The advancement of digital technology, along with the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, is driving the logistics sector towards a new era marked by innovative technologies that can improve both efficiency and transparency.
According to Forbes Insight's Logistics, Supply Chain, and Transportation 2023 research, over two-thirds of logistics executives expect technology to offer major productivity benefits. While CEOs are hoping for better visibility through the intersection of blockchain, telematics, and IoT, 53% of respondents anticipate technology to improve customer experience through solutions that use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
What Is Trending in Sales Digitalization?
In the logistics industry, enabling technologies are being applied in specialized applications.
As a result, businesses all over the world are shifting away from traditional sales techniques and toward digital ways that will allow them to remain profitable. Let’s take a look at a couple of them here:
1.Online Sales and Pricing
More logistics firms are developing online sales capabilities like online quoting and price estimates. Previously, potential customers could only get an estimate based on a set of static criteria, which was then followed by phone calls or in-person negotiations.
Innovations in online sales, such as dynamic automated pricing engines, are making it increasingly possible to get instant and more precise quotes and prices, based on the type of
goods, average delivery time, shipment prioritization, and total expenses.
2. Automatization of Procedures
AI and ML technologies can also assist in automating many manual sales procedures. Adapting salespeople to new technologies on a wide scale, on the other hand, may be difficult for many logistics organizations. We can make this much easier by utilizing more efficient and time-saving digital learning tools.
The logistics industry's use of AI is expected to increase at a CAGR of 42.9% per year, reaching a market value of $6.5 billion by 2023.
3. Blockchain-Enabled Efficiency
Since the advent of blockchain, small, medium, and large businesses have realized the value of this technology. This is why leaders from technology, transportation, and supply chain formed the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA) to assist in the development of blockchain standards in the freight industry.
Craig Fuller, the Co-founder of BiTA once stated that, “blockchain is a technology that’s ideally suited to the transportation industry and one believed to prove transformational in its impact.” He added that, “it’s a technology that allows people and companies who often don’t really know or trust one another naturally to engage in commerce.”
That is why top-rated logistics companies like FedEx, UPS, and Uber Freight have joined the blockchain-enabled logistics digital ecosystem. Blockchain provides transparency and peer-to- peer data integration to tackle difficulties in the logistics supply chain such as fraud detection, contract administration, and payment management. Yet, it is still a rising trend in the industry.
4. IoT Track and Trace
Lastly, new technologies are now making it possible to track products between manufacturing facilities and vendor sites. This can help a logistics company in lowering costs and improving delivery visibility for consumers.
Digitalization is thus assisting in attracting a large number of new companies to the logistics industry. The influx of these smaller, more modern, dynamic, customer-friendly, and more flexible enterprises is increasing competition in the market, giving larger, more traditional companies more incentive to embrace digital solutions in transforming their sales funnel and enhancing business operations.
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