1. Transport and logistics, the digital challenge for managing services and workflows
2. Service Management for the transport and logistics sector
3. Pat's direct experience of Service Management for transport and logistics
The digital revolution has brought about important innovations in the transport and logistics sector: from the introduction of IoT (Internet of Things) devices to Machine Learning algorithms, passing through the new company management systems. The communication systems that connect employees and customers have integrated with those for tracking workflows, triggering a "virtual circle" between people and things.
This approach has also changed the management of the services offered (internal or to customers) that corporate information systems or Customer Service support.
Transport and logistics, the digital challenge for managing services and workflows
The current competitiveness of national and global markets drives companies in the transport and logistics and goods transport sectors to adopt platforms that optimize workflows.
These companies today are looking for technologies capable of lowering the Time-to-Market, of combining inventory rotation with customer demand, of connecting apps or e-commerce to ERP, CRM and Inventory systems.
In this digitization, consumers have new habits and all these needs are reflected in the organizational and business methods of companies in the logistics and transport services sector, which need to promptly and dynamically manage the continuous increase in requests.
So what are the digital challenges of the sector?
1. Reduce complexity:
Through the aid of digital tools that simplify the synergy between operators, streamlining the complexity of the transport and logistics sector. The processes involve many subjects and therefore technologies that digitize documents and their rapid sharing are needed.
2. Improve the transmission and collection of information:
To facilitate traceability and contribute to process planning and monitoring, improving company and warehouse activities.
3. Securely manage your data:
Digital innovation and blockchain are two key elements of the new operations and competitiveness in the transport and logistics sector, only if they comply with the security of the managed and transmitted data.
4. Optimize internal IT and Service Management processes:
The various company departments need to be fully interconnected with the IT infrastructures that govern processes, workstations, technologies and users. Optimizing internal IT and Service Management processes means making an organizational improvement, increasing the efficiency of management and service delivery, while limiting costs.
Service Management for the transport and logistics sector
The digital challenge for transport and logistics companies, and their Information Technology departments, is therefore also that of standardizing and normalizing support for corporate users, through a centralized Service Management service: creating standards for delivery processes internal and coordinated services in the various countries where the organization.
In fact, for example, a banal stoppage in the functioning of the IT infrastructure can slow down or compromise the work of entire teams and undermine the high quality level offered by the company to its customers in terms of reliability and guarantee of deliveries.
Or, the diffusion of omnichannel and e-commerce leads to the extension of the time slots of service availability, which affects the operations of employees and the expectations of the SLAs that the support must respect.
But that's not all, corporate IT departments in this complexity often find themselves having to manage considerable volumes of calls, reports and activities related to the support of traditional office users: companies in the logistics and transport sector often have very capillary organisations, with geographically distributed branches and fulfillment centers in various territories, all managed remotely by the support teams.
Another typical need of logistics service companies is assistance with devices typical of a warehouse: bar-code readers, label printers, as well as vehicular devices found on board the vehicles that carry out the picking and handling of goods . Also in this case, direct support or support entrusted to external suppliers may always be necessary.
These are just some cases and examples of how the Service Desk is involved at a management level in the release of assistance and support.
In this context, a centralized Service Management system can serve as a solution for IT process management, 1st and 2nd level IT support, 24/7 and multilingual, as well as managing service levels, the high volume of requests and be the coordination point for activities involving supranational and third-party teams.
Pat's direct experience of Service Management for transport and logistics
Pat's Service Management solution has been covering transversal Service management needs for years, also for companies in the transport and logistics sector.
We talked about it in one of our dedicated webinars, where a customer in the transport sector was able to describe the different areas of functional coverage of the HDA platform.
In fact, the Service Management project activated in 2019 through the use of the HDA platform covers various company operating areas that are called upon to provide services. The system centralizes all requests for typical IT support needs but also supports the dynamics and needs of service delivery for areas such as HR, Facility and Finance. In addition, HDA manages a state-of-the-art system that is constantly renewing interventions on fleets: 500 trucks all equipped with IoT and GPS devices.
The corporate objectives that the IT Service Manager had set were different: the first was to standardize the provision of services by the corporate shared services towards "customers" inside and outside the company, starting as a pilot from the IT department .
Secondly, to cover the company areas which until now managed their processes completely manually and on "artisanal" solutions often based on Excel files. Finally, integrate the Service Desk solution into the corporate application architecture in order to enhance the quality of the data and optimize its value.
Today this customer manages 1,000 Tickets per month in the IT area with HDA, around 9,000 Work Orders in the Workshop project (year 2022) and around 70,000 tickets managed overall in the various areas of adoption of the tool (year 2022).
HDA for Service Desk and IT Support
The main need that emerges in every company is that relating to the centralized and standardized management of internal IT assistance and the management of IT services, especially for logistics and transport companies that have thousands of employees distributed in different locations and countries.
In these cases it is necessary to manage, through a structured platform such as Pat's HDA, ITIL compliant processes for the opening and management of Incidents, Problems and Service requests. The simplified management of these multiple requests, which follows best practices, can take place through a Service Catalog differentiated by user profile, geographical area or company environment. Reports can be made through the Self-Service Portal and be assigned to the correct resolution IT group.
HDA to manage fleet interventions with planning and reporting
The HDA solution was also adopted for the "Workshop" project: through specific integration with a proprietary APP of the customer, a ticket is opened which reports damage to a truck in the fleet. This report generates a work order in charge of the workshop manager who authorizes and plans the activity that the mechanics must carry out to repair the damage.
The Ticket is resolved and closed with the loading of the activities carried out and the time spent in the order, as well as through integration with the management system which is updated for the spare parts in the warehouse.
A truly challenging project, where the Service Desk has been made a centralizer of intervention requests: by exploiting the API layer that HDA makes available and Pat's Business Process Management tool, it was possible to manage the work orders of the workshop with the relative approval process and management of the interventions and activities on the vehicles.