The line between necessity and luxury is quite blurred. Whether it is modernized indoor plumbing or high-speed internet, imagining life without either is impossible. Similarly, real-time visibility in supply chain ecosystems has become a must-have for business users. Operational users fancy valuable real-time insights, all thanks to the “Amazon effect” that has taken customer expectations to the next level.
When Gartner explored the latest supply chain trends that make a significant impact on the industry, they discovered that the gulf in real-time visibility attributes between integration vendors is enormous. The report included introduction of visibility in forward-thinking supply chain strategies to boot.
Many supply chain giants are looking for ways to modernize supply chain ecosystems with better integration in their ecosystem. Here are 5 ways integration platforms can affect supply chain optimization.
1. Ensures Faster ROI with Flexible, Easy Implementation
Integration solutions elevate operational excellence by getting deeply embedded in the supply chain. Features such as easy implementation and superior flexibility help supply chains unlock better business outcomes and drive revenues.
2. Delivers Delightful Customer Experience with Personalized Customer Support
Technology calls for a learning curve, and a steep learning curve calls for support management. Integration solution vendors offer valuable support service in the form of technical assistance and business process insights. Comprehensive customer support services include delivering maintenance and support services, and sending product updates to customers as well as partners.
3. Boosts Performance and Profit Margins with Real-Time Monitoring and Tracking
Real-time updates are crucial. For example, if carrier equipment in your supply chain supports temperature tracking, integration platforms can handle refrigerated freight tracking with temperature information and alerts. The integration platform can provide a solution that possesses web-based monitoring and real-time tracking capabilities.
Real-time visibility allows business users to monitor their transactions for errors or possible threats, helping make right decisions and provide customers with critical information. In turn, supply chain leaders get real-time data access for improving performance and profitability.
4. Enables Better Delivery Time Estimates with Dynamic ETAs, Delivery Times, and Status Updates
Integration solutions with real-time tracking mechanism enable better delivery estimates by improving ETAs. ETA is improved by integrating factors such as traffic patterns, weather, social events, driver hours of service, maximum height or weight of a vehicle, road and/or port conditions etc.
In addition, such platforms allow ETAs, delivery times, and status updates to change dynamically with every data point to estimatea delivery at a much faster clip.
5. Allows Better Event Management with Configurable Email Notifications
Disruptions in a supply chain are inevitable. Integration platforms can take care of extraneous conditions resulting from encountering corrupted data or process execution level errors at runtime. Not being able to resolve such errors at real-time can result in data integrity issues in the target application, such as partial record updates, downstream failures in dependent systems etc. Integration manages such exceptions by offering insights into such disruptions via sending automated email notifications to help users manage exceptions proactively.
Relying on modernized data integration platform will not only strengthen supply chain ecosystems, but also enhance customer experience, productivity and revenue.