How technology can organise an unorganised logistics market

Over the past few years, the logistics and relocation industry has undergone sea change when it comes to leveraging cutting-edge technology. The advancements have majorly been made in the spheres of artificial and augmented intelligence, automation and advanced analytics, among others.

The logistics industry, which is still considered one among the unorganised sectors, has a lot to gain with the implementation of new technologies and innovative supply chains. The adoption of new technologies was further propelled by the unprecedented developments over the past one year.

Improved customer targeting

Scouting for leads and converting the same into clients is a major bottleneck in the relocation industry, primarily because the end consumers are wary of trusting movers and packers without due diligence. One of the biggest boons of innovation and adoption of cutting-edge technology is an improved and synchronised customer targeting.

Technology has provided the industry players access to massive data bank and software that streamlines the same, thereby helping them in reaching out to the right customers just in the nick of time.

In addition to it, the players in the logistics and relocation industry now have a number of digital or online marketing channels. By using these channels judiciously in a planned manner, they are able to reach out to a wider customer base across different geographical locations.

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Route optimisation

The other operational areas where cutting-edge technology is playing a remarkable role include a swift and pro-active decision making and optimisation of routes. When a consignment or cargo is en route a destination, the relocation vendor or aggregator can access its real-time position in different time frames with the help of IoT-based systems.

With the help of such systems, both progress as well as disruptions can be monitored in real time, giving a better bandwidth to act before it’s too late. This assumes even more significance when the relocation is from one city to another. The real-time data helps in effective planning of the logistics.

Paperless processes

The growth in the industry is further boosted by Proof of Discovery (POD), the emergence of which has reduced the redundant, conventional, and cumbersome paper-based processes up to a great extent.

Do you know that creation, management and distribution of documents consume more than 15 percent of an organisation’s revenue and nearly 60 percent of employee time? This is where POD emergence has emerged as a great tech-based innovation, resulting in better productivity of employees and streamlining of processes.

Further aiding the reduction of paper-based processes is the tracking mechanism using bar codes. Acceptances, acknowledgments, consignment, and pricing details now need not be shared manually. Just install a scanner on your smartphone and you are good to go.

Tackling manpower shortage

By leveraging cutting-edge technologies, the logistics and relocation industry has further been able to overcome the challenges of labour and other manpower shortage, which was felt even more significantly following the outbreak of the pandemic last year. This shortage led to a massive surge in the overall pricing in the sector, which was not a very favourable sight for industry players as well as end consumers.

What the new-age players in the domain did was integrate tech-powered systems that made contact less or minimal contact operations feasible. For instance, we ensured that all the requirements of the consumers were met through our mobile app, letting us save on time, energy, and manpower.

Application of blockchain technology in the space has also proved to very effective when it comes to security, efficiency and data integrity. Furthermore, there are software programmes in place to improve credit analysis. To conclude, we can definitely say that cutting-edge technology has rendered a comprehensive solution to the logistics industry in sync with the need of the hour.