January 15, 2025 Data Analysis And Automation Keep Operations Smooth

Record-breaking holiday sales demonstrate that consumer spending is surging. Proactive strategies are needed to stay ahead.

By Thomas Strain, Vice President of Technology, Surgere

Shoppers broke records on Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year, spending $9.8 billion and $12.4 billion, respectively. These numbers are indicative that consumer spending is reaching new highs, especially as we start 2025. That’s great for retailers—but what does this mean for the manufacturing and distribution centers at the heart of the supply chain?

In many cases, it means added pressure to production schedules, a greater need for robust and accurate inventory management, and a growing role for advanced logistics systems to keep track of it all. Most importantly, it means supply chain management professionals must think strategically and stay nimble. In this article, we’ll explore some of the key challenges to be overcome when demand peaks, and how advanced data and automation solutions can help your operations remain smooth and scalable.

Grappling with Key Challenges when Demand Peaks

Manufacturing and distribution industries face a few critical challenges during peak demand periods.

Inventory management can pose perhaps the largest of those challenges. Predicting demand accurately can be tricky; overestimating can lead to excess inventory and associated costs, while underestimating can leave you unable to deliver on customer needs. Effective management is a delicate balance.

Deploying ongoing inventory analysis can help here. Collecting and analyzing data on your inventory, such as volume, location, expected inbound material and needed outbound finished goods for orders gives you more insight into what your customers are buying versus what isn’t moving as quickly as you thought. You can refine how you order, stock, and replenish your inventory to reduce your costs while meeting customers’ needs. But proper analysis in inventory management requires digging through volumes of data and making multiple calculations. You need high-quality data to get an accurate analysis, and doing it manually or with various spreadsheets and programs often leads to errors. 

Labor shortages are another hurdle that supply chain management professionals must clear in today’s environment. Finding and retaining enough skilled labor to handle increased workloads can be difficult, especially in a tight labor market. Elsewhere, shipping and logistics bottlenecks, order accuracy and speed lapses, and suboptimal warehousing management can all pile up to complicate your operations and cause customer dissatisfaction.

Overcoming the Obstacles with Software Solutions

Luckily, there are solutions available for supply chain professionals. In today’s environment, technological progress has the potential to make supply chain management more streamlined and seamless than ever before. Taking advantage requires new ways of thinking and knowing what to look for.

For example: With the rise of cloud computing, companies offering Software as a Service (SaaS) have changed the way many businesses operate, and that extends to supply chain management. Ditching your manual processes and piles of paperwork in favor of a comprehensive supply chain SaaS gives you real-time visibility into your processes and systems, allowing you to track shipments in real time, manage inventory levels, analyze your costs, and assess your processes from start to finish. 

Seeing your supply chain work in real time helps you identify bottlenecks and other inefficiencies that are slowing your delivery times. A supply chain visibility software can also offer analytics data that helps you benchmark your performance against your competitors and even yourself. These insights can help you implement cost-saving measures that boost your bottom line without drastic measures. 

Some specific use cases for supply chain SaaS include:

Workflow optimization. Supply chain software lets you optimize workflows to improve productivity. Analytical tools give you better demand forecasts to plan your inventory levels. Some SaaS tools automate parts of your processes to save your team time and reduce errors. For example, inventory management software can notify your warehouse manager when you’re running low so they can place an order before you run out. Some systems will even generate purchase orders automatically when inventory hits a certain level. 

Customization and flexibility. Because supply chain SaaS solutions are cloud based, you don’t always need additional infrastructure. Your IT team can handle maintenance and security off-site instead of having to access secure servers in multiple physical locations. You can also configure supply chain software to meet your needs. For example, you can set up customized reports to track the analytics that matter most to you. Instead of having to sift through multiple dashboards, you can track the information you need and stay ahead of trends in production and shipping, as the software proactively alerts you to these data points.

Route planning. Optimizing shipping and delivery routes on paper is easy, but it doesn’t always give you the full picture. SaaS logistics platforms help you plan routes that allow drivers to maximize efficiency. Instead of sending one driver back and forth across a city, your route planning software schedules deliveries in clusters so they can start at one end of the city and end in another. Route planning software can also help you manage supply chain disruptions. For example, if a natural disaster impacts part of your shipping route, you can find other partners and plan alternative routes so your customers still get their merchandise on time. 

Ultimately, supply chain software can improve every part of your operations, enabling you to better understand how to manage your inventory without wasting time and money on excesses. What’s more, today’s software solutions are increasingly leveraging the power of AI to more fully streamline supply chain processes.

It’s important to choose the right cloud-based SaaS in supply chain operations. You need a solution that meets your needs and helps you achieve your goals. At Surgere, we offer an AI-powered solution that works from highly accurate data to forge new insights you can use to overcome inventory woes, bottlenecks, shipping concerns and much more. Our team works with you to create systems based on your unique operations, with ongoing support to scale globally, regionally or globally.

Today’s supply chain professionals have the opportunity to leverage increasingly powerful tools to eliminate friction from supply chains everywhere. It’s time to take advantage.

About the Author:
Thomas Strain is Vice President of Technology at Surgere. He leads the company’s technology organization as well as its hardware integration to bring data-driven supply chain software solutions and business intelligence platforms to the market. He has significant previous experience leading strategic development of business intelligence, retail e-commerce, and enterprise software solutions in the automotive market. Tom holds an M.S. in Information Technology from the Florida Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Saint Leo University.

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