Track and trace technology is not just a COVID 19 phenomena - it’s become an essential for elite supply chain management. This technology ensures a clear track of individual products from initial manufacturer to the hand of the customer, offering full visibility at all stages of the journey. With the power to protect products and companies falling victim to counterfeit reproduction, smuggling, theft or tax evasion, capabilities of track and trace technology uses state of the art solutions to keep a supply chain profitably flowing and making it easy for companies to instantly identify areas of concern and potential loss of revenue. With 70% of Chief Supply Chain Officers (CSCOs) stating their supply chains as being “very” or “extremely” complex ( IBM), having a clear understanding of supply chain traceability and its benefits is imperative.
Why should your business adopt track and trace technology?
Leveraging track and trace technology comes with a myriad of benefits and addresses a wide range of potential issues within your supply chain. The longer a supply chain, the higher the problematic potential; however, this shouldn’t stifle your business’ goals and ability to grow globally if desired. The world is vastly adopting technology to proactively address problems before they occur, and the capabilities of track and trace technology do just this, offering businesses a range of fundamental benefits.
Supply chain visibility
Understanding your supply chain from inception to completion is no easy feat, with 84% of CSCOs reporting that a lack of supply chain visibility is their biggest challenge (IBM), and 80% of logistics experts wanting to improve and invest in digital planning so as to increase their supply chain visibility (McKinsey). The capabilities of Track and Trace technology ensure every product is always accounted for, optimising and streamlining the chain as a whole, further enabling speedy and simple identification of any risks or issues within the chain, optimising costs.
Trust and transparency
Businesses need to be clear with their customers about the progress of their market orders. Alongside this, governments and stakeholders need to be kept aware of product movement and potential risks. With efficient supply chain traceability, any required product recalls can commence with ease, armed with the knowledge of precise product location. Furthermore, any ambiguity about the supply chain process is minimised, enabling all involved parties to feel confident about the supply chain from start to finish. A survey found that fluctuating to customer demand was seen as a supply chain challenge growing 25% in a year (Statista), highlighting the continued need for transparency within the chain.
Brand protection
Your brand is at risk from counterfeit, smuggling and tax evasion with specific areas of the supply chain left vulnerable to falling victim to these problems. Supply-chain disruptions cost the average organisation 45% of one year’s profits over the course of a decade (McKinsey) with 87% of CSCOs viewing risk mitigation as critical, but only 36% say they are adequately equipped to manage it (IBM). This in turn, puts the integrity and quality of your brand at risk. Capabilities of track and trace technology help you to enforce brand protection with evidencable supply chain accountability, enabling swift action to potential threats cross the chain to curate a secure and streamlined supply chain.
Evolved business functions
Large scale product movement can dilute down to confusing data sets, proving difficult for businesses to set future goals for company growth. Advanced track and trace technology enables access to beneficially insightful data to drive brand expansion on a global scale, with realistic understanding of current pitfalls and long-term trajectory. Currently, less than 10% of available data is effectively used by supply chain professionals (IBM), allowing for a wide range of errors within the process, which track and trace technology could easily amend.
Streamlined auditing
Auditing remains a paramount approach to ensuring accuracy and efficiency in business functions and offers unique insight into areas for development. With reliable track and trace technology in play, helping to provide detailed data along the supply chain, audits are not only streamlined, but also optimised to ensure consistent return on investment alongside satisfaction for all customers and future buyers.
Sustainability
Companies are also using track and trace solutions to ensure compliance with environmental regulations and sustainability goals. These solutions help in tracking the origin of materials and ensuring that they meet regulatory standards, thereby supporting corporate sustainability initiatives and helping to reduce environmental impact and carbon footprint throughout the supply chain.
What are the current capabilities of track and trace technology?
It's clear that a thriving supply chain will rest upon a foundation of intricate track and trace technology, bolstering productivity and results. The technology currently offered maximises a range of exciting features, with the capabilities of track and trace continuing to revolutionise supply chain functionality.
Randomised serialisation
Each product will have a unique journey across the supply chain to its final destination. Random serialisation ensures each product contains a unique custom labelling system, such as a label, marker or inlay branded with a unique number which tracks back to a central database. This ensures that every detail of the products manufacture, alongside its journey across the chain is instantly identifiable, offering complete visibility and product control for the entirety of the supply chain, right up to the consumer. These serial numbers can also be utilised to track any losses, illegal resales, or product recall requirements.
Complex, secure labelling
Counterfeit goods are estimated to cost the UK economy £11 billion annually (De La Rue) .With the threat of smuggling and counterfeiting, these serial number label’s are purposefully curated to ensure they are increasingly difficult to tamper with or replicate. Methods such as the use of holographic technologies, security thread with overt and covert features all contribute towards a label system which is complex in its design and offers irreplaceable security. Furthermore, with products changing hands several times along a supply chain, these labels remain intricately durable to ensure a tamper-proof design. Secure labels provide tangible benefits to business in providing the mechanism to protect brand reputation, IP and revenue.
Digital traceology
Current capabilities of track and trace include digital solutions such as tracking applications for mobile phones, beneficial for supply chains where products change hands between several sites, whereby couriers may only have access to their mobile phone. This mainly links physical products with QR codes as a secondary line of product authenticity, alongside clear transparency. This makes it possible for all products within the supply chain, irrelevant of location, to be linked back into a central database that can be accessed by all along the chain, from manufacturers to logistic suppliers and distributors.
What is the future of track and trace technologies?
Unsurprisingly, capabilities of track and trace technology have started looking to Artificial Intelligence to evolve and streamline the use of data generated by track and trace systems. As AI develops, it continues to offer a wide range of benefits and has the potential to most effective in the realms of predictive analytics and insights.
Optimised data analysis
Current track and trace technologies offer detailed data surrounding your supply chain, but AI is finding new pathways in combining that data for easily digestible insights and analysis which helps guide future decision making for a more streamlined and optimised process. This can further automate processes, removing unnecessary or time-consuming steps without compromising on accuracy. AI data analysis has been found to lower cost-per-package by up to 5.4% and reduce shipping costs by up to 7.1%. (IBM)
Capabilities of track and trace can then continue to evolve and optimise, always learning from previous encounters to provide businesses with an infallible process, securing return on investment and maximising profitability.
Overall, the track and trace solutions market is poised for significant growth and innovation in 2024, driven by technological advancements, regulatory requirements, and the need for greater supply chain transparency.
Embrace world leading track and trace technology in your supply chain
Revolutionise your supply chain with unrivaled track and trace solutions from De La Rue. With decades of experience in state of the art track and trace systems with ever-evolving capabilities, we are here to help your supply chain flourish.
Explore our world-leading traceology solutions today. Brand Protection (delarue.com)
