For global shippers, diversification of sourcing and transportation providers is the order of the day. Hannah Testani, chief executive officer of Intelligent Audit, explains how artificial intelligence can help them to address the complexities that result.

The lives of shippers have become exponentially more complex in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the trade war between the U.S. and China, and other factors that are forcing them to rethink their supply chain strategies. Where one carrier on a single lane might have previously sufficed, now shippers are being forced to diversify their carrier base in order to mitigate the impact of disruptions. At the same time, they’ve had to modify just-in-time inventory strategies to ensure they have enough product on hand to meet unanticipated demand.

It's a challenge just to obtain the data necessary for making those decisions. Excel spreadsheets do a fine job of displaying the data on hand, Testani says, but they don’t allow for modifications and intelligent decision-making based on that information. Yet bills of lading are still manually created, putting the supply chain industry well behind others such as banking and finance in automating the management of data.

A key technology for digitizing data is artificial intelligence, which can cleanse that data and use it to make decisions independent of human managers. AI can detect deviations in customary patterns, as well as opportunities for shifting sourcing, carriers and routes in line with changing conditions in the supply chain. It can generate “what-if” scenarios that allow planners to test out various options on a virtual basis before deciding on the best one for the moment.

Technological innovation can be difficult to pull off, Testani says, but it’s necessary to prepare supply chains for the greater complexities brought about by recent events. “Some of the big companies are so old, that it’s hard to get them to realize that they need to make changes now to prepare for success in the future.”