During a conversation on the side-lines of an industry event, the CEO of a reputed logistics company shared his thoughts that perfectly captured the present scenario in freight. “We face high demurrage and detention charges, operating costs, and other charges pertaining to container storage and transfers. The demand is better than the pandemic years, but capacity and supply of containers are abundant. Most of us are trying to build resilience and consistency in our operations. This is business critical.”
True, the transport and logistics market is currently experiencing an oversupply of trucking capacity with stable demand, leading to lower rates. Added to this is the high demurrage and detention charges further compounding operating costs. The only way out for freight companies is to build resilience which could help them handle fluctuations in supply and demand without incurring excessive costs.
How to Build Resilience in Freight?
To build resilience, companies turn to automation and artificial intelligence. They look up to freight tech companies to give them sufficient capabilities with respect to customized TMS, real-time transportation visibility, advanced analytics with third party data and many more.
Freight-tech and transport-logistics-supply chain (TLS) software providers are striving to keep pace with advanced technologies even in the face of economic slowdown. But to power business-critical applications, and to be agile and flexible to aid their clients in achieving resilience, they need an ever-ready infrastructure.
Embracing a Resilient Digital Infrastructure
Mission-critical workloads demand a resilient digital infrastructure. The role of managed infrastructure providers in this scenario is now being increasingly acknowledged by the industry. They provide freight-tech companies with a host of solutions ranging from database infrastructure, security, network connectivity, and compute management to data storage, regulatory compliance, and asset management.
These solutions can be grouped into four buckets:
How Do These Solutions Enable Resilience?
1 IT infrastructure management – foundation for modern logistics digital infrastructure.
In an industry where competition is high and margins are low, a resilient organization will maintain higher levels of efficiency and optimize their costs. They will also predict and adapt to disruptions to deliver continued customer satisfaction. One way to being resilient is to leverage advanced technologies such as AI, ML, augmented reality, and virtual reality.
But these advanced technologies rely on the underlying infrastructure supporting them. That’s why IT infrastructure management is at the heart of establishing resilience in logistics.
Let’s look at how managed service providers enable IT infrastructure management through the following services.
- Effective infrastructure provisioning and configuration ensures that the foundational resources are set up to handle demanding AI, ML, and blockchain workloads, enabling efficient deployment and scalability.
- Storage and server management provides the necessary capacity and performance to manage large data sets, ensuring smooth operation of data-intensive technologies.
- Regular backups and disaster recovery planning protect data integrity, allowing quick recovery and continuity in the event of disruptions.
- System upgrades and maintenance keep the infrastructure compatible with the latest advancements, maximizing the effectiveness of evolving technologies.
- Lastly, reliable network connectivity ensures seamless data flow, enabling real-time processing and communication essential for AI, ML, and blockchain applications.
2 System Integration: the foundation for a unified and responsive supply chain.
A unified and responsive supply chain thrives on real-time visibility and communication systems, which in turn are powered by an IOT infrastructure. With effective system integration, IoT devices work seamlessly together, enabling logistics companies to track assets, monitor cargo and vehicles in real-time, and make data-driven decisions to optimize fleet operations. This interconnected system is also vital in warehouse and inventory management, helping reduce waste, enhance work safety, and maintain optimal storage conditions.
Managed service providers ensure an agile supply through the following system integration services:
- Complex systems integration services: Unifying diverse technologies of inventory management, transportation management, and customer relationship management into a single, cohesive platform
- Database and infrastructure management: Ensuring all integrated systems have access to the same accurate and up-to-date information.
- Security and compliance management: Ensuring integrated systems are secure and compliant with industry regulations.
- Network connectivity management: Enabling seamless real-time communication between systems.
- Compute resource management: Ensuring computing resources are allocated efficiently across integrated systems.
3 Business process automation – addresses labor shortages and elevates customer experience
A key aspect of resilience is being able to reduce the dependence on manual labor, while making no compromise on customer experience and satisfaction. To achieve this, logistics companies turn to business process automation, while adopting technologies like AR and VR to augment employee learning and create efficient, automated workflows. By automating routine and mundane tasks, companies can free up their skilled workforce to focus on delivering better customer experience.
Here’s how managed service providers automate key business processes.
Workflow automation: Automating entire task sequences helps manage labor shortages by accomplishing more with fewer employees, while improving customer satisfaction through faster order processing and delivery.
RPA Solutions: Automation of data-intensive tasks thus freeing up human resources for more customer-facing roles.
4 Cybersecurity and compliance services – a foundation for proactive risk management
Proactive risk management is crucial for building resilience in logistics. Yet many companies struggle to adhere to industry standards due to the absence of a proper document tracking system or centralized management repository. This can lead to significant compliance issues, threatening the stability and continuity of operations. For logistics companies and FreightTechs of all sizes, daily tracking of compliance is essential to maintain standardization, transparency, and consistency in audits, which are key to resilient operations.
Managed infrastructure services provide the expertise needed to identify and close gaps in statutory requirements, ensuring all licenses, registrations, and approvals are in place and up to date.
Here’s how managed infrastructure providers address security and compliance challenges in logistics:
Gap assessment: Assessing critical gaps in regulatory requirements to ensure the necessary licenses, registrations, and approvals are in place. This proactive approach helps prevent non-compliance and associated penalties.
Compliance tracking: Ongoing tracking of regulatory compliance across all business activities helps the company remain in alignment with industry standards, reducing the risk of operational disruptions.
Document tracking: Providing a centralized system for tracking and managing compliance-related documents to enhance transparency and ensure the necessary documentation is readily available during audits.
Real-time threat detection and management: This helps continuously monitor and respond to cyber threats, preventing breaches and minimizing operational disruptions, which is crucial for the integrity of logistics operations.
Achieve Greater Resilience with Trigent
Building resilience in logistics demands a proactive approach that integrates cutting-edge technologies with a robust digital infrastructure. With their deep expertise in infrastructure management, system integration services, business process automation, and cybersecurity, managed infrastructure service providers empower logistics companies to overcome industry challenges with enhanced agility and confidence.
At Trigent, we have a proven track record in enabling our partners to deploy and sustain digital innovations with our critical support. Trigent’s Managed Infrastructure Services help you switch to a ZeroOps or NoOps model. You can achieve uninterrupted operations with our 24/7 always-on infrastructure.
Empower Your FreightTech with Trigent’s Managed Infrastructure Services
