The rising costs caused by extra safety guidelines put forward by governments the world over, the sudden changes in their processes owing to these safety guidelines, and dwindling businesses were severe concerns for many key players in this sector. The lockdowns in various countries caused heavy supply chain disruptions, affecting international and intra-national logistics, leading to slowdowns in other related industries. Many small trucking companies in the USA were forced to file for bankruptcy in 2020 owing to COVID, as they lacked resources to turn things around or wait for the pandemic out.

The impact was evident in other industries as well – the aviation industry is one such example. Most of the major routes were either thoroughly grounded or reduced to a few hours of operations due to the lack of the required number of passengers to cover the substantial operational costs. As a result, there was a decline in people preferring to travel to international locations, bringing the demand further down.

The work-from-home situation dragged down the number of corporate travelers, which amounted to 75% of airlines’ profits. In addition, there was a decline in people preferring to travel to international locations for personal reasons, bringing the demand further down.

The global freight forwarding market was also among the most brutally hit, with an expected decline by 7.5 percent in 2020, compared with the previous year. The case was similar for various other transportation companies – a good example would be that of the global cab aggregator, Uber, which saw a 50 percent fall in its gross bookings year over year during the pandemic.

However, after a year of living through the pandemic, the outlook is positive, and the world is adapting to the changes caused by it.

How business leaders should navigate the pandemic to ensure resilience

Even though the pandemic disrupted many transport and logistics businesses, many leaders took this as an opportunity to accelerate their digital transformation journey that could catapult their business to new and sustainable levels.

Optimizing Operations

Business leaders must reassess how their businesses operate and focus on optimizing them to reduce any unwanted costs. For example, transportations and logistics companies bear the brunt of working on legacy processes, and opting to re-engineer them would result in high payoffs. For example, a warehousing business could use analytics and location data to plan various shipments to be loaded and unloaded optimally.

Similarly, airlines can use the data of passenger onboarding, baggage tag scans, or other tracking mechanisms to deploy FTEs to handle these passengers optimally, hence controlling the operational costs even further.

blackrock enabled an international construction equipment manufacturer to develop a comprehensive Fleet Management System for optimizing mine operations. As a result, the project is set to increase its efficiency and operational costs. You can read the news article here.

Providing Transparency

A business must provide transparency to all its stakeholders to make the business process easy, manageable, and measurable. For example, with every lockdown, there was rising consumer demand for home delivery and thus an increased demand for last-mile delivery services. This highlighted the need for automated, contactless delivery technology. TAs a result, these businesses need to build a digital ecosystem to ensure that their customer engagement levels are high and that transparency is maintained throughout their business processes.

Even in a B2B scenario, logistics companies need to ensure that relevant data is available to their customers to ensure their business isn’t disrupted. This is particularly significant in the wake of increased demand for e-Commerce and enterprises supported by transportation and logistics companies adopting such a transition. As for the internal stakeholders, they are improving the visibility within the supply chain, ensuring that they are ready for any disruption that might happen within the supply chain.

A good example of this would be the comprehensive logistics management platform created by blackrock for a global leader in supply chain solutions – you can read the complete success story here.

Harness the power of data

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of leveraging data and analytics solutions to make decisions. While data utilization in transportation and logistics has grown significantly over the past few years, the pandemic has accelerated an urgency to innovate. This led to rising demand for supply chain risk management and real-time monitoring systems during the past year.

With the adoption of multi-modal transportation and technological advancements leading to many different data sources like cameras, GPS, and geo-location, it is a logical step to consider this diverse data ecosystem. This unmatched amount of data can help businesses use advanced data and analytics solutions to enhance operations, reduce costs, and better serve travelers.

Understanding the mobility patterns and transportation and logistics trends early on will give rise to effective risk and disaster management, and those businesses accelerating their digital transformation journeys will reap the benefits in the long term and would be able to tackle any other significant disruptions head-on.

blackrock helped an Indian hill-state tackle its road safety challenges by going digital. You can read the complete story here.

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From governments closing the borders and enforcing lockdowns to businesses struggling to meet the supply and demand, the novel coronavirus is changing the way businesses operate, collaborate and compete. Traditional business models are on the verge of being wiped out by their digital counterparts. Digital Transformation is something that has been predicted by leading analyst firms as the way forward for years now, and certain organizations have already implemented it, with a fast-tracked future now becoming a reality.  In this current scenario, the first movers will have the upper hand in the long journey ahead, and unfortunately, the laggards will struggle to tackle the situation. 

This article takes a predictive look at how various industries will flourish post COVID-19.

Healthcare

Unlike any other industry, COVID-19 has affected the healthcare industry the most. The current situation is an opportunity for healthcare stakeholders to utilize the available tools, software, and technologies such as AI, ML, IoT, Data Analytics, etc to offer better solutions.

Mobile healthcare, IoT, Virtual Assistants, and Robotics are some of the leading areas that healthcare providers can look into. Mobile apps to get in touch with doctors at your convenience, sensors/IoT devices to monitor real-time patient data, virtual assistants to guide healthcare professionals with complex procedures remotely, machine-learned robots to assist doctors in patient examination, etc. are some of the areas where digital transformation is going to make its mark.

Ultimately, new business models will emerge, as all healthcare providers need to rethink their current business strategies and pave the way for the vast opportunities that will come along with this pandemic. 

Retail 

With people staying inside their homes and practicing social distancing, the impact of COVID-19 on retailers will be severe. Leading retailers have started adopting omnichannel digital transformation strategies rapidly to win the customer pie. Most traditional retail customers, who once swore by the in-store experience, have now been forced to experience the convenience of digital purchasing, and are likely to continue with the trend even once this phase of being locked in is over.  

Brick and mortar stores have noted reduced footfall during this situation.  In order to stay afloat, they must now look into newer and more innovative ways to do business – be it through online platforms or even just becoming available on social media platforms to take orders. We are yet to see how the retail industry will evolve post-pandemic but surely, COVID-19 has dramatically accelerated the digital transformation in the retail industry too. 

InsurTech

The insurance industry thrives on predictability and the uncertainty that COVID-19 has caused is unprecedented. Most of their customers will be devastated with the fear of losing their jobs, their businesses and even their lives and they will rely on the insurance industry to be a ray of hope. 

Collaboration with various governments and other industry players to collect data from all possible sources should be the priority. Be it in the form of sensors, IoT devices, weather reports, and drones, they must generate meaningful insights in real-time to offer pro-active and personalized solutions. Coupled with advanced data analysis, they can come up with data models that predict possible future outcomes like this. 

InsurTech players must lead the digital transformation journey in terms of leveraging the latest technologies, optimizing the processes, personalizing the solutions, and bringing in automation to reduce costs and improve efficiency and effectiveness. All the players in the ecosystem must embrace digital transformation at the heart of their strategy to be the front-runners in the new insurance era. 

FinTech

With people being asked to remain indoors and governments and central banks announcing economic relief packages, everyone is looking at FinTech to help implement their ideas.  The current situation brings a new sense of urgency to the need to examine ‘going digital’ by accelerating the rush to digitization. Digital payments have become an integral part of everyday life across the globe, opening up new avenues of innovation and business opportunities in the coming future. 

Digital onboarding, omnichannel retailing and eWallets will likely grow to new heights. Financial institutions must utilize these opportunities and go digital in their offerings. Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and big-data analytics will play a crucial role in formulating FinTech strategies in the digital-only era. 

EduTech

The global learning population has been keenly impacted by the spread of the C0VID-19 virus. Though the infrastructure in terms of internet access, data costs, etc are yet to catch up with the rising requirements, the time is ripe for EduTech companies to make their mark. This will be the point of transition in the adoption of the online medium against the traditional educational model. 

Instead of focusing on replacing mundane administrative and managerial roles, which unfortunately most providers are doing right now, they must embrace and accelerate the digital transformation of education itself. EduTech companies need to collaborate with traditional universities and schools and offer an online-offline system. They must leverage the latest technologies such as online video-based learning, artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced analytics to personalize the learning experience and ensure a more engaging and valuable offering to the user.

The change here must come from the educational institutes as well, as they need to take the step towards embracing this change – but the current pandemic has only proven that it is high time they understand that this is the future of education. 

Transportation & Logistics

Transportation and logistics players globally are trying to fix things with whatever resources they have because they are the lifelines that make sure the logistics of essentials stay in place. With limited manpower and severe restrictions, they must leverage technologies to overcome this hurdle. 

This is an opportunity for them to rethink their business practices. Instead of working and relying on outdated legacy software systems, they should embrace digitization and automation to stay competitive within the industry. They must accelerate their digital transformation process and partner with technology companies to develop tech-driven solutions to offer streamlined and personalized end-to-end services. They must harness the power of “digital” to handle any unforeseen events in the future. 

The challenges that COVID-19 poses cannot be generalized as it varies from industry to industry. Post epidemic, organizations should revisit and reinvent their business strategies with more focus and weightage on innovation, research and development. Inevitably across industries, digitization shall be embraced with an urgency more than ever before. 

Survival and recovery of core operations should be what organizations focus on post COVID-19. Collaborating with digital technology consultants like Black Rock IT Solutions can help you get the kick-start you need to successfully restart your businesses.

The post Predicting Post-COVID19 Success through Digital Transformation appeared first on Black Rock IT Solutions – Software Product Engineering Services.

Factors driving adoption of automation in transportation 

• High per capita cost of manual labor: Enterprises may find it challenging to find skilled labor, or they cannot meet the per capita cost for maintaining a large manual labor force. Because of fierce market competition, enterprises must keep their expenses to the minimum to win this race. Also, it is not an ideal solution to hire more labor to meet fluctuating demand and supply. To address this situation, enterprises can leverage automation as the best choice.
• Technical advancements: Technological advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning technologies, and IoT is redefining the entire ecosystem, and transportation & logistics is not spared. From planning until execution, AI will play a vital role such as automated transportation, order prediction, optimizing warehouse locations in line with requirements. However, lack of clarity on which technology will emerge as the winner may create some amount of confusion among the organizations to channelize and prioritize their investment in these technologies. 

How is automation moulding the future of logistics industry?

Automated warehouse

Warehouse automation is one of the first areas companies try to attend when it comes to investing in automation. On a bigger scale, it encapsulates the automation of existing processes to improve efficiency, reliability, enhance accuracy, and leads to improved ROI. Bringing inventory to the order picker to minimize his movements inside the warehouse, automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS), automated carrying vehicles, automatic conveyors, etc. are some areas where automation can play a significant role in a warehouse. 

On-demand Automated trucks

Consumers have moved from owning a product to avail its benefits- the sharing economy. Uber and Airbnb are classic examples of how taking away the ownership of privileged customers. Transportation & Logistics industry is also witnessing the same “shared economy” model in the form of on-demand automated trucks. On-demand autonomous trucking improves the efficiency of freight movement and reduces the increased cost of hiring and training drivers. The autonomous truck would work round the clock with double the work done by non-automated trucks. On-demand trucks remove the burden of enormous initial capital investments from the organizations, reduced transportation costs, and ultimately elevate customers with competitive prices. 

Real-time tracking

Consignment delivery has always been a significant concern for enterprises as timely delivery of goods is directly proportional to customer experience. Real-time monitoring can enable logistics providers to address demurrage and detention problems and take corrective measures such as informing the customers about any possible delays due to traffic or bad weather, resulting in reduced failed delivery instances and improved customer satisfaction. 

Automated Analytics Systems 

In this era of “Data is the new Oil,” T&L companies must leverage the power of data analytics to stay ahead of the competition. Those organizations who rely on traditional or outdated IT systems can’t drive insights from available data and hence fails to understand and meet customer preferences and market dynamics. T&L companies are sitting on a vast amount of data which is not explored for generating insights such as customer churn prediction, demand generation analysis, and supply shortage prediction.  Automating the entire system help enterprises to create actionable insights periodically and salespersons can act accordingly. Sales figures can directly be induced back to the system from sales POS, and the system can generate revised insights to best suit the current situation. 

Automation: Gateway to the future

Though Transportation and Logistics companies have been relying on advanced technologies to handle the complex network, they haven’t explored the commercial side of automation yet. When employed correctly, automation can substantially improve organizational efficiency, sales growth, performance, reduce the cost, and most importantly increased revenue.

At Experion, we have implemented several projects spanning across the transportation and logistics industry building future with digital. To know more about our offerings in the T&L industry, drop a mail to sales@blackrockdxb.com 

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