(and why they are so important!)
Sadaf Atashbarghi
Time to broaden your supply chain internationally? You won't be alone. Today's highly competitive global marketplace demands, at a minimum, some level of active involvement or peripheral participation in foreign markets due to rapidly changing market conditions, aggressive competition, and dramatic growth in foreign exchange. Companies of all shapes, sizes, and industries are jumping on the international business bandwagon and expanding their transportation logistics beyond borders to maximize on projected cost savings.
Before you hop on the global business bandwagon, however, you should understand that establishing a cross-border supply chain can be a challenging journey on which you may encounter any number of obstacles. And, what works for your domestic supply chain may not work as well in the global arena.
To competitively globalize your supply chain, you'd do well to adhere to select industry best practices — four of which are listed below, and include creating consistency in execution, the establishment of centralized technology and data, centralizing business rules, and creating global visibility.
Best Practice #1: CONSISTENCY IN EXECUTION
OVERVIEW: By virtue of the "e" in ERP, many organizations have already learned the value of managing data and processes at the enterprise level. Typically, best practices are defined, refined, and made part of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution prior to implementing or during the implementation process. Values recognized from this approach can and should be carried over to transportation management solutions as well. For global ERP, one should follow suit for all subsystems or complimentary applications to maintain consistency in execution.
BENEFIT: When all of the transportation, logistics, and related service providers strive to achieve the same standards of performance, there will be more consistency in the entire global supply chain.
PITFALLS: Without building consistency into a global supply chain's framework, inefficiencies and duplication of efforts can impede reliability, driving up costs and reducing services.
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