White Paper Identifies Transportation Best Practices and Megatrends to Adopt by 2025
The rise of e-commerce and consumer expectations is leading firms to treat transportation as a strategic element of the business plan and the end-to-end supply chain rather than a cost center, according to a white paper by UT’s Global Supply Chain Institute titled “Transportation 2025 Megatrends and Current Digital Best Practices.”
Consumers’ delivery experiences and online product availability have become key market differentiators, making transportation the last customer service touch point. The paper emphasizes that this change to viewing transportation as a value–added enterprise will affect the relationship between shippers and carriers, as well as business strategy, much more than previous fluctuations in the business environment.
The research shows shippers who have appropriately aligned transportation with their business model have significantly better performance than those who have not. It predicts that firms that solely focus on minimizing transportation cost without consideration for the overall value proposition will fall short of the customer’s growing expectations for speed and synchronized product availability.
The report identifies three megatrends and seven best practices businesses should adopt by 2025 to remain competitive.
Trend 1: An omnichannel approach will replace multiple distribution network strategies.
Trend 2: Integrated supply chain operations enabled by data-format neutral technology.
Trend 3: The emergence of the chief supply chain officer.
Transportation Best Practices
1. Long-term strategies/partnerships to succeed
2. Creating value from lean methodologies
3. Fully leveraging new intermodal capabilities
4. Highly customized services to meet emerging needs
5. Establishing the right culture for driving transportation
6. Fully leveraging digital technology/analytics
7. Expansion and bundling services for growth
All the companies surveyed have created value from Lean methodologies and established a culture for driving transportation excellence. Other common best practices included creating strategies for long-term transportation partnerships with carriers, leveraging intermodal capabilities, customizing services to meet emerging needs, leveraging digital technology, and bundling services for growth.
Download the complete white paper. MODEX recently announced a transportation and logistics Solution Center at MODEX 2018. Learn more.
