The pandemic has triggered an increase in the use of e-commerce around the world. As a result, consumers are becoming increasingly demanding in terms of delivery times and shipment reliability.
Thus, the logistics sector, understood as all those operations that must be carried out to get a given product to the consumer from the warehouse of the company that produces it, is transforming at full speed in order to meet the demands of both the companies that make use of its services and consumers.
The key to this transformation is to ensure the traceability of shipments at any time, with the difficulty that in logistics we find very heterogeneous systems, from different companies and that are not usually connected to each other.
Cloud Computing comes to the rescue for logistics companies
The challenge is more complicated because in this sector, data must be collected from objects that are on the move all over the world in trucks, containers or simply on forklifts in warehouses.
As in so many other sectors, Cloud Computing comes to the rescue for companies that need to cope with all this complexity as it is the perfect solution to manage decentralised environments and save investments in systems and maintenance.
Cloud helps to save costs and makes it easier to respond to seasonal peaks in demand
The use of the Cloud helps to save costs, since you only pay for the resources consumed and, as a result, it allows you to adapt the available resources to demand, making it easier to cope with seasonal peaks in demand (Black Friday, Christmas, etc.).
In addition, the information stored in the cloud becomes accessible from mobile devices that can be on the move anywhere in the world, which is essential in the logistics sector.
Cloud Computing advantages for the logistics sector
There are therefore several advantages that Cloud Computing brings to the logistics sector:
- Real-time inventory management, to facilitate an agile response to fluctuations in demand. Cloud Computing provides better visibility of all the processes involved in the supply chain, enabling supply chain managers to influence them in near real-time.
- Dynamic pricing, depending on cost fluctuations or price changes made by competitors, allowing margins and profitability to be preserved.
- Systems integration. The logistics sector involves a variety of systems managed by different companies. Without seamless communication between these systems, process efficiency will suffer. Cloud technology plays a key role in facilitating this coordination between systems, synchronising and monitoring processes in real time and improving the controllability of the entire model.
- Augmented intelligence: when all elements of the supply chain are connected, advanced analytics can be implemented to improve decision-making. Demand can be anticipated by analysing large volumes of data (e.g., vehicle sensor data, social media trend analysis or weather reports) to create accurate demand evolution scenarios.
- Rapid scalability: making the leap to Cloud Computing makes it possible to adjust the availability of IT resources, taking into account market conditions and customer demands.
In short, Cloud Computing allows communications between the different components of the supply chain to be agile and capable of being monitored in real time. This accelerates speed to market, adapting to peaks in demand and achieving seamless interoperability between different platforms and systems.
Cloud is therefore synonymous with collaboration, flexibility, savings, efficiency and agility, also applied to the logistics sector.
Featured photo: Adrian Sulyok / Unsplash
