By Nitish Rai
Logistics is crucial for the smooth functioning of supply chains, ensuring that goods and services are delivered efficiently and on time. It plays a vital role in businesses’ operations and helps drive economic growth by enabling trade and commerce. Effective logistics management can improve customer satisfaction, reduce costs, and increase profitability.
Digitalisation is essential in logistics as it enables real-time tracking, automation, and data-driven decision-making. It increases visibility across the supply chain, improves efficiency, and reduces errors and delays. Adopting digital technologies can enhance competitiveness, customer satisfaction, and overall profitability.
India’s digitalisation of logistics faces several key hurdles. The country’s logistics infrastructure is still developing, with limited adequate roads, ports, and warehouses. The highly fragmented logistics industry makes it difficult to achieve the necessary level of standardisation and cooperation. In addition, limited digital skills, a complex regulatory environment, and cost constraints can all pose challenges to the successful implementation of digital logistics solutions.
Many industries in India have been taking individual efforts to digitalise their logistics processes. Some of these efforts include investing in digital supply chain management systems, implementing real-time tracking technologies, adopting automated warehouse management systems, and utilising data analytics to optimise supply chain performance. However, these efforts are often isolated and limited to individual companies or sectors, highlighting the need for a more collaborative approach to digitalisation across the entire logistics industry. These set of efforts are again highly dependent on the fragmented information and data available through unreliable sources with high costs.
With a vision of the current government to revolutionise the logistics sector in terms of capability, data, and skills with the focus of bringing down the cost of logistics from 14% to 9% level a holistic approach was required and much awaited. With the introduction of the Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP) we have the right stage and arsenal to address some of the key challenges of the sector listed above.
What is ULIP and Why do we need it?
What is ULIP and Why do we need it?
Refer to the below 2X2 matrix explaining our ability to access the data which was available in several pockets making it expensive and inaccessible.
Here you will be able to observe our current state of affairs shown as information opaqueness – where data / information was available but scattered, making it inaccessible and meaningful for the relevant stakeholders.
ULIP paved a way forward taking a leap from opaqueness to transparency by acting as a technology consolidator and developing the APIs (Advance Programming Interfaces) for this scattered data and bringing it in a consumable form.
The benefit of doing so resulted in democratisation of the data through which several initiatives on data and digitalisation can be carried out by the private sector to deliver benefits to the overall ecosystem. There is a sky of possibility with the ULIP data, to explain and put in perspective, we have listed the following major short-to-mid-to long-term impacts ULIP has the potential to deliver.
ULIP has opened up possibilities for organisations to innovate radically and bring down the cost of logistics collectively and make India an attractive manufacturing destination.
The platform has the potential to disrupt manufacturing logistics by delivering supply chain efficiency, reducing costs, enhancing the customer experience, and driving innovation. By leveraging ULIP, manufacturers can optimise their operations, respond to market demands more quickly, and differentiate themselves in the marketplace. In the long term, this can help India be more competitive in the global manufacturing landscape and drive economic growth.
Data-driven disruption through ULIP is set to reshape the logistics industry, driving innovation, and transforming traditional decision-making. By leveraging advanced technologies such as AI, machine learning, and IoT, in conjunction with ULIP the organisations can improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance the customer experience.
The industry must adapt to this changing landscape by embracing ULIP Data-driven decision-making and investing in to augment its capabilities. The accessibility and costs for adapting ULIP data is also simple, transparent, and highly cost-effective. Imagining a competitive supply chain and logistics without ULIP and collaboration will remain a challenge.
The author is the CEO and Co-Founder of FreightFox.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of Financial Express Online. Reproducing this content without permission is prohibited.
