Mobile app development has become the need of the hour. Mobile Apps have become important for a business owner of every genre including the transportation industry. This is because more than 85% of the users all across the globe are mobile users. And more than 75% of them prefer following mobile trends and using mobile apps.
The transportation and logistics industry is also not left behind from the shadows of mobile apps. Mobile technologies have been causing enormous growth in transportation operations as the adoption of mobile technologies increases every day around the globe.
As almost every individual is constantly connected and is accessible through mobile devices, this makes it imperative for logistics industry verticals to take the advantage of this technology and effectively streamline their business operations and provide better services to their customers. This in turn helps them generate high returns on investment.
In this customer-centric, digitalized world the transportation and logistics industry is under constant enforcement to deliver quality service and find innovative ways to streamline its operations.
The advancement of mobile apps has greatly benefitted the transportation business in many ways. With that businesses start to see their processes become more seamless, secure, and synchronized.
The cutting-edge mobile apps simplify every aspect of logistics virtually including inventory visibility, tracking, and management, transportation costs, fulfillment, offering customer service and retail experience both in-store and online.
Since mobile technology can perform more than ever before and more businesses are realizing in value of every industry. Here are challenges faced by the transportation industry and how mobile apps help solve those.
Challenges Faced By Transportation Business-
1. Poor Supply Chain Management
2. Issues in Having Proper Documentation
3. Warehouse and inventory management Errors
4. Lack of connection with end customers
5. Stock inconsistencies
6. Slow business processes
7. Lack of proper internal communication
How Mobile Apps Benefit The Transportation Business –
1. Inventory Visibility And Warehouse Management
One of the main challenges faced by the transportation business is the ability to successfully understand and manage a business inventory. If a business does not have enough real-time visibility into the available inventory at a specified location then it will be a huge drawback to the business sales that will also harm customer satisfaction. In specific supply chain management often needs to track, manage and keep on updated with the availability of inventory in multiple warehouses, locations, and stores which is a tough task for businesses that are not synchronized centrally.
To overcome this challenge transportation businesses are moving from traditional manual methods of storing everything via paper or kept in files or clipboards and invest in mobile apps with cloud technologies that provide real-time data of process, accessible to the entire organization from every location regardless of time including warehouse management systems and transport management system.
2. Apt Location Tracking
The main role of supply chain management is to have a system that would help manage all supply chains in an optimum manner. The absence of proper management applications results in delivery time failures, customer dissatisfaction, and many other issues. Even a small defect in the logistics system can cost businesses huge losses in the process.
However, by having state-of-the-art mobile applications, transport businesses can easily track every vehicle and shipment accurately anytime from anywhere. GPS allows implementing fleet management system to track ad locate vehicles, plan routes, schedule itineraries, etc in real-time. This immediate, accurate and real-time tracking of location enables the transport and logistics companies to maintain an efficient supply chain. Delays in transportation can also be done away with and the expectations of the customers can be managed effectively.
3. Manpower Management
As the transportation and logistics business continues to grow, the need for a faster, organized and smarter system to manage manpower has become more essential. With the advancement of many online eCommerce websites, the demand for faster and more efficient shipping strategies within the transportation business has become a major issue for many business entities. Without a tool, it is tough to manage the entire manpower.
With cutting-edge mobile apps businesses can easily monitor the availability of manpower, and equipment, track vehicles locations and check various activities of drivers, warehouse, and office staff. Incredible mobile applications have become a great solution to manage manpower effectively by eliminating paperwork and human error.
4. Transportation Costs
Transportation costs are the main concern for any company’s overall budget. Every organization aims to lower its costs. The regular increase in fuel prices, traffic issues, and tolls- may have posed challenges for the transportation business. To overcome these challenges businesses can incorporate the use of mobile apps that eliminate transportation concerns and provide apt solutions.
The use of autonomous tracking and artificial intelligence to track real-time data with routes as well as possible alternative short routes enables to cut down the costs. The sensors attached to vehicles enable to communicate faster with mobile devices will improve fuel efficiency, evaluate road conditions and observe how the human operator responds along routes.
5. Retail and Customer Experience
The current logistics and transportation sector makes it tough for the customer to buy the goods on time. The long waiting line with current retail and customer services results in a difficult user experience for purchasing goods. Mobile-based e-Commerce applications can eliminate these risks by providing customers with a way to shop anytime and anywhere.
The mobile apps improve the customer experience and benefit the retail services by providing a high level of transparency in the whole process of distribution and manufacturing. This creates trust among users and in turn, helps better business outreach. Thus mobile applications can offer a better customer experience for the transportation business.
6. Internet of Things
The advent of mobile technologies and IoT enterprises let transportation and logistics accelerate productivity, enhance profits and synchronize their operations. IoT enables mobile devices to be created in a way that they can track inventory data, vehicle performance as well as equipment. With IoT, solution enterprises can connect all devices across a consolidated cloud computing network where critical data can be stored and shared thus letting enterprises gain an accurate and actual-time perception of their operations. Companies can track their fleet, take proactive measures in terms of fleet management and avoid unwanted expenses.
7. Automation Of Existing Paper-Based Process
Paperwork forms and service orders get lost often or can end up incomplete, incorrect, and in many cases illegible. Using mobile apps, owners can gather required data and store it in the company’s database or on their mobile devices. They can collect data using mobile forms and measure relevant metrics like driving time and mileage. The automation of the existing paper-based process via mobile apps will boost your productivity and will allow the user to get instant mobile reports, thus saving time and ensuring your data is safe and easily accessible.
8. Monitoring Performance
Visibility is very important for logistics companies and cutting-edge mobile applications can help managers to oversee functions like load management, load planning, and transportation optimization. Visibility also helps companies to reduce performance gaps, boost their agility, predict certain issues and make data-driven business decisions.
9. Track Vehicles
Mobile applications allow logistics companies to track vehicles and cargo. With mobile apps, one can easily track parcel meter by meter and second by second basis. This makes it possible to oversee the transport processes and not only recognize issues when they arise but also predict issues even before they appear. By using mobile applications for transport business, one can easily know on a real-time basis about the vehicles and drivers with GPS.
10. Flexible Delivery Process
With mobile apps, the delivery schedules and routes can be changed on the go which provides a big level of flexibility to the organization. Increasing control of their supply chains increases customer retention and generates opportunities for new levels of cooperation between customers and logistics providers.
Final Words
In the past decade, the transportation industry has integrated technological developments in its operations and has encouraged innovative ways to carry out shipping and deliveries to ensure they are done in a flawless and real-time manner.
Every process in the transportation sector needs constant development and improvements and mobile technology can be of great help to achieve that. Mobile apps for the transportation business can bring many benefits to the industry like helping managers with functions that include load management and planning and transportation optimization.
Leading-edge mobile apps are a boon for the transportation business. They help in improving several activities like managing inventory, keeping an eye on the warehouse, supervising goods and carrying vehicles, and so on. The need of the hour is to have an attractive, scalable, cutting-edge, and user-centric mobile application for transportation businesses to simplify, synchronize and manage all the transportation business processes and you can carry out the work via a single app platform.
Editorial Staff at Bharat Software Solutions is a team of transport management system development.