supply chain, creating a complicated paper trail ridden with errors and miscommunication. In switching to automation and the blockchain, their supply chain friction is significantly eased.
 
It’s not simply giant enterprises like IBM and Maersk. The potential for supply chain automation goes on to enlarge to meet increased demands for transparency, speed and conformity from across the business world. With automation, service providers have the ability to support zero-defect logistics processes and empower new levels of productivity.
 
Challenges within the Supply Chain Process
 
Supply chain management neckties with each other many siloed processes and departments. However, managing the supply chain is troubled with challenges in merging so many coordinated entities and processes.
 
Corporations get overwhelmed by massive amounts of information coming from suppliers and customers in varying places, from pricing to labor agreements to tax documents and more. There are simply not sufficient hours or people to complete carry out the processes quickly and error-free.
 
With plenty time dedicated to marrying countless processes together into one supply chain, customer interactions don’t get nearly as much attention and time as they should. Consumers expect to get their packages when they want them. They also have the option to buy through numerous channels at any time on any device. Companies also have to increase or maintain fast delivery lead times to customers who want to receive their products on schedule regardless of the increased complexity in the manufacturer’s supply chains. So where is the happy medium? How can a company meet all deadlines while also give customers service matter the attention they demand? They do so through starting their process automation journey.
 
Supply Chain Automation Empowers Shippers to Meet Increasing Demands
 
Automated technology is able to work constantly to fulfill orders, assisting shippers meet heavy customer demands and reducing operational costs in the long run. For instance, a warehouse worker loading a truck for delivery can scan a package barcode. This triggers a workflow starting with a notification in that shipper’s purchase management system. That then spurs an email to the customer alerting them their package has shipped. In a similar vein, UPS has implemented warehouse automation technologies to identify the speediest route for delivery vans as it works to reduce the cost of home deliveries and carry on with with record demand.
 
But your supply chain doesn’t have to perform at UPS’s advanced level to obtain the benefits of automated processes. Mitchells & Butlers, like for example, operates managed pubs and restaurants in the U.K. Previously, it used paper-based forms for just about all of its processes — pre-opening and closure checks, wellness and safety checks, cleaning up schedules, the general manager responsibilities, and more. All in all, their manual processes yielded 3 million pieces of paper per year — that’s a lot of room for error and wasted time. In turning to a process automation, the business was able to save over 20,000 hours of employee labor per year and permit much earlier awareness of errors in the procedure.
 
Finding an Optimal Automated Workflow Tool
 
Small to mid-sized shipping operations can’t expect to keep pace with industry giants like Amazon. But by leveraging supply chain automation solutions, they can take a critical step toward minimizing working expenses and improving bottom-line efficiency. Nevertheless, that ultimate success depends on finding an effective supply chain automation solution. Here are some of the factors shippers should prioritize when looking for an optimal solution:
 
● Incremental deployment: Implementing automated workflow tools can be a big shift for shippers, and it’s important for people and processes to keep pace. For this reason, shippers should look to solutions that can be rolled out incrementally and on an as-needed basis.
 
● Integration with active solutions: Adopting a cloud-based workflow automation tool shouldn’t come at the expense of jettisoning existing processes that don’t need repairing. In order to facilitate the most seamless adoption possible, shippers should identify solution providers that easily integrate within the company’s existing infrastructure, rather than requiring total overhaul.
 
● Navigable interface: Finally, shippers need to ensure that whatever supply chain automation solution they settle on, it highlights a user-friendly and highly navigable interface. Shippers out in the field can’t frequently rely on IT teams alone to manage the solution long-term. That means settling on a solution that’s built with line-of-business workers and intuitive functionality in mind.
 
Workflow automation has the energy to stitch together disparate sub-processes into one cohesive end-to-end journey. It can also automate the variety interactions that happen in between the separate enterprise systems. In the end, the errors happen in manual spaces at process hand-off points in between steps.
 
Finally, workflow automation provides unambiguous, hi-fidelity documentation of the full end-to-end process and encoded corporate policies. Anybody with authority can peek in to see correctly the process progresses and, if needed, easily make changes that are reliably enforced and executed.
 
Moving to a digital platform for supply chain processes should render an agile solution to change processes, strategies and strategy as you navigate the transformation journey. The substitution of manual processes with a fully digital workflow starts small by addressing the most critical areas each time. From there, workflow automation enables for the streamlining of processes comprising the whole supply chain, relieving logistics pros to depend upon a smooth transporting journey while they focus on the human elements of their jobs.