The future of transport management will be resilient & sustainable, with enhanced recipient services at a lower cost-to-serve, says Tim Bateman of TCS
Tim Bateman is a Retail Supply Chain Partner at TCS based in the UK. With over 25 years of experience in retail supply chain, Tim has led several large supply chain transformation programmes leveraging processes improvements, organisational clarity, and the right technologies.
The future of transport management will be resilient & sustainable, with enhanced recipient services at a lower cost-to-serve, says Tim Bateman of TCS
Tim Bateman is a Retail Supply Chain Partner at TCS based in the UK. With over 25 years of experience in retail supply chain, Tim has led several large supply chain transformation programmes leveraging processes improvements, organisational clarity, and the right technologies. The past festive season, if you were able to tuck presents under the Christmas tree, you have been lucky. Luckier, if you were able to put up the iconic tree in the first place. That’s because several Christmas trees - natural and artificial - got stuck in some container due to port congestion, or due to shortages of truck drivers stressing out every part of retail supply chains.
In both the US and UK, the government had to push for round-the-clock port operations and slacken labour and visa rules to address port congestion and labour shortage to ensure packages were moving, gifts were being delivered, and shelves were not empty. Almost all operators of large (and many small) road transport fleets operate either a template-based approach, or utilise a route optimisation product to make their transport plans - typically on a daily basis. The time is right to address the temporary workarounds and realise both the service improvement and cost reduction opportunities by leveraging improved data streams and new technologies.
Shift from cost driver to critical profitability enabler
Transport is a major cost component, typically accounting for around half of supply chain costs. In addition, raising freight costs are weighing on companies’ profits. Whilst retailers have soaked up much of these cost increases, there are increasing signs of price inflation to consumers.
This raging supply chain crisis is not new, but a perfect storm of rising customer expectations around tighter delivery windows, convenient fulfilment options such as BOPIS, and notifications about shipment delays or stock issues, make transportation planning complex. Combined with a sprawling network of multiple third-party providers, planning gets even more complicated.
Transportation planning is as much about the flow of information as it is about the flow of goods. With limited to no visibility into other retail areas such as merchandising and inventory, combined with a capacity constrained market, there is a risk that customer experience takes a huge hit.
Although many fleets have IoT connected vehicles, whether OEM factory fitted or aftermarket installation; retailers are failing to maximise the use of the data available to them, in particular the part that it can play in reflecting real-world experiences in refining transport plans.
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