The growth of the Indian economy has increased the importance of transport and logistics. In fact, this sector was always crucial to the country’s infrastructural and economic advancement. The Indian logistics market has witnessed its way forward from traditional transport companies to a full-fledged logistics service provider, offering various supply chain services such as transportation, warehousing and other value additions. The growth in this sector is primarily dependent on growth of goods across different sectors within the country and goods traded with other countries.
World Bank ranks India 46th among 155 countries in the logistics performance index ranking, but there is a long way to be covered by this sector to achieve global standards, which would include exceptional infrastructure and a highly technology driven as well as seamlessly integrated supply chain. In this increasingly technology-driven environment, we are living in, transportation and logistics companies too need to adopt technology solutions that are not only aligned with the organization’s business needs but would also help them in achieving growth and efficiencies. Emerging technologies and best practices can give these companies a competitive edge like in the case of Mr Satish Sharma, who is an owner-driver of 2 one-tonners, and once used to wait for business to come to him. After joining hands with a tech-enabled platform, he is witnessing a steady rise in his revenue.
Road transport may have emerged as the dominant segment in India’s transportation sector but it faces numerous challenges like the unreliability and unaccountability of logistics trucks, which often do not report on time at the destination, resulting in a cascading effect on the operations. Moreover, there is a severe shortage of trained manpower in our transportation and logistics sector. With no requisite skills to handle the entire supply chain, the industry becomes unorganized with non-standardized operating procedures. With so many prevailing issues, technology plays an imperative role in solving some of these challenges and leveraging its convenience to the driver, the customer, as well as the business owners, thereby helping the sector leapfrog. It has the ability to facilitate delivering global business solutions to local geographies.
Organisations these days have started looking at the transportation and logistics function as crucial rather than considering it as merely business-enabling. While the superior players with abundant financial resources have made investments in this function, the smaller or proprietor-driven firms in India are yet to make considerable investments in technology and talent. Moreover, given the global demand for an ideal delivery, technology enables a smarter logistics function. However, its primary objective is to manage operations with improved efficiency.
Technology intervention can benefit the logistics and transportation companies in dramatically improving their productivity, end-to-end visibility, warehouse & yard management, fleet management, escalating their customer account management, relationship & accessibility, assimilating the off-road and on-road movement of their consignments and vehicle, ensuring real-time tracking & tracing, condensing labour, fuel & sales management costs and increasing the transparency and accountability within their organisation.
Advancements in technology are shrinking the world day by day, which is also increasing the customers’ expectations, resulting in companies becoming prone to a more uncertain environment. New technologies are influencing the way the world is communicating and the combination of these new technologies in supply chain management has provided important advances in the methods used by the logistics and transportation companies. The good news is India is rapidly catching up with the rest of the world by executing the latest technology solutions available for the Transportation and Logistics sector through its comprehensible vision, strong planning and technical approach to progress.
