To help organisations increase efficiency and value across their global supply chains, Oracle has added logistics management capabilities within its Fusion Cloud SCM supply chain and manufacturing product.

The updates to its cloud transportation and global trade management software can help organisations reduce costs and risk, improve customer experience, and become more adaptable to business disruptions.

The unpredictability of the past two years has created major logistics-related problems for organisations as they navigate large fluctuations in supply and demand and major disruptions to their distribution networks. This has resulted in rising logistics costs and has impacted organisations’ relationships with customers. A recent Oracle survey found that 87 per cent of people have been negatively impacted by supply chain issues over the past year.

“Western Digital has multiple manufacturing locations in the USA and Asia, handling more than half a million shipments every year,” said Joseph Hodges, director of logistics at Western Digital. “Our supply chain ecosystem is extremely complex with multiple end markets each having unique service needs, and the disruptive events of the past two years added to that complexity on an exponential scale.”

He said with Oracle Transportation Management as its foundation, it had streamlined logistics processes and customer support, quickly achieving significant results, including reducing cost and service disruption through expansion of its partner base, implementing on-demand spot bidding, and dynamically shifting modes while operating with 90 per cent touch-free automation in the past fiscal year.

“In addition, Oracle transportation management’s built-in machine learning capabilities have helped improve ETA accuracy from 64 to 93 per cent, which is an invaluable result in terms of an improved customer experience,” said Hodges.

Oracle’s transportation management and global trade management products are continuously innovating to help organisations address logistics management problems. The added capabilities should help users improve order fulfilment accuracy, reduce logistics costs, enhance the customer experience, and manage risk associated with unforeseen changes across their supply chains.

These additions include:

• Intelligent transit time predictions: A machine-learning algorithm in the transportation management software will let users evaluate the potential impact of macro-level interruptions including extreme weather or airport delays and network-level disruptions such as labour and capacity shortages. This can help more accurately predict delivery times and lower costs associated with delays, expedited shipments and additional safety stock.
• Shipment capabilities: Supply chain managers can simplify and automate transportation processes for shipments. New capabilities include automated spot bidding and the ability to combine and track multiple shipments, and automated global trade analysis on trade agreements. By automating and simplifying these previously manual processes, the capabilities can help reduce human errors, freight costs and shipment delays.
• Multi-language digital assistant: Real-time, multi-lingual response capabilities within Oracle’s logistics digital assistant help organisations provide faster and more accurate information and standardise responses to inquiries in their customers’ native languages. By offering global customer service without the need for additional IT resources, organisations can reduce operational costs and quickly respond to customers, regardless of geographical location or language.
• Transportation and global trade analytics: Analytics capabilities let users quickly access, analyse and interpret accurate transportation and global trade data. This helps increase cost savings, improve logistics planning and enable better-informed business decisions.

“While the volatile business environment of the past two years will continue to shape supply chain strategies, accurately managing the crucial transportation and shipping functions will always remain a top priority for our customers,” said Derek Gittoes, vice president at Oracle. “The new capabilities in Oracle transportation management and global trade management deliver a double benefit, as they help customers streamline their logistics operations while minimising the associated risks. With these capabilities, we’re underscoring our commitment to continuous innovation and helping our customers navigate today’s business landscape to continue growing their businesses.”

• Indian communications provider Bharti Airtel has chosen Oracle Fusion Cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) and SCM products to digitise and simplify its finance, planning and supply chain processes.