As the world connects closer, Indian supply chain and business logistics management are in for a tsunami of a change. With efficiency, speed and collaboration making up the boat, the paddle and the skill to help India ride the wave, the industry is playing catch up in a serious way, feels Anjani Mandal – Co-Founder & CEO, TruckNet Digital. Sarada Vishnubhatla reports.
Indian transportation industry is slowly gearing up to be better prepared with connectivity and supply chain visibility for a smoother transition into the next level. Anjani Mandal – Co-Founder & CEO, TruckNet Digital, and his team of experts have been working hard in the last 4 years or so towards this exact goal. The platform, TruckNet Digital, is designed to give the industry the ‘eyes’ to track goods from inventory to its destination.
Mandal shares: “The supply demand equation is changing and it is imperative for the manufacturers to be more efficient. As the global supply chain is integrating and moving into India, our logistics must become efficient end-to-end, or India will suffer or at least those pockets will which choose to remain inefficient.”
End-to-End Solution
TruckNet Digital deploys technology to make the entire ecosystem efficient and productive.
He says: “We are asset light and our team is made up of domain specialists. We have been able to configure a TMS from ground up that fits the Indian environment perfectly. And it is a near plug-and-play for just about any shipper today.”
The product has been well received by the market. All the data – from demand generation, delivery of the goods and billing the customer – can be accessed using a smart phone.
Mandal adds: “The digital platform helps the customer transact, control, analyze and optimize. Most importantly, it gives the customer access to data and its patterns so it can be analyzed and trends predicted. That is what we call Transaction Capabilities Application Part. It can do freight reconciliation from both the manufacturer’s and the shipper’s end, making the system highly efficient in a collaborative mode. This puts an end to unethical practices.”
Mandal calls it a strategic USP because TruckNet Digital is all about creating a solution that is scalable, is fully risk-mitigated and is a secure – down to the page level – platform on the cloud with a high availability solution, and which works 24×7.
He reiterates: “Our USP is that we are practitioners who make the product. Our advantage is that when the regulatory changes, we too can change really quick.”
2020 – The ‘Digital’ Year
With a huge push from the central government to go digital, businesses across industries are already transitioning to it. And TruckNet Digital is developing solutions to address issues including lack of supply chain visibility, volatility, disruption of channels and cash cycle inefficiencies.
Mandal opines: “In the next couple of years, this is exactly what we plan to do. Apart from continuing to serve through our 4TiGo network bringing in technology-based logistics services, we will be coming up with the technology for the consignor-consignee aspect too.”
As of now, the platform has been deployed on the supply side entirely.
Mandal shares: “They are only users and are not yet integrated with our system. An example would be one particular logistics client is based in a remote area and they run about 10,000 trucks a day. And we have successfully deployed our platform with him.”
TruckNet Digital’s own 4TiGo network has been running on this platform since 2018. Since then, the platform has been built up as a standalone product that can be pushed into the market for the service providers.
Mandal adds: “Now, the platform has been developed to the point that we have started building the product for service providers and that essentially is a transport management system with logistics control. The interactions are completely electronic – from requirement to payment.”
The next level of value for digital transformation is collaboration and TruckNet Digital platform gets the customer ready for that.
Key to Success – Collaboration
A single integrated platform which is collaborative in nature will enable the manufacturers to deliver higher efficiency with respect to loading and unloading, while bringing their costs down. Globally, the shift in demand is rapid and it requires speed and efficiency that is executed at low costs.
In alignment with it, TruckNet Digital’s transport management system provides the tools and the technology to help the ecosystem integrate it with the existing ERP systems of the manufacturers so that they benefit from cost savings, productivity efficiency and catapult the industry to Supply Chain 4.0.
Supply Chain 4.0 will reduce delivery times by employing predictive analytics that take into account market trends, helping customer demands be foreseen close to reality.
Mandal explains: “About US $ 400 billion per year worth of global supply chain is what is supposed get directed towards India in the next three years and if we have to align with that, we should be adopting technology as our single most important mission. And TruckNet Digital is ready for this future trend.”
Agile and Flexible
Efficiency at local, regional, country or global levels is what is needed in the Indian transportation and supply chain industry. And that requires agility and flexibility to fulfill the sudden spurt in demand. TruckNet Digital has developed Agile Just-in-Case model as a solution.
Mandal adds further: “Almost instantaneously the network must show where the material can be sourced from. Even if the inventory and consumption ratios are different for different areas, the demand can still be fulfilled and that is being agile. And it is ‘just in case’ because if the consumption rate has gone up in a particular geography say due to a sudden demand spurt, and it has been predicted to remain that way for the next so many days, then the items can continue to get sourced from there.”
And this is what defines an integrated supply chain visibility.
Ushering in Supply Chain 4.0
Supply Chain 4.0 will uplift the existing supply chain networks to provide real time transparency across the value chain, provided India can integrate the supply chain using the technology. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught the industry to build up on it.
Mandal assures: “India has some of the best technology leaders in the world, and this is the best place for the world to have their supply chain here. This is the time when the transportation industry is restructuring. Now is the time to act with a single point agenda. It is a connected world and the future is all connected.”
India is poised to be a big contributor to the risk mitigation for various industries such as electronics, food and for metals, and production wise, in pharma and chemicals.
He adds: “Right now, TruckNet Digital is focusing on distribution-led businesses and bulk movement. Our capability is that if a customer wants to ship 10,000 tons of cargo a day, we have the solution. If the cargo needs to be shipped across the country, and track it as a primary movement, we can. If we need to offer secondary movement within a particular geography, we can do that also.”
Mandal is convinced that ‘things are piecing together’. If there was a time for change, it is now – to be on par with global requirement. It has to be cooperative and bound by technology, working rapidly towards an overall systemic efficiency. That is what the world is moving to. And India must work continuously towards collaboration and speed as a team with the highest level of efficiency as the only goal.