Collaboration and the state of the supply chain

Dominik Birgelen, CEO at oneclick, discusses why collaboration in the supply chain is essential for minimising uncertainty between businesses and their suppliers.

As more sectors begin to deploy high-performing tech to drive collaboration and efficiency, it seems the current state of the supply chain is not living up to the same expectations. In fact, a recent study has shown that a third of firms are unaware of how their suppliers are performing.

This is largely down to a lack of software support, which is essentially restricting collaboration throughout the supply chain, further leading to inventory inaccuracy and loss in profits. As it stands, suppliers are needing to work within several different solutions to interact. This means warehouse owners aren’t easily able to manage performance and access analytics.

To address these concerns, suppliers are now moving away from the traditional ways they manage their systems on premise and are integrating to cloud-based platforms to streamline communications, improve productivity and boost profits. For bigger businesses and vendors, there is a pressure to keep ahead of the competition by adopting the best technologies to enable the highest productivity. In addition, with nearly 50 million tonnes of goods being moved every day in the US alone, it is crucial to implement a successful platform that can manage risks and resolve any issues that occur. It will also allow end users to monitor the overall process and make any adjustments if needed.

Using collaborative technology, with a secure back portal, facilitates a system for multiple vendors or suppliers, enabling a more streamlined execution and guaranteed security in any location in-which data is accessed. With this in place, companies communications will be accelerated leading to multiple long-term benefits, including lower costs and overall ease of the process, which can be ensured with a collaboration platform to drive efficiency in supply chain.

Furthermore, if both the suppliers and distributors work to deliver value for each other in the long term and both recognise the benefits of the system, it will strengthen their partnership going forward. In terms of admin, whilst many complex documents are going back and forth between multiple suppliers, vendors and buyers, it can be difficult to keep these organised with easy access. Using a cloud system allows documents to be stored safely in one location, making it easier to locate them at a future date. This also applies to data storage. To separate certain data, companies will usually require many different applications to store information. The cloud is able to carry out analysis on data and store it safely in an organised manner. Usually this task would be handled by an employee, so additionally, the time saved can be invested in places of the business that require greater attention.

This will also significantly cut costs. As the cloud is able to replace many human tasks, employers have less pressure to hire new staff to maintain streamlined systems. In addition, these tasks performed by the cloud will be achieved considerably faster than if carried out by an employee. Over time, this will speed up the entire system of the supply chain, making the process increasingly efficient. In addition to this, employers won’t need to rely on IT support to fix internal technical problems, as the cloud can self diagnose and resolve issues in the system. This will save a crucial amount of time and money waiting for IT support to arrive and fix the issue for a hefty fee.

Collaboration in the supply chain is essential for minimising uncertainty between businesses and their suppliers. A lack of collaboration leads to inventory inaccuracy, security issues and loss in profits, which can unavoidably decrease your businesses success. Working within one supported platform, all interaction and distribution analytics can be accessed in one space, with a simple request. With only a small monthly subscription, employers will experience a significant reduction in costs with a higher level of security by adapting to a cloud-based platform. This year, we can expect to see a 60% reduction in security issues when using the cloud. With this, and considering the multiple end users involved in the supply chain, using one secure platform will inevitably strengthen the collaboration and management of suppliers, vendors and buyers.

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