Businesses are facing extraordinary challenges as disruptions in the supply chain echo across the globe. Even as things looked to return to normal, we’ve seen even more chaos as climate change-induced heat waves have resulted in the Yangtze River in China drying up in places. This has curtailed the production of hydroelectric power, and factories have been shuttered in several Chinese provinces.
In addition, the unprecedented heat waves have caused air conditioning usage to soar, adversely affecting the grid, and reducing available power. Clearly, recent events have shown us that unexpected change is woven into the new business model. As such, every business now faces the difficult task of retooling itself to become a master of adaptability and rapid response to new conditions. Running a successful business has always been quite an undertaking, but owners and CEOs now find that the challenge has grown geometrically. One must carefully focus on improving efficiency at all levels, especially logistics if their business is to survive.
Leverage Fuel Management Tools
As fuel costs skyrocket, more and more companies are finding that their annual budgets for fuel are exhausted well before the end of the year. This has led to painful choices that must be made to make cuts in other departments, which can dramatically affect operations and other areas within the company. These reductions will eventually hurt sales and profitability. If you want to help control rising costs, fuel cards for truckers can provide an ideal solution. They allow companies to proactively track fuel purchases and set budgetary spending controls. Additionally, they offer significant discounts on fuel and help streamline the IFTA reporting process. You can find online resources that help you select the best fuel cards, and provide valuable information about improving logistics efficiency and lowering fuel costs.
Create a Data Warehouse and Use Advanced Analytics
Many times, businesses operate from a seat of the pants style of management. While learned experience is certainly valuable, you can enhance your knowledge by creating a data warehouse and applying advanced analytical tools. With a data warehouse, you gather all of your marketing strategies, operational, manufacturing, sales, logistics, and other information in a single, comprehensive database. From there, you can use the advanced query tools to look at logistics metrics at a high level and then drill down to specific areas of opportunity or concern. Some of the tools require specialized training, but others let operations and logistics managers and users create queries without writing any code at all.
Optimize Warehouse Operations
One of the keys to improving the delivery of goods to your customers is to optimize your warehouse operations. Proactive changes in this area can also help streamline receiving. The data warehouse and query tools will allow you to quickly identify products that are hot sellers, and you can then dramatically increase productivity by changing the warehouse layout and moving them to prime picking locations. You can also look at seasonal sales trends, and adjust the warehouse storage configuration accordingly. By grouping hot items in an easy-to-access area, your pickers won’t have to traverse an entire warehouse to get to the items that are moving most.