According to a recent survey of transport and logistics firms in six countries conducted by Intermec, managers around the world believe that arming their mobile workforce with new technology could cut both their pick-up times by 30% and delivery times by 29%.
The April 2013 survey found that 38% of U.S. organizations view operational efficiency as the area of most strategic importance for their business. Overall, 92% of companies worldwide claim that meeting these expectations is placing significant challenges on their businesses and most feel that customer demand can best be achieved by automating key pick-up and delivery processes, and by adopting new technology for drivers such as GPS, mobile and broadband communications. The companies surveyed anticipate that by adopting these technologies, the time for each pick-up and delivery can be cut by 2.68 and 2.41 minutes, respectively.
Conclusions of the Intermec survey include:
Respondents believe broadband mobile communications (60%), integrated vehicle telematics (44%) and RFID (38%) offer the most promising return on investment to their organizations.
Efficiency gains from new technology could extend to back office staff. Survey respondents report that they are receiving 6,677 calls per day from customers asking for order status updates. By providing proactive shipment updates, a process enabled by location-based and mobile technologies, these same companies believe they could eliminate 24% of these calls immediately.
44% of companies feel that process re-engineering is the most effective means of improving operational efficiency levels and that a process re-engineering effort can improve efficiency levels by over 13%.