The world economy depends heavily on the seamless flow of goods — domestically and internationally, across land, sea, and air. In order to maintain vital supply chains and keep business moving, companies rely on logistics and transportation organizations to ensure the safe passage, transfer, and delivery of their products.

To keep their customers satisfied and secure in their business, logistics, and transportation companies bear a huge responsibility along with massive amounts of data informing their processes. Between invoices, shipping and fulfillment information, and logistics data, these organizations are constantly working to manage interconnected details that can make or break their business.

Because of that complex navigation of information, manual processes are becoming more and more inefficient and ineffective in delivering the results logistics and transportation companies need to give their customers. That’s where automation and AI-powered solutions are rewriting the possibilities of data management and utilization, giving these organizations far more capabilities to optimize their processes and deliver better and more profitable outcomes for their customers.

The Big Question Marks in Logistics and Transportation

The large-scale impacts and consequences of an industry like logistics and transportation leave no room for error. In the midst of so many external factors, these organizations need to consider these crucial details to start to paint the picture of where AI and automation can play their supporting roles.

• Global Conflict — A tumultuous world naturally spells trouble for shippers looking to avoid any hiccups in their regular business practices. From emerging conflicts in various regions to ongoing issues like piracy, logistics needs to allow for malleable supply chains.
• Weather Events — Dangerous and extreme weather events have continued to rise in recent years, a condition that can have a negative trickle-down effect on shippers. The events also don’t discriminate by type of shipping — from hurricanes to tornadoes to earthquakes, every form of transport needs to have plans in place to adjust in the case of an emergency.
• Extreme Accidents — While not a trending issue necessarily, any logistics and transportation company has to be ready for the worst. Recent accidents like the train derailment in East Palestine, OH, or the bridge collapse in Baltimore, MD highlight how major infrastructural hubs can be kneecapped at a moment’s notice, demanding flexible processes in case of these events.

Optimization in the World of Logistics and Transportation

What all of these unpredictable and complicated events indicate is that logistics and transportation providers need to be able to rapidly adjust their processes in the face of a crisis. Luckily, certain technology solutions can make these moment-to-moment pivots more palatable and effective, ensuring a smoother continuation of business no matter the outlying conditions.

Logistics and transportation is famously a document and data-heavy industry. In fact, ocean freight forwarders exchange over 12 billion documents of information every year — a massive trove of data that demands these companies use smart technology to extract the data they need to more effectively react and proactively support their supply chains for necessary customer outcomes.

Leveraging IDP and Automation for Logistics and Transportation

Document processing for the logistics and transportation industry is a transformative technology poised to make companies far more effective at delivering positive results for their suppliers and customers. Thanks to automation and intelligent solutions, manual processes have been vastly improved upon to ensure the most transparent and accessible use of shipping data ever imagined.

Key to this process is the use of intelligent document processing, or “IDP”. In practice, IDP is an automation solution leveraging character recognition software through AI to identify, capture, and extract data from documents — including invoices, shipping manifests, and many more that apply to this industry. IDP can work with internal databases or infrastructure to then classify and manage that logistics and transportation data for easy access inside and outside any organization, ensuring a clear thread of transparency and communication that strengthens supply chains across the globe.

The impact of such a technology is emphatic — the once insurmountable challenges mentioned above become much more manageable in the hands of infrastructure that helps logistics and transportation data feel flexible and applicable to changing situations. Here’s how IDP in practice rapidly expands the potential of an organization’s approach.

• Making efficiency a core competency — Logistics and transportation is notorious for requiring sign-off from multiple stakeholders. By creating a document automation process that streamlines the communication between these individuals, the necessary executive decisions around logistics can be made faster — and the outcomes more fruitful for customers.
• Streamlining access to and execution of logistics — When confined to manual processes, the front lines of logistics and transportation can often feel like they lack access to key information that informs decision-making. IDP breaks down those siloes by extracting and automatically centralizing key information to ensure intelligent decision-making at every touchpoint.
• Unifying insights into active supply chains — In a constantly evolving world like logistics and shipping, withholding information will only create more inefficiencies. IDP ensure all data gets centralized under one manageable hub of critical information to give corresponding stakeholders the ability to derive insights and identify efficiency areas for optimization in the logistic development process.
• Optimizing transportation operations in real-time — Oftentimes, the roadblocks to rapid response transportation and logistics service are the roadblocks and backlog of manual operative tasks. Once IDP and automation optimize those processes, front-line workers are freed up to respond to real-time issues like logistics alterations and similar issues without the extra weight of repetitive tasks.

Certainly, the challenges of an increasingly complex world can’t be solely solved by IDP and automation solutions. But what these technologies prove is that adaptable solutions are key to staying competitive and effective when the external factors become overwhelming. By allowing a path for flexibility, the transportation and logistics industry can continue to thrive and grow as long as it embraces the innovations that make it the most effective.

Taking Your Logistics and Transportation Business into the Future

As the supply chains of the world become more nuanced, logistics and transportation providers will be tasked with helping steward the uncertain waters of keeping the flow of business moving. Through the rapid efficiency and intelligence of AI and automation, a more secure and interconnected world remains very possible.

Reach out to Plextera today to try a demo of our IDP solutions and see firsthand how you can optimize your healthcare organization today.