COVER STORY

VISIBILITY IN SUPPLY CHAIN

A recent Harvard Business Review Analytic Services and GEP study showed that more than 72% of companies believed their key supply chain capabilities—supply planning, demand planning, supplier risk management, warehousing and logistics, procurement, and inventory management—to be digitally immature. New technologies can provide comprehensive supply-chain visibility with real-time data and intelligence to help companies make timely and effective decisions based on shifting market dynamics. While attaining clear visibility into the entire supply chain seems to be a daunting task, it is not an OPTION anymore but a MUST for companies. The Covid-19 pandemic has only accentuated this very fact. Our recent Webinar, ‘Real-time Visibility in Logistics’ offered fascinating facets into what visibility means to the stakeholders and how enhanced visibility is the only way forward for companies. Here’s presenting you the excerpts from the engaging webinar sponsored by LogiCloud and moderated by Sanjay Desai, Cofounder & Regional Director, Humana International (S) Pte. Ltd.

Apurva Mankad, Founder & CEO, LogiCloud and WebXpress India

What do you mean by visibility? The very idea of visibility is how do I remove uncertainty from my day-to-day life be it supplying cargo, unloading at the warehouse, so on. India is a diverse country. We have 9 million fleet in India, which is more than population of some of the countries. More than 90% of fleet are owned by people with just 5 vehicles or less. When we have such a wide fragmentation, the scope for visibility is humungous. Improving visibility is one of the toughest jobs to achieve for any company be it even Google. I think if we can reduce the plight of people who are waiting at the bus stop to catch the next bus is when we would be able to proudly say that we have achieved visibility in a true sense. I hope to do work in that area in the future.

How can we bring the small players or small suppliers into the visibility ecosystem to ensure endto-end transparency? The supply chain is as good as its weakest link. World over the supply chain consists of small as well as large players. Unless you bring the small players into the gamut, you can’t achieve the visibility objective. I will give you an example… we are working with a big retail client in India, they run more than 350 retail fashion stores across the country. Getting material to sell in those stores is dependent on probably 500+ small manufacturing companies. Unless they don’t bring all these players into the ecosystem, they will not be able to do a good job of prediction and in making sure that the stores are having all the SKUs at the right time. For many decades, these companies have been ignored because firstly they don’t have the IT system in place, or they didn’t have the maturity in place, or they were considered too small to worry about. Today that’s not the case. It’s not restricted to manufacturing only, all the partners in the ecosystem need to be brought into the visibility space like the small transportation partners. Companies need to incentivize their partners to get onto the visibility journey. Once they realize the benefits, they will certainly be a part of the change. But until that happens, it’s of no use. It should be the responsibility of big players to bring onboard their partner ecosystem for the real change to happen.

Can you talk about trust & transparency? Transparency is all about visibility. One should be willing to get the visibility or allow the transparency to go to your partner. One of the traditional problems has been that people don’t want to tell you where they are. Traditionally there has been a trust deficit between supply chain partners especially the logistics partners and the shippers of goods who are always at loggerheads. There is also trust deficit in terms of what service has been provided or not been provided. First thing we need to ensure is building trust. It will help both the partners to declare to each other the updates which might have an impact on other’s operations. There’s a big change culturally as far as the supply chains in India are concerned. Yes, there is a long way to go. As we move forward, this will only improve from hereon.

What are the opportunities that young minds have in the digital world? Young minds are going to be the key in the future. They don’t have the baggage of the past. The young generation is way more open to adopting technology. They need to be backed with the right capital. That’s why we are seeing a huge influx of start-ups, particularly in India.

What is the best way to achieve supply chain visibility? Experimenting is critical whoever wants to go in for supply chain visibility solution. For example, one company went on thinking about how a control tower should be like for close to 18 months. The result is that the control tower didn’t see the light of the day. The essence is one must start somewhere and then iron out complexities and inefficiencies arising in the system. The companies should take a pragmatic approach. They should look at where do they stand currently. If you are at 0, go to next milestone, i.e., 1 and so on. The technology needs to be easily deployable into your supply and give you some results on day 1. If you deploy a technology into your system and it gives you results after 30 days, then there is something wrong with that. For sure, one may not be happy with the result in its entirety, but there must be a start.

What are your clients’ expectations? Involving multiple logistics partners is a must for our customers but bringing them all into one system has always been a challenge for them. Monitoring them and ensuring seamless supply chain visibility can immensely lead to optimization of their processes. This is where LogiCloud fits the bill perfectly. Through our custom solutions & services, even smallest logistics company can be digitally connected to a large company. We are hopeful that LogiCloud platform would help connect all stakeholders in supply chain and lead to greater efficiencies. 