Ways to modernise your operations for a more streamlined business
Digital transformation may seem like a corporate buzzword.
It’s certainly become a popular topic in recent years.
In particular, since the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for digital solutions has been highlighted.
The world is a more connected and competitive market than ever before.
And digital solutions can help businesses reach a wider customer base, deliver superior experiences, and meet the need for more touch points even on expedited deliveries.
Many businesses that failed to keep up are among the thousands that have gone bust during or since the pandemic.
And despite continued growth within the shipping industry, companies face a multitude of challenges.
Addressing these and finding creative ways to expand your digital offerings will be critical for businesses looking to grow in the future.
Find and attract the right tech talent
With digital initiatives top of the agenda for so many companies, there is fierce competition for the right employees. This isn’t helped by segments of the shipping industry, such as maritime shipping, falling behind in terms of digitisation.
As a result, the most highly skilled tech professionals are largely choosing to work in other industries that are further along in their transformation journeys.
The upside to this is that, if you are able to find the right person, they can give you a significant advantage over the competition. With fewer shipping organisations modernising quickly, the race is there to be won.
Consider hiring for key leadership roles to provide expertise while training existing employees to supplement your digitisation workforce. The best talent won’t come cheap but the risks of falling behind the curve are too great to ignore.
Plan improvements alongside your day to day
It’s unlikely you can just put all your customers and order on hold while you upgrade your entire system. Instead, a good plan should consider ways to make incremental improvements to your processes and infrastructure while you continue regular operations.
Consider whether there are off peak times during which can you make significant changes, or if your digital transformation team might be better served working hours that don’t clash with your core business times for some of their projects.
Creating new schedules for your various teams is of course going to be far easier with a digital scheduling solution, especially one like Findmyshift that’s tailored to employee scheduling for the shipping and transportation industry.
Use AI intelligently
Artificial intelligence seems to be everywhere at the moment. And we aren’t suggesting you let ChatGPT determine your entire business strategy. But using the right solutions to supplement your existing processes can yield better results.
For instance, machine learning has shone to perform well at predictive analytics, which can feed into preventative maintenance routines. Fraud detection is also best handled by machines, which can recognise patterns imperceptible to human operators.
Look up and downstream for collaboration
Your business doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You’re receiving goods from someone and transporting them to someone else. So what are those parties doing in terms of the tools they use, the expectations they have, and the tech they have access to?
You might find that a key manufacturer already has a tech solution you can piggyback onto that makes your adoption journey easier.
Your end customers could all be ordering their goods through the same app, making it a logical choice for how to update them on their order progress.
Track the right data
It’s easy to think you should be tracking everything. There are near endless possibilities to collect data across every point of your business, and the temptation is to gather it all before working out what to do with it.
But collecting, storing, and analysing vast quantities of data isn’t cheap or easy. It’s better to start with identifying the most important data points to help augment your decision making and find efficient ways to collect those.
Building up your data capabilities incrementally will be far more cost effective, and analysis will quickly highlight any gaps in your processes.
Gather the right data rather than letting yourself drown in vast seas of irrelevant information.
Keep these tips in mind and you can kickstart digital transformation in your transportation business.