Creating a Digitized Supply Chain

PC: Why is end-to-end (E2E) visibility and digitization across the supply chain so valuable?

Jain: Companies were also realizing that they were facing a lot of issues, lots of losses when they were not actually ensuring that the correct procedures were followed or they were not ensuring proper automation. Automation is the future—lot of companies have started and worked on that. It's only that this technology did not exist a few years ago, so a lot of companies are looking at it now. The ERP started in 1980s, the CRMs in 2000, and now we have, all kinds of systems for every department, such as HRMS systems. We also have the support ticketing systems. However, no system existed for cross border shipment management, so companies did not realize this. We are finding that a lot more companies are adopting such technologies because they are realizing that it's not possible to just manually keep scaling the team members. Even after having more team members, the process does not get solved easily, because sometimes, if everything is sitting on emails and spreadsheets, there is a lack of coordination. If someone has to go and leave, then it sits on their emails. No one else knows what to do. It is just there. When the person comes back, there is a penalty on it, even if more team members are there.

Secondly, having more team members causes the issue that they are doing repetitive work, which should be automated. Instead, if companies are able to focus their energy on ensuring that the people are doing strategic work, building the correct relations with the carriers, finding better routes, doing better planning, this is where the time is better used, as compared to tracking every shipment and going to different carriers again and again—10 times a day—for hundreds of shipments. That cannot happen.

These can be solved with technology. People are realizing there is a lot of potential of saving costs, as the freight rates have increased in the past. They are about eight times what they were pre-COVID levels, and they are three times from the past few months now as well. Companies are seeing that it is having impact on the bottom line directly. There is extra cost, just like it's, money which is going out of their pockets. This is one of the big issues, and companies are solving it by automating systems. They are saving time. and they are having their teams put their minds on better strategic work, as compared to doing manual, repetitive work. These are the benefits that companies are realizing.