what we do industries
Transportation and Logistics
What’s going on?
Whatever your company is, it’s probably a player in this space—there’s virtually no industry that transportation and logistics doesn’t serve, and there’s virtually no company that doesn’t demand transportation and logistics services. Since the beginning of commerce itself, this has been true, and it has only become more true—and more complicated—as history has unfolded.
World War II illustrated just how critical accurate planning and distribution can be in any operation. Then transportation deregulation intensified competition and provided more options in the supply chain. Finally, the technology explosion of recent decades added immediacy to world trade (and even a new player, the fourth-party provider or 4PL, to manage the integrated process rather than singular functions).
Today, ever extending supply chains, rapid product development, variable shifts in demand, volatile geopolitical climates, and rising operating costs put pressure on all companies—and particularly on carriers, warehouses, freight forwarders, and third-party (as well as fourth-party) logistics providers—to act responsively, quickly, and flexibly.
Competition is intense: top performers in this area have mastered the digital supply chain so well that they outmaneuver the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) by a dramatic 11.46%, according to year-end 2007 research by AMR.
How can Clarity help?
To companies throughout the supply chain, as well as to their customers, who are the shippers themselves, Clarity brings the professionals and the skills to solve industry-specific problems like the following:
The high costs of doing business
Your issue: Unrelenting increases in costs like fuel and labor, which are long term realities rather than temporary hurdles, and which are forcing not only abrupt cost cutting measures but fundamental changes in how industry participants do business.
Our answer:
Technology and process capabilities that go beyond optimizing individual points in the chain (i.e., transaction efficiency) to create an adaptive, demand-driven network across your enterprise (i.e., operations insight). This kind of network monitors real world events, facilitates immediate responses, and prevents costly supply chain inaccuracies.
Many companies are passing higher logistics costs onto their customers in the form of fees and surcharges. Clarity can help you offset these costs through better systems instead, which actually turns your challenges into an advantage for your customers: they are relieved of the cost burden, with the added benefit of better service.
Learn about Clarity’s specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) skills.
An extensive and growing supply chain
Your issue: A supply chain that spans numerous internal and external geographically dispersed members and trading partners, all with separate communications, operations, and transactions systems.
Our answer:
Cross enterprise, integrated solutions that help you mold your supply chain so that the flow of products is optimized, minimizing handling and transit times; and so that the flow of information is controlled, enabling granular visibility, planning, and decision support.
Clarity can extract data and consolidate information from a variety of sources, including Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Transportation Management Systems (TMS), Warehouse Management Systems (WMS), and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), enabling a comprehensive view into all your supply chain activities.
Learn about Clarity’s Information Management Practice.
Learn about Clarity’s specific data integration skills.
The need to understand overall performance
Your issue: A vague, inaccurate, or lagging picture of supply chain performance.
Our answer:
The business intelligence (BI) capabilities of analytics, data mining, reporting, dashboards, and metrics that you need to drive and measure performance in individual functions, in processes that span those functions, and in the collaboration necessary among supply chain partners.
Clarity can deliver your performance measurements not merely standalone, but as part of a supply chain metrics framework that defines enterprise-wide strategic and financial objectives, outlines the impact of the supply chain on these objectives, maps processes and roles in the supply chain to key metrics that underlie performance, and provides mechanisms for real-time review and evaluation.
Some of the metrics that Clarity helps provide include low-level measurements like inventory turnover and fill rate, as well as high-level measurements like demand forecast accuracy, perfect order index, cash-to-cash cycle time, new product cycle time, and supply chain management costs. This enables a clear and comprehensive view of performance that can be compared to benchmarks over time.
Learn about Clarity’s specific BI skills as well as our Information Management Practice
The question of inventory
Your issue: An uncertain inventory strategy.
Our answer:
Precise, quality data, including financials, on your procurement, production, transport, distribution, and sales processes, which helps you uncover all of the hidden costs of your current inventory strategy; plus the planning services to design a custom roadmap for your particular business environment and mission.
Lean inventory was once the cornerstone of supply chain structures everywhere, but it’s not a given anymore. Throughout supply chains today, higher risk and great distances equal a higher rate of disruptions. When combined with the huge costs of emergency freight, many supply chain participants are questioning whether larger stocks would better meet customer demands—and better serve their bottom lines. If your company is struggling with this question too, Clarity can help.
Learn about Clarity’s specific data quality skills.
Learn about Clarity’s Information Management Practice.
Warehouse automation
Your issue: The need to automate and continually enhance warehouse processes in order to compete.
Our answer:
The application development skills to install, configure, implement, monitor, and upgrade the tools that help you run an efficient, productive warehouse and minimize the costs of labor. Whatever your current warehouse management system, we can help you streamline historically time-intensive tasks like cycle counting, location management, stock moves, receiving, and order picking. Clarity is comfortable helping you choose the software that’s right for you, and we excel in deploying systems in either a standard or customized environment.
Learn about Clarity’s Application Development Practice.