According to a report from Fortune Magazine, nearly 94% of businesses within the Fortune 1000 faced supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic. Most logistics leaders experienced these disruptions themselves due to COVID exposing the weaknesses of more traditional workflows in existing supply chain planning.

Here’s a quick look at some of the issues companies are still seeing in 2023.

Shipping Costs

Have you wondered how to lower shipping costs? The Ukraine-Russia conflict has triggered the recent volatility in the price of fuel, but transportation costs, in general, have risen in the past few years.

Many trucking companies have predicted that the rates of their annual contracts will go up by double digits due to strained capacities.

Also, when taking shipping costs into consideration, Europe is also suffering from a shortage of vehicle drivers for heavy goods. In the U.S., road transportation rates have gone up amidst increased costs for input by logistics players and rising freight spending. To sum it up, costs for transportation are going up all over the planet.

Tracking

In spite of the myriad of benefits of IoT, a lot of companies still follow manual processes for tracking. Utilizing multiple software and spreadsheets for this decreases the productivity of the workforce and, as a result, reduces efficiency.

Limited Visibility

Consumers today expect their orders to be visible. That said, a lack of this throughout the supply chain can lead to issues that can seriously impede the flow of your goods. Unnecessary delays have become the norm with no transparency from end to end, as have operational inefficiencies in the warehouse.

Communication

The logistics supply chain starts with the manufacturing process and ends when your final product is delivered to your customer. The unfortunate thing is that OEMs can suffer from the lack of a communication channel being integrated into the process. This can lead to communication that’s fragmented and can have an adverse impact on both efficiency and delivery times.

Empty Miles

These are also called non-revenue miles and have been a plague for the industry of logistics for years. These lead to cost increases that aren’t necessary, as well as negative environmental impacts. They adversely impact the efficiency of both shippers and carriers.

Delivery Delays

With the demands for ecommerce goods in 2023 increasing, as they do every year, and the spiraling effect that the pandemic had that caused factories to shutter, as well as a series of issues related to a labor shortage, there will be delivery delays for some goods.

Additionally, they have fragmented and soiled legacy processes that have had a negative impact on delivery times. As an example, if you were to order a Model X or Model Y Tesla, you would have to wait for as long as a year to get it.

The Way Out

The logistics industry faces a growing list of challenges, and given that, solutions that are viable are a necessity right now. It’s a good thing that there are a few solutions available. As an example, collaborative logistics and digitization can tackle many of the existing issues and allow businesses to control, plan, and monitor their goods’ movement with ease.

Quite a few logistics players have come to embrace digitization and have actually adopted a variety of non-SAP and SAP solutions in an effort to address their emerging and existing challenges. SAP supply chain management (SCM) has allowed players in logistics to move away from things like transactional SCLM so they can move forward to a digital, strategy-driven, and sustainable approach. Additionally, this solution mitigates any potential future disruptions and enhances their overall resilience with data-driven actions and agility