High-quality data, characterised by its meaningfulness, completeness, and accuracy, stands as a pivotal factor for decision-makers navigating the intricate landscape of supply chains. “The rising costs, complexity, and dynamic environment in which we operate has highlighted the need for on-demand and real-time information,” said Graham Oates, director at Rhenus Logistics. “My experience and observation with customers and logistics partners has highlighted evident lack of data integrity along with the seamless f low of information upstream and downstream within our respective supply chains.”While many larger global behemoths like Amazon have created these platforms and incorporated them into their core service offering, allowing for efficient transactions and visibility, this cannot be said for the larger group of stakeholders within the supply chain, said Oates. “Integration between operating systems requires significant resource in costs, time and integration development. The question often asked, 'Who will pay for this?', becomes a cause of disagreement. The cost of doing business has escalated and customers are looking at service providers to absorb costs.”The significance of addressing these inquiries amplifies when disparities in stock counts lead to financial write-offs, a scenario that frequently surpasses the integration's developmental costs.Many companies have not been able to harness and capitalise on the tremendous amount of data available in business. “The use of spreadsheets remains a medium through which companies exchange data, but these are often corrupt, and sent back and forth via emails resulting in timing delays and mismatching,” Oates told Freight News. “Firewalls and data protection policies have also created a barrier to the use of shared drives and information f lows between companies.”According to Oates, organisations have chosen to internally develop systems that can accommodate the diverse range of functionalities needed across various departments, encompassing finance, operations, track and trace, volume statistics, and geolocation tracking, among others. “Business analytics through various platforms such as Qliksense and Microsoft’s Power BI rely on accurate data to provide meaningful feedback – it’s the accuracy and completeness of data that remains the question on many decision-makers' minds.”Oates emphasises that fostering collaborative partnerships among stakeholders should be a topic of discussion at the executive boardroom level. “It is often difficult to persuade partners and customers to do the best for the supply chain network. Senior managers should see beyond their immediate horizons and consider the supply chain in its entirety,” he said. “We have a long way to go in providing industry with packaged solutions that are affordable and attend to the multifunctional requirements of companies. One need only ask how many applications are being run across the various divisions within a company to get a sense of the extent to which these platforms operate in silos and require much human effort and time to ensure completeness and accuracy of data across the entire business."
