Digital technologies have revolutionized every aspect of businesses, and consumer expectations are at an all-time high. Consumers today want better buying experience, faster delivery, quick response time, and all this at a lower cost. Consumers switch to other businesses in no time if their expectations are not met. Brands need to adapt fast with new trends and adopt digital technology to make their business processes more efficient and faster to increase customer retention and beat the competition. The supply chain digitalization is an essential step in this direction that can help companies to eliminate many inefficiencies and optimize the cost.
Why supply-chain digitalization?
The following are the major reasons why you should think about digitalizing the supply-chain for your brand.
Visibility of Supply Chain
The digitalization of the supply chain helps companies to bring visibility to the supply chain. This means the stakeholders involved at different levels in the supply chain can track the status of the materials/products in transit until it reaches the destination. Supply chain visibility(SCV) is especially important when companies these days outsource many functions of the supply chain. It helps brands in many ways, from tracking raw material to stock status at the retail points. SCV also helps in tackling the problems of overstocking and stock outage.
Optimizing and removing inefficiencies to lower the cost
Supply chain digitalization will also help in identifying and rectifying the inefficiencies involved in the supply chain. This will help in improving the speed and optimizing the costs involved. Digital technology can help brands plan how orders from their distributors can be efficiently managed and delivered with the least wait time.
Timely and accurate product recall
Many times brands need to recall products due to some issues in production or faulty component in the products. Supply chain digitalization makes it possible for brands to do a quick recall of faulty product batches, instead of recalling all the batches produced in a particular time period. In the case of consumable products, this may mean saving worth millions of dollars.
Trace the origin of raw materials
Another very crucial advantage of supply chain digitalization is the ability to trace the origin of raw materials. Most of the established brands depend on a number of suppliers for their raw material needs. Many times it happens that consumers suddenly start finding problems in a brand’s products, and this mostly happens due to some problem in raw material/components acquired from some supplier(s). The brand needs to find the culprit(s) to take corrective actions and identify the products in which the faulty material has been used.
Consumer Expectations
Consumers these days expect complete transparency. They want to know what they are consuming and, many times, the source of the product. SCV can be very helpful in meeting these expectations of the consumers, and brands can keep track of and record all the raw materials/product component sources.
Better inventory management
A good supply chain digital technology would connect all the warehouses of a brand, even if they are in diverse locations. Digital technology would make the whole inventory visible to supply chain managers, and they can make more informed decisions related to inventory management.
Demand forecasting
Supply chain digitalization will also help in forecasting the demand. Anticipating the demand requires input from various points involved in the supply chain. With the help of digital technology, all the required data is readily available, which can be used to forecast the demand. Whereas in the conventional supply chain, brands need to depend on surveys and interviews of involved parties to forecast the demand. Which is a time taking process and is less accurate.
Better analytics and better decision making
Since the data can be captured at all points in the supply chain with the help of digitalization, this data can participate in advanced analytics. Effective decision making requires input from various business functions involved in the supply chain. Supply chain digitalization streamlines the processes, and input from all essential functions is collected without a miss in a timely manner.
Prevent Counterfeiting
Supply chain digitalization adds transparency to the supply chain. This transparency helps in preventing counterfeiting, as brands can accurately find the point from where the counterfeits are entering the supply chain. If the digitalization has been applied at the product item level, then each product item has a unique identity. It becomes difficult for counterfeiters to sell the fakes if the brand provides a straightforward way for customers to check the product authenticity. As the brand can keep track of all items and any anomaly found in authenticity check can be marked as counterfeit. The brand can find ways to eliminate the fakes if they know where it was scanned.
Please contact us to know how NeuroTags is helping brands in the supply chain digitalization.
