The following post is a guest post by Beatrix Potter.

Beatrix Potter is logistics analyst and writer at UKWritings.com and Essay Help. She enjoys helping people to find their way in the exciting field of logistics as well as creating articles about things that excite her for Essay Writing Service.

Logistics leaders are making direct responses to new the new innovation and evolution of businesses that is forecasted for after 2019.

The technologies that are pushing the logistics industry range from rising technology, new competition and shifts in consumer mindsets and expectations. As such, the management of the supply chain has also completely shifted.

For long, innovation has been regarded as adopting new technologies, as well as process improvement. However, the two can be examined together to see the true potential of technology. This article gives a brief illustration of where supply chain leaders are paying their attention to.

E-Commerce Technology

E-Commerce technology has greatly impacted the industry, through changing how consumers buy things. Now, everything is regulated by the dopamine rush of the next best e-commerce deal. New promises to abide by are rapid, high-quality and inexpensive delivery. However, innovation means process improvement. There’s no point sacrificing the price tag of new technology in a misguided way.

Current market needs are growing at a faster pace, making the efficiency of supply trends extend towards consumer knowledge surrounding their orders. The demand for insight centres itself around origins, transits and arrival times. As such, visibility have seen a lot of development lately.

Other technology that has been in the spotlight for increasing process efficiency include robotics and automation, as well as sensors and blockchain. Aside from them, emerging IoT technology has been recognised as improving regulatory compliance, tightening cyber security and lowering expenditure.

Consumer Segmentation

Addressing consumers with a grouping method allows more direct consumer success, by adapting supply chain strategies and using a more succinct business model. The groups of customers can be simple: based on the reasons that lead to various purchasing and interaction decisions. Choose these over broad groups that over-generalise consumers, as this will be futile.

SaaS in the Supply Chain

A higher proportion of online enterprises are using SaaS to increase their reach to consumers, alongside an increased use of cloud computing. SaaS offers high levels of safety and security, following the ease of using a simple pay as you use foundation. This bypasses all the costs involved in continual system maintenance and other internal upgrades and costs related to infrastructure.

The visibility of the supply chain

Predicting the rises and falls of business will directly impact on decision making. Through thorough analysis of supply chain data, such business forecasting can be optimised. This is because it allows insight into what is happening at each level of the supply chain, feeding back important self-analytical information that will increase the efficiency of the whole chain. The enhanced ability to manage inventories in real time is a major benefit of supply chain visibility and uses sensors as well as point-of-sale systems.

A circular supply chain

Conventional, linear supply chains focus on the journey from the raw material to the product ready to be shipped to the customer. The concept of a circular supply chain takes a different approach, by finding new ways to use older, used materials instead of direct raw materials. This is reverse logistics, which lowers the administrative and transportation costs that a company faces, as well as reaching better levels of sustainability, customer loyalty and resource conservation.

Wearable devices

Cloud technology is available to wearable devices, which allows data monitoring in real time. After data input and analysis, wearable cloud technology allows a fast and accurate accumulation of inventory data. Another reason to introduce wearable technology is for better monitoring of the health of employees. Exhaustion and heart attacks are two conditions which affect the working population commonly and can be better prevented using wearable technology.

The globalisation of knowledge work

“Knowledge work refers to complicated analytics, planning and processing. The more businesses become global, the more knowledge work will disperse and also become more global. This brings massive benefits such as being able to have business links between countries,” says Gay Henry, supply chain manager at State Of Writing and BoomEssays.

A higher focus on risk management

Considering the risk management for a large company is a sure way to protect it from unforeseeable events with a negative effect on the company. Dispersing work to off-shore business links, improving product versatility and increasing the amount of practices that are outsourced, are all ways that companies can increase their focus on both risk management and supply chain resilience. The latter is how well a company’s supply chain can withstand adverse events.

Artificial intelligence

Examples are very varied today: from self-driving/ autonomous vehicles built to drive without human attention, gesture recognition technology rather than conventional keyboards and mice… Robotics and automation and wide fields in the supply chain, both as products and to improve the supply chain itself. The improvements are largely in the higher flexibility and affordability. Repetitive and challenging tasks are made easier.

Better collaborative strength

“A major priority when improving the supply chain is building strong relationships with suppliers. Collaboration helps to focus internal processes and lower resource exhaustion that has directed time and energy into administrative work.” Says Kevin Manning, consultant at Paper Fellows and Assignment Help.

Supply chain digitisation

Through the use of up-to-date technology with physical and digital assets, the whole process of practicing logistics can be altered to a more rapid and competitive current platform. Both dynamic flexibility and resilience of supply chain strategies are improved through digitisation, increasing value, revenue and market valuation.

Internet of Things / IoT

This is a system of interlinked computers, machines, human resources and so on, that are given unique identifiers (UIDs) so they can move data through a network without the need for human to human, or human to computer interaction.

IoT has been adopted into multiple chains, though hardly forms a part of the entire supply chain process. the business value of OT (operational technology) is expandable with the IoT. The effects could simply, but importantly be improved supply chain performance for the entire strategy. This in turn improves supply chain visibility, reliability and so on.