5 Signs It’s Time to Modernize Your Supply Chain Technology

Supply chain applications have changed so much during the past decade that using yesterday’s applications could be stopping your business from achieving its full potential. Modern solutions help you increase capacity, boost efficiency, and get lots of data that you can leverage to improve operations and customer experience.

Does your technology provide these benefits, or is our current system holding you back? Here are five signs that you need a more modern solution.

1. Customers are annoyed with you

Everybody wants to be able to go online and find out exactly where their order is, right now. Your customers know this is possible because they have all ordered items from Amazon and other distributors and received home delivery of packages with visibility into their order status and location. They do not understand why your business cannot supply this kind of service when you ship to their business.

2. Your app is like a black box, hard to use and no one fully understands it

If you are still relying on legacy, custom-configured technology, odds are that the people who built your solutions and support them are retiring — and nobody else knows the details of those configurations. You have a hodge-podge of old apps that are hard to use. Your application is a black box with your data locked inside. It is time to sunset this app and move on to a single cloud-based platform.

3. You cannot generate invoices based on what was shipped

Invoicing based on the purchase order is old-school. A nimble, frictionless supply chain allows you to act quickly and invoice customers only for items that were shipped. Modernizing your supply chain technology with a cloud-based platform of integrated applications helps meet new demands.

4. Your inventory costs are too high

If you do not really have visibility into when inbound shipments are coming from suppliers, more safety stock must be carried to ensure enough inventory. Improving inbound visibility allows you to reduce inventory, which will remove cost from your supply chain. Minimizing your safety stock reduces not just your carrying costs but also the risk of getting stuck with hard to sell stock if demand dries up suddenly, as it often does with seasonal or trend-driven items.

5. You cannot generate customized reports

The reports and dashboards are not what you need. Your manager is asking for specific information. If you do not have a way to quickly customize and show the information that management needs, you know it is time to modernize.

NetSymm is a cloud based B2B eCommerce platform that makes it easy to place orders anytime from anywhere, gives full visibility to inventory and shipments, and allows you to generate reports that are meaningful for your business.