Enterprise Mobility: Shaping The Future Of Transportation And Logistics

Whether across the seven seas, in the air, or on roadways, every transportation and logistics operator has something in common – a need for customer-centric services and processes. And it’s the ability to execute across these areas that drives profitability. To stay ahead, operators are empowering their workforce and enhancing processes with information. Doing so helps ensure that all parts of the operation are working together harmoniously and delivering more profitable services.

For operators, managing assets – such as locomotives, ships, vehicles, aircraft, and rail track – is an area ripe for improvement. Through better management of spare parts and more effective scheduling of asset maintenance, operators can realize dramatic cost savings.

Another reality is the fluctuating – and even skyrocketing – cost of fuel. Whether the price dramatically rises or plummets, the overall operation is always impacted. This forces operators to focus on process flexibility and delivery of accurate and timely business insight to make informed decisions for containing costs.

And for contract logistics, the ability to tailor and support the warehouse needs of customers requires flexibility and sophisticated process support to deliver advanced services, such as batch management, serialization, and catch weight.

Nevertheless, revenue growth and profit are no longer the only benchmarks for success. Operators also need to stand out in crowded and highly competitive markets. The pace of business is relentless, and today’s innovation inevitably becomes tomorrow’s status quo.

By embracing enterprise mobility, transformation can happen – rapidly giving operators a significant advantage over the competition.

For example:

  • Asset management: Field workers and technicians can be more productive at the point of service – offline, online, and in the field or shops. They can monitor assets, facilities, and infrastructure to help ensure asset availability, as well as corporate and regulatory compliance.
  • Operations: Operations managers can monitor key performance indicators and order status across performance dimensions. In addition, operators can enable flexible and timely access to deliveries, purchase orders, and invoices.
  • Sales and marketing: Sales team members and executives have instant access to order status, account information, meetings, and order history. With these insights, they can make timely decisions about the business, operations, and customer demands.

Connect, engage, and interact with enterprise mobility

By having always-on employees, executives know that they can expect increased productivity and attention to safety. Meanwhile, employees can obtain greater convenience in accessing data, processes, and interactions anywhere and anytime.

But to get there, CIOs must consider how to use enterprise mobility as a tool to virtualize, accelerate, and most importantly transform their businesses.

1. Workforce virtualization

With this approach, the workforce – no matter the role or location – is no longer confined to a desk, control room, or vehicle. Workers can access the information they need, anywhere and anytime, to help ensure seamless operations and limit avoidable issues.

Travelers and partners can benefit from virtualization, as well. With mobile apps designed for them, they can interact directly with the operator 24×7, extending the mobile experience to become part of the overall customer experience.

2. Accelerated time-to-decision process

Because of the nature of their job functions, managers and executives tend to frequently travel and be on the move. Decision makers must be able to gain access to decision support systems via business analytics applications, regardless of their location.

With mobile business analytics solutions, key managers, decision makers, customers, and suppliers can monitor business performance, gather data for analysis, and access corporate dashboards to quickly respond to changing demand and supply conditions. But better yet, field workers can monitor assets to get ahead of malfunctions, incidents, and equipment failure.

3. Business transformation

Mobile technology initiatives can be more than mere windows to the organization’s data. They can transform the way transportation operators conduct their businesses. As a result, operators can better control cost of service delivery, lower its carbon footprint, and free up funds for investing in assets and equipment. But more importantly, consumers can be assured that transit operations will be safe for them, their loved ones, as well as their property and possessions.

This article was written by Shelly Dutton from Business2Community and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.

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