Digital transformation of logistics enterprises is still difficult

According to the Vietnam Logistics Research and Development Institute (VLI), the demand for digital conversion becomes a matter of urgency and a prerequisite for carrying out the operation.

Enterprises participating in the survey conducted by VLI have expressed interest and assessed the important role of digital transformation; At the same time, they all confirmed that digital transformation is a process that generates many difficulties and barriers.

According to the survey results, 38.24% of logistics enterprises believe that COVID-19 has formed the need for digital transformation and 42.65% of enterprises believe that the impact of COVID-19 is to change the needs of their customers. customers (for example, using more electronic transactions, e-commerce delivery services, etc.).

There are also other trends formed such as changing the concept of operating a logistics business, the ability to work remotely.

44.74% of enterprises said that there is technology compatibility between their enterprises and partners in the logistics service chain; while 42.11% of businesses shared that the reason for the delay in digital transformation was due to limited funding and limited human resources, as well as not finding suitable conversion technology.

Meanwhile, 28.95% of businesses wondered how to spend investment funds appropriately and how to start in the digital transformation process.

In addition, nearly 16% of businesses expressed that converting a huge amount of existing information to a digital platform is also an obstacle.

Only 5.26% of logistics enterprises believe that the obstacle to the digital transformation process is due to not paying attention to the safety and ability of information security of online platforms.

In order to promote a strong digital transformation process, VLI believes that there should be close cooperation between logistics enterprise with partners in the entire service chain network to be able to make the right decision in choosing the right application or platform.

Digital transformation depends a lot on the mindset of business leaders and must be seen as a strategy of businesses including small and medium enterprises.

In fact, logistics businesses have the characteristics of operating with a large amount of data (big data), the number of orders can be from several hundred thousand to millions of orders per day.

In addition, it is very remarkable that although there are many difficulties affecting the application of information technology and digital transformation of Vietnamese logistics enterprises, the enterprises have made great efforts to invest and apply technology. necessary information technology in implementing logistics services.

Specifically, 75% of businesses are using delivery management software (FMS); 63.89% of businesses are using management software orders, warehouse management software (OMS and WMS); 61.11% of businesses are using transport management software (TMS).

However, applications that can optimize operations such as vehicle routing systems (VRP) or AS/RS automatic picking and storage systems, automated pickup trucks, etc., are still very difficult. few enterprises use it with the respective rates of 19.4%, 16.67% and 11.11%.

In particular, the application drone technology is not used at all. However, up to 11.11% of Vietnamese logistics enterprises have planned to use this application in the future.