Supply Chain Digitisation – Dream or Reality?

Supply Chain Digitisation is not a new concept, but it appears to remain a dream for many organisations.

How Radaro is disrupting the logistics industry, is an article published in 2019. 5 years later, digital supply chains are still a key talking point at industry events and many businesses are still working towards the digital dream.

What is Supply Chain Digitisation

Supply chain digitisation is the process of replacing manual processes with technologies into different aspects of the supply chain to streamline operations, improve management, and increase visibility.

Driver Benefits

Drivers were quick to embrace digitisation as it simplifies their day.

• No paper handling – have all your job data within the Radaro Driver App

• Digital POD / sign on glass with photo confirmation – protects Drivers from false claims

• Success and failure codes with automated escalations – means less double handling and relaying of information

• Fastest route via preferred GPS

B2C operations quickly learnt that it wasn’t just the Customer and Driver benefiting from digitisation. There is a far greater array of operational benefits to be gained from digitisation and today, it is these benefits driving B2B organisations to embrace supply chain digitisation.

Operational benefits

• Expedite Job allocation and planning – plan delivery routes in moments rather than hours

• Reduce missed / failed visits –

  • Improved planning and customer communications results in fewer futile deliveries

  • Maximum driver utilisation – improved planning and reducing administrative driver handling allows for increased deliveries, and fully utilised vehicle capacity.

• Real-time updates and visibility

• Improve COR compliance with transparency across your fleet.

• Minimise administrative burdens – less paper handling, less chasing between departments

Common Obstacles to Supply Chain Digitisation

With all these benefits, why are so many organisations slow to digitise their supply chain?

Change is hard, we all know that but when you take into account various stakeholders with strong opinions and different agendas, for a business, this can make implementing change harder than expected. Here are the common occurrences and how to overcome them.

2) “But we’ve always done it this way”.

Some people are more adept to change than others.

Address resistance to change by understanding current processes, evaluating their impact, and highlighting positive changes. Often the reluctance to change is quickly overcome once someone understands that those processes are having a negative effect on other team members or departments.

3) What if xyz happens?

It is important to ensure you’re catering for a wide range of circumstances, but can you accommodate for absolutely everything? Do your existing manual processes cater for that one ambiguous scenario? Here it is helpful to understand how often xyz occurs. Make sure you are applying your focus to the majority of cases to maximise your outcomes, rather than letting a once on a blue moon scenario hold you back.

If your organisation has been hesitant to embrace supply chain digitisation, now is the time to initiate discussions with Radaro. The journey towards a digitised supply chain may have its challenges, but the benefits are substantial, offering improved efficiency, visibility, and customer satisfaction. Contact the Radaro team or email support@radaro.com

Related reading: Advanced Strategies for Supply Chain Transformation, Navigating the Path to Supply Chain Digitisation: From Dream to Reality and Key supply chain industry trends that shaped 2025