Going Digital: Journey of a Logistics Manager

Logistics management can be rough. But the digital transformation in the supply chain industry is increasingly a quick solution.

The freight forwarding industry has caught up with the wave of digitisation that has been pervasive across the rest of the sectors. The traditional ways of doing business are being replaced by modern solutions which have opened up various avenues for a tremendous amount of growth. This transformation has helped shipping organisations keep up with the intense pressure that comes with the increasing demands of today’s customers.

Although the entire industry has benefited by migrating to digital solutions, the work of specific individuals has also been made easy — especially a logistics manager, who deals with a wide range of responsibilities daily. Let’s have a look into how adapting the digital ways in the logistics industry has helped a logistics manager. However, before that, let us understand what does a logistics manager do.

What Does a Logistics Manager Do?

A logistics manager takes care of your goods while they are shipped from the source to its destination. However, how they do the job can often vary. They might focus on transport, or cover everything from booking containers and planning transportation to taking care of all the documentation and customer communication.

Whatever the scope of the role, it comes with a range of challenges that call for detailed knowledge of supply chain management and a fair amount of resourcefulness.

The Challenges

At the heart of the daily challenge of logistics manager is the need to keep end customers happy.

Every customer may have different shipping requirements. While some might need just a container, others might require the whole package. Whenever asked to book a container or transportation, the logistics manager needs to provide the best rates to its customers, for which he has to hassle a lot. Every shipment requires them to negotiate with the suppliers and provide a separate quotation which might take hours to generate, not the amount of time customers are ready to wait.

Additionally, the shipping process involves many documents. Every paper received since the booking of a container needs to be kept track of. With multiple customers, there are chances of paperwork piling up. Misplacing even a single document can lead to delays in the arrival of the shipment, and in some cases, cancellation too. This affects both the business of the customer and the reputation of the logistics manager.

Furthermore, customers expect full transparency from their logistics manager. They wish to be aware of the location of their shipments at any given time. To provide them with this information, the managers have to go through much trouble contacting the respective shipping line’s customer services every step of the way. Hence, shipping tracking for the customers is an issue logistics managers face daily, as it is directly related to a customers satisfaction.

Lastly, keeping up with the variety of demands has also been troublesome for the logistics managers. Earlier, a customer’s logistics requirements were limited to one form of transportation. Nowadays, that is not the case. Instead of taking care of the goods from port to port, customers demand the logistics managers take care of the products from warehouse to warehouse. This means that they are required to provide trucking services too, which increases the work even more as trucking services becomes a whole new area to be managed.

How Can Digitisation Help?

Innovative players in this industry have realised that digitisation is providing efficient solutions to many of their problems. Logistics managers have turned to digital platforms like Cogoport to deliver more benefits to customers.

With the help of these platforms, logistics managers can provide different freight rates to the customers instantly. The platform can quickly fetch the rates that are not available at the given time. Quotation generation for a shipment, that earlier used to take up to 48 hours is now available to the managers at one click of a button.

Digitalisation can also make the crucial task of managing documents easier. A database is provided to the logistics manager where they can save all their documents and access them anytime they want. This ensures then even if a paper is forgotten or lost at any point of time; the manager can find it on this platform, hence securing the documentation process. If ever the customer wishes to view any document, they can always be given access to this database.

By providing facilities such as real-time tracking, these platforms give the logistics manager the luxury of offering their customers with the real-time location of their cargo. Furthermore, by the use of certain onboard sensors, the condition of the cargo can also be monitored.

Keeping in mind the increasing transportation duties and responsibilities of a logistics manager, digital platforms have made themselves a one-stop for all their needs. Including other forms of transportation such as trucking services has ensured that managers can fulfil every aspect of their order at one single place.

What Does this Mean for the Shipping Industry?

It can be safe to assume that putting methods of digital shipping into practice has a profound advantage over the traditional methods. Providing customers with a hassle-free platform satisfying all their logistics needs draws a clear blueprint for success. Logistics managers make up only a fraction of people who benefit from this change.

We at Cogoport saw the need to make freight shipment easier for everyone and decided to ride this wave of digitisation. Implementing cutting-edge technology to solve the logistics-related problem, we aim to take this trillion-dollar freight industry online. If a freight forwarder is who you are, then we welcome you to do your business the digital way, here at Cogoport.