The Effect Of Mobile Applications In Supply Chain Management

By Author: Yancy Marry
Total Articles: 184
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Deployment of mobile apps has risen over the past two years in all forms of enterprises sectors, including supply chain management. If reports released last year are to be believed, the supply chain managers of the logistics sector are increasingly installing mobile applications in devices such as smartphones and tablets to manage daily tasks quickly and more effectively. To understand how mobile apps have affected supply chain management, it is first important to know how supply chain managers function. This sector is responsible for overseeing data and materials and keeping a check on financial accounts while they are moving from the supplier to the manufacturer and from the wholesaler to the retailer or consumer. Therefore, the work of a supply chain manager would be to manage, coordinate, and integrate all these movements within and outside an organization.

By deploying mobile apps in supply chain management, the workforce can now easily track all forms of official data and reports. They can also ensure faster flow of data between the multiple departments of an enterprise and send alerts to any employee when his/her ...
... process deviates from the company’s schedule. According to mobile analysts, mailing is one of the most important daily tasks of a supply chain manager; hence mailing apps are the most popular forms of mobile applications which are deployed in the supply chain management sector. The other functions which a mobile app can fulfill in the day to day running of the supply chain management industry are messaging, controlling, timekeeping, and tracking of operations.

Based on the required mobile functionality, the mobile applications which can be deployed in a supply chain management unit must have the following qualities:

1. The mobile apps must help in improving the supply chain management sector’s sense of responsiveness towards its existing customer base and the future extended user base.

2. They must be able to reduce the workforce’s downtime.

3. Like in all other sectors of the economy, the mobile apps deployed in the supply chain management sector must help the staff to execute work quickly, thus contributing towards increased productivity.

A very prominent example of the role of mobile applications in supply chain management can be explained from the software deployed in the shipping industry. Ships are often used to transport perishable goods from one place to another; the recording of the correct temperature and tracking of this temperature in order to deliver goods in their proper conditions are processes that can be performed by mobile apps. Similarly, the apps can also be used to trace and judge basic visibility levels of the warehouse management sector of the shipping industry and for ordering solutions for the proper functioning of the transportation management system of this industry.

Another unit of supply chain management that has benefitted largely from the deployment of mobile applications is freight forwarding commercial. A large number of subcontractors have to be employed in this unit of supply chain management. If a company’s management has to issue machinery to all these subcontractors, it will lead to unnecessary excessive expenditure. In order to raise the level of total profits, supply chain managers now ensure that live data is sent to the subcontractors by installing telematics apps in the mobile devices provided to them.

In a nutshell, the use of mobile applications in supply chain management is a time and cost effective solution.

The author is associated with a enterprise application development Dallas with an experience of creating over 300 mobile apps. The mobile app companies firm has iPhone, iPad and Android developers believes keeping the India mobile app development cost low, so that more and more businesses get keen on going mobile. It is one of the leading mobile application development in Noida has worked for clients including Cisco, Cienna, and Verizon. .