One of the key characteristics of business in the modern world is the rising transition towards new types of software. Supply chain managers are often at the forefront of this wave because they have to deal with logistics tasks that require a significant expenditure of the human workforce. For this reason, it’s unsurprising that more and more companies in the sector are turning towards supply chain software to optimize the relevant processes and make them as simple as possible.
What’s the primary goal of this article? We want to list the key features that every modern supply chain software should have. As you’ll see from this analysis, our list strongly favors custom development services. Why should one invest in a supply chain software development service? The reason is quite simple: it allows one to focus on the maximal number of genuinely relevant features for their business.
So, what features are relevant in your app, and what should you inform your custom development partner about when developing an app for supply chain management? Let’s find out!
Feature 1. Inventory management capabilities
The first feature we recommend paying attention to is inventory management. In this case, inventory management’s primary goal is to help you track as many instruments in your business as possible. Supply chain businesses typically have to work with many diverging instruments and other vital tools. In this light, it’s easy to lose those instruments due to the expansive nature of the facilities, for example.
Inventory management apps solve this problem once and for all for the relevant decision-makers. Using an inventory management app, you can track almost every object in your business with a clear set of designations. In this regard, connecting an inventory management app to various sensors and all types of RFID systems is possible. In this way, you can get information about the location of almost every asset in your company.
More importantly, inventory management is usable for instruments in your business and great for tracking wares in general. You can assign every product with a clear designation within an inventory management system. This way, you’ll know all the core locations for your objects. More importantly, they allow one to understand the inventory levels to prevent situations where you don’t have enough resources, for example.
Feature 2. Order management system
One more framework vital for supply chain businesses is undoubtedly order management. What is order management software? As its name suggests, it’s a framework that allows you to track orders in a company. Supply chains are usually order-based in two contexts.
On the one hand, they’re centered around orders because every request in the system can be seen as an order. For example, the requirement to bring some instruments is a type of order in this case. On the other hand, one should note that orders also mean the requests of different kinds of customers.
Typically, all these requests represent a tremendous amount of information within a business. Consequently, it’s essential to have a tool that can help you comfortably deal with the orders. For example, there should be filtering options and even user profiles to separate your business’s different lines of work. In short, the idea is to offer as many capabilities as possible for analyzing information and optimizing the data transmission routes. The faster and more manageable one can analyze information, the higher the quality of the customer experience in the presented case.
Feature 3. Supplier and vendor management
Most companies in the supply chain market have to work with a tremendous number of potential customers. In this regard, tracking all those customers is a complex task that takes time. More importantly, not tracking isn’t an option in most cases. Why? The reason is simple: vendors and suppliers often play a significant part in deciding whether your business will succeed. Modern supply chain management tools allow tracking every vendor and supplier within your internal systems. In this way, you minimize the potential of losing particular vendors and, consequently, encountering long-term negative impacts from this loss.
How do these systems work? They can track vendors manually and automatically in the majority of cases. Firstly, monitoring vendors manually by putting them into the electronic systems is possible. Secondly, however, you can also focus on automatically inserting the vendors into the systems. Modern AI can track your transactions and later turn those transactions into full-scale records within your tracking systems. In this way, minimizing the labor you spend to track potential customers is possible.
Feature 4. Analytics and Reporting
One more feature you should pay attention to is analytics and reporting. A good supply chain management tool must quickly analyze information and turn it into high-quality insights. In this respect, the most promising technology today involves artificial intelligence reporting. It’s possible to use AI to, for instance, analyze the scope of your transactions and turn them into full-scale insights for analytics. Using them, one can later optimize their business towards higher-quality processes, for example.
Conclusion
The list of features we’ve outlined in this case isn’t exhaustive. There are many more frameworks that you can add to the presented case. Nonetheless, the elements here are essential to create a full-scale inventory management system.
We’ve also mentioned that the best way to develop those systems is to address companies that target custom development of all kinds. In this case, our recommendation is to look for companies like Keenethics. Your goal is to find a company with more than five years of experience and relevant agricultural projects within the portfolio.
