How to Adapt to Rapidly Changing Needs in Logistics and Global Trade

Tracking fast-evolving customer expectations, behaviors, and demands amid the COVID-19 pandemic is now a full-time activity for many organizations. Today, companies must either adapt and respond to customer demands or risk losing them to competitors.

Consumers who require their products to be delivered as soon as possible are the driving forces behind the world’s changing trends. Those seeking specialized and personalized services, on the other hand, are complicating the trends. So how exactly can businesses best adapt to these changes to improve the customer experience?

Rethinking Sourcing Options

As a result of the pandemic, many companies are experiencing massive sourcing challenges. COVID-19 has revealed significant weaknesses in various supply networks, forcing many to establish new sourcing strategies and locations to keep businesses afloat. However, achieving this task amid the current trade agreements, regulations, tariffs, and different material costs can be difficult.

According to the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), more than 70% of businesses around the globe experienced supply chain interruption following transport restrictions triggered by the rapid spread of the virus. As a result, many companies’ lead times for products sourced from other countries effectively doubled. The resulting shortages have been exacerbated by a lack of air and ocean freight options for transporting products to the US. Furthermore, a Descartes survey of customers discovered that nearly 31% were in search of alternative suppliers while their use of tools to find alternative supply sources went up by 21%.

Fortunately, global trade intelligence can be a valuable resource for those looking for solutions to these problems. Organizations can analyze trade flows of different countries and speed up the process of identifying new suppliers by providing visibility into international shipment data. With this information, it will also be much easier to look beyond specific supply chains and evaluate all shipping companies transporting specific goods to various parts of the world, analyze the data within the supply base, and quickly identify new sourcing regions.

Increase Delivery Capacity

The effects of delivery capacity have also been changing as demand continues to evolve. For example, some companies are facing overwhelming demand, leading to a shortage of delivery capacity. On the other hand, some businesses have excess capacity as a result of significant slowdowns. In the face of such intense disruption and instability, adopting route optimization technology is critical.

This can help companies determine strategies that can best facilitate the quick analysis and implementation of new delivery practices and policies. In contrast to daily planning, where all policies, tactics, frequencies, and routes are already outlined, all constraints can be regarded as variables for reroutes, offering companies the flexibility to determine ideal routing techniques and plans. Delivery network reroutes can thus respond in time to extreme changes in demand, boosting capacity, enhancing productivity, and lowering costs.

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