Companies are facing complex challenges in profitably growing their topline. Brands need to deliver outstanding value in order to keep customers engaged. There are multiple ways to reach your potential and current customers and is supported by the growing network of distribution partners. As a result, marketing costs are increasingly variable and dependent on a broad set of parameters. On top of this, demand is volatile, and technology drives disruptions of business models and the rise of new competitors.
We support companies in spotting commercial opportunities and managing risk in turbulent markets. Our solutions include tools for digital yield management, specifically considering variable costs of marketing, heuristics for dealing with uncertainty, and frameworks to evaluate and implement strategic partnerships. Most companies are stretched between transforming their business models while still delivering their targets for daily trading. Here, we have a definitive answer: A pragmatic and hands on approach, supported by smart analytics.
Airlines, airports, railway and postal operators, and mobility providers all interact directly with their customers at physical touch points. Logistics and container shipping companies interact with their B2B customers via booking hotlines or tracking apps. They have to deal with commoditization and high transparency, while customer interaction is a key feature to differentiate products and services.
We have witnessed the transportation industry moving from “customer ownership” to the wider concept of “customer experience.” How much value can a new service or product offer, and how can customer interaction be used to improve service as a product? We at Roland Berger are aware of how much the success of this concept is based on customer data – data that needs to be collected along the whole customer journey. We help to turn big data into smart data.
New mobility and urban logistics business models are changing our cities as we know them. With the help of new innovations, you are now able to pick up a car anywhere in many cities and drop it off at your destination. But this is only the beginning; autonomous technology is closer than many realise. The real revolution is yet to come.
We are working extensively on the most innovative and strategic projects in the industry concerning mobility, autonomous vehicles, and logistics concepts. We help our clients build customer-centric solutions that put them on the map of new mobility and urban logistics.
The mass arrival of robots is no longer a question. But how soon will it happen? And how do we best prepare for it? Robotic solutions have developed at a great pace since the giants of the internet made them the spearhead of their expansion plans. Robotization differs from mechanisation (or automation), as it provides a flexible and reconfigurable solution that can be integrated seamlessly into existing infrastructures with human operators.
We support our clients in managing a smart transition to robotization. We encourage logisticians of all industries to revamp their business models on the basis of this new reality.
Industrial assets remain a key element in transportation markets. The challenges are classical, including, in particular, financing, maintenance, and optimisation of utilisation. However, it is critical for companies to apply new technologies and adjust partnership models to stay ahead.
We support our clients in making sure their assets translate into a competitive edge advantage in turbulent transportation markets.
Arguing about the impact of digitalisation is as necessary as bringing sand to the beach. Whereas start-ups are developing new business models free of legacy restrictions, established players both want and should leverage given capabilities and competences to deploy solutions that make a difference.
We support our clients throughout the entire transformation by formulating a digital vision and corresponding value proposition. Thereby, we bridge the gaps between the traditional and digital business worlds.
In the current competitive business environment, every mature company has been undergoing performance enhancement initiatives. Given the dynamics of our markets, striving for more efficiency is a permanent task.
To align initiatives to corporate targets, mobilise troops, and ensure that the effects can be measured on the profit and loss statement, we support our clients on all relevant issues, i.e., short-term revenue growth, comprehensive cost-savings, re-alignment of investment programmes, structural changes, communication, and overall programme management.
There are several main drivers in the transportation industry. These include the need to specialise, ambitious efficiency goals, consolidation, and merging to extend both reach and scope. These are the consequences of globalization and sector reforms, often triggered by redundant capacity.
We support our clients throughout the entire merger process by delivering pre-merger studies and due diligence, negotiation support on deal making and merger integration itself. Throughout the process, we partner case-specifically with lawyers, M&A firms, communication agencies, and other experts.
The electronic Air Waybill (e-AWB) is the initiative for industrial digitalisation. It’s a standardised digital version of the prevailing paper Air Waybill which follows cargo from shipper to delivery.
The e-AWB greatly improves the efficiency in tracking and processing cargo data, as well as increasing transparency, improving security, and reducing costs and delays. It’s thus far received an honest uptake, with the International Air Transportation Association (IATA) declaring the e-AWB its default contract of carriage earlier this year. Big airlines like Lufthansa and Emirates have already implemented it et al. like Delta Airlines and United Airlines are expected to follow soon, meaning an expected 80 per cent industry adoption by 2020.
The potential for AI and ML in logistics is huge: a supply chain may be a veritable goldmine of structured and unstructured data, and by harnessing and analysing it, identifying patterns and generating insight into every link of the availability chain, logistics companies can dramatically transform operations.
ML can help companies uncover patterns in supply chain data using algorithms that pinpoint the most factors influencing their supply network’s success, while learning continuously and simultaneously. These patterns can relate to inventory levels, supplier quality, forecasting demand, production planning, transportation management and more, and provides companies the knowledge and insights to scale back freight costs, improve supplier performance and minimize supplier risk.
Cloud logistics is accepting fast appropriation with 60 percent of logistics suppliers previously utilizing cloud administrations and another 30 percent anticipating doing as such.
As data shifts to the cloud, logistics IT services are getting available on a versatile, on-demand, pay-per-use model. this suggests smaller businesses not got to hand over on monolithic IT structures, paying just for what they have once they need it.
Services like Shipwire and Freight already provide real-time cloud-based transport management systems that cover all logistics processes from procurement to billing, making the entire process easier and cheaper for SMEs.
IoT are going to be subsequent game changer. Combined with cutting edge availability and sensors, it’ll leave for all intents and purposes any article to be associated with the web any place it’s, which means full discernibility and straightforwardness from shipper to conveyance. No wonder it’s expected to get a possible $1.9 trillion for the logistics industry.
IoT-connected sensors will monitor temperature and humidity for sensitive cargo like food and pharmaceuticals. Near Field Communication (NFC) tags will provide product authentication with the faucet of a smartphone, thus protecting against counterfeiting and theft.
Further away but with huge potential is blockchain. This blockchain technology decentralises information, expanding straightforwardness and detectability by giving each member inside the chain the keys to imperative data on an item’s excursion. By reducing complexity and breaking down trade barriers, it could lead on to a 5 per cent increase in global GDP and 15 per cent in global trade.
Supply chains will become more efficient as all parties involved can track the progress and standing of products. Digitalisation of important documents just like the e-AWB and bill of lading, opens these up to the likelihood of blockchain adoption, allowing the first document to be issued, transferred and received on distributed ledgers that are visible to all or any participants within the process, increasing efficiency and security across the availability chain.
Autonomous forklifts are as of now very ordinary in present day stockrooms, air terminals, ports and other gracefully chain areas. And that we will soon see autonomous trucks on the roads, delivering goods to be unloaded by autonomous forklifts and put in warehouses by automated conveyor belts and robotic arms.
Vehicle-to-vehicle communications will allow autonomous trucks to platoon, whereby multiple trucks drive bumper to bumper to scale back costs. The improved drag and reduced concertina from slowing down and accelerating means less fuel is employed, which makes up 30 percent of the entire operating costs of a truck.
