5 Ways Hyperautomation Improves Supply Chains in 2024

According to Gartner, over 70% of commercial enterprises have plenty of automation initiatives, but these initiatives are often siloed and not coordinated with business objectives. Moving towards supply chain autonomy requires a coordinated hyperautomation effort that leverages intelligent technologies to automate as many processes as possible.

In this article, we’ll explore 5 ways hyperautomation can add value to different aspects of supply chains.

1. Increased productivity with back-office automation

Back-office tasks such as processing documents, including invoices, delivery orders, and bills of lading, constitute a significant part of supply chain management. Manually processing these documents is time-consuming and prone to errors. For instance, processing an invoice manually costs $15-40 and takes 25 days. On the other hand, the data in documents is unstructured. Therefore, automating document processing efficiently requires more than simple, rule-based automation methods.

By combining technologies such as RPA, AI, process mining, and OCR, supply chain managers can automate complex back-office tasks, including:

• Document processing: By leveraging AI methods, intelligent document processing (IDP) can understand the context of documents, extract relevant information, and enter extracted data into company systems.
• Inventory management: Intelligent bots can alert staff about inventory levels, predict optimum inventory levels for different locations, and reorder items automatically.
• Customer service: Intelligent bots can monitor shipping schedules, send shipment status updates, and answer FAQs.

Feel free to check our article on back-office automation and how it can improve productivity in your organization.

2. Increased supply chain visibility

A visible supply chain is transparent about tracking products throughout the entire delivery process to all involved parties. Visibility enables supply chain managers to:

• Have better control over the inventory,
• Mitigate risks due to uncertainty,
• Ensure customer satisfaction.

However, only 21% of industry professionals say they have good visibility into their supply chains. Hyperautomation efforts can significantly improve the visibility of the supply chain with:

• IoT devices that provide real-time data about movements of products, storage conditions, etc.,
• A digital twin of a supply chain that collects real-time data from IoT devices, databases, and vendors, which enables supply chain leaders to identify bottlenecks, optimize inventories, and manage risk,
• Integrated supply chain systems that enable different suppliers and partners to share real-time information and take automated actions.

For more, you can check our article on how to improve the visibility of your supply chain.

3. Accurate forecasting

Making accurate predictions is crucial in making better decisions about the supply chains. This is why 50% of supply chain organizations will invest in applications that support advanced analytical capabilities through 2024.

Supply chain managers can leverage real-time data from IoT devices and digital twins and feed them into AI & machine learning algorithms. This can help them make better predictions about supply and demand changes, product prices, or machine failures. Intelligent bots can monitor AI models and alert staff if an action is needed based on their predictions.

This can help supply chain managers to make better decisions about:

• Inventory levels for specific locations and times,
• Budget planning,
• Machinery maintenance,
• Market expansion.

You can also check our articles on demand forecasting and predictive maintenance.

4. Increased supply chain sustainability

A sustainable supply chain transfers goods as quickly and cheaply as possible while minimizing the negative environmental and social impacts. Sustainability is not just an environmental goal for businesses: around 35% of consumers have stopped purchasing from certain brands over sustainability or ethical concerns over the last year.

With improved visibility and more accurate forecasting offered by hyperautomation technologies, supply chain leaders can improve the sustainability of their supply chain. For instance:

• Optimum inventory levels will result in reduced waste,
• Optimized logistic routes will reduce gas consumption and carbon emissions,
• Smart sensors can be used to track machine and human behavior in warehouses, trucks, etc.

Feel free to check our article on supply chain sustainability for a more comprehensive account.

5. Improved customer experience

All the four benefits listed above will translate into happier customers. For instance, accurate forecasting enables supply chain businesses to keep optimum inventory levels, shortening the supply chain cycles and delivery time. Or improved visibility enables real-time information for customers.

Besides, an hyperautomated supply chain also involves intelligent chatbots that can handle customer service tasks. Bots can interact with customers, provide self-service capabilities, offer post-sale assistance, and assist human customer service reps during their customer conversations.

Check our article on customer service chatbots for more.

For more on supply chain automation

• 3 Ways to Improve Supply Chain with Automation 
• Top 5 AI Use Cases for Supply Chain Optimization

If you want to get started with hyperautomation in your supply chain, feel free to check our data-driven lists of intelligent automation software. You can also check our supply chain software list. If you have other questions, we can help: