With the increasing level of vertical integration, the eight Rs of logistics become more and more crucial. Besides the right (“R”) place, good, quantity, quality, costs, customer, information and time a 9Th “R” is vital to profit in the upcoming Hyper-VUCA world: The right consultancy. It is crucial to have the right consulting partner on your side who has the understanding, tools and proof to face upcoming challenges affecting the way you do business tomorrow.
Our last blog article provided insights on how to streamline your tender process by avoiding pitfalls and reduce timespans from offer to signature with CAMELOT’s own checklist approach for the logistics area. Also, where it makes sense to think about introducing process automation.
Our initial question for this article shall be: “How can we transform your business strategy and processes into your operational IT environment?” Before we can answer this question, we have first to understand your IT setup. Besides conducting interviews with respective contacts in your business, we employ e.g. our IT maturity model to gain a meaningful overview. Having completed this step, we further investigate and brainstorm for potential enhancements of your IT landscape. To us it is always important to be transparent and explain why we see reason for change and what it could mean to your e.g. logistics if no action is going to be taken.
Replacing the Transport Management System
One result of our IT investigation could be e.g. to modify or even replace the current transport management system (short: TMS). Of course, we consider your internal compliance policies towards the selection of a specific software.
Let us assume you have a TMS in place. If you think about it, what would you change? Are your focus topics covered by your current setup? Most commonly the end-to-end (E2E) integration with partners was built up over a long time. Resulting in many complex interfaces with different software of various providers. These setups of logistics execution systems lead to growth risks and cost increases. Growth risk because of a capacity bottleneck in e.g. handling X amount of data in Y time and ensuring a high level of internal data transparency at the same time. Additionally, upcoming regulatory requirements for international freight shipping cannot be implemented easily due to the interfaces’ complexity. Especially, the implementation of new required features is a reason for increased costs compared to embedded solutions provided by specific software manufacturers. Another reason to review your current TMS setup is the business environment itself: As we live in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) it became a competitive advantage of being highly flexible and therefore being able to act before others react. This is also true for your TMS setup. We call this “Dynamic Transport Management” and in combination with a TMS process redesign it is possible to generate up to 10% of cost savings.
Implementing quick wins
Besides implementing more complex solutions like a TMS, also with support of our affiliate Camelot ITLab, we always strive to offer quick wins. We regularly see potential of introducing smaller apps. Smaller apps can be e.g. a dock scheduler to improve your ramp handling or a driver app. In general, we are happy to provide large scale setups as ERP extensions (e.g. SAP TM) and smaller solution like process optimizing apps.
CAMELOT’s process reference model
So, “How can we transform your business strategy and processes into your operational IT environment?” to refer to the initial question of this article. In terms of a transport management solution we would gather your focus topics and suggest how to proceed. This is supported by CAMELOT’s process reference model, our IT maturity model and our internal implementation partner, Camelot ITLab.
Click here to learn more about CAMELOT’s Transport Management solutions.
Quick wins and major wins
Over the last four articles we gave insights of what CAMELOT can do for you in various business scenarios. Each time we focus on quick wins to support your project internally by showing the potential of the efforts. However, major wins like savings in the double-digit area are possible and common. We see ourselves as logistics and supply chain specialist and as an integrator delivering from strategy to operational results out of one hand. In order to archive this, we and our partner Camelot ITLab apply highly innovative techniques and technologies with for which we are awarded for many times. Therefore, make sure to choose the right 9th “R”.
All articles of the series at a glance:
The 9th “R” of logistics (part 1)
The 9th “R” of logistics (part 2)
The 9th “R” of logistics (part 3)
