CartonCloud's inaugural Logistics Index report sees optimism and growth

Friday, 27 August 2021 21:21

CartonCloud's inaugural Logistics Index report sees optimism and growth

GUEST RESEARCH: The first edition of the CartonCloud Logistics Index Quarterly Report has been released, and while the Delta variant of COVID has locked down NSW, VIC and the ACT in the third quarter of 2021, logistics keeps Australia stocked and running - so what does the industry think - and how can you get a copy of the report?

The CartonCloud Logistics Index (CCLI) report was launched in early 2021 to measure and track sentiment within the logistics industry.

The goal was to provide CartonCloud users, and the broader industry, with actionable data and insights to help them better understand the external environment, market confidence and growth expectations — and benchmark this against their own position and progress.

The CCLI quarterly index reports allows the industry to identify changes and track industry trends over time, empowering members of the logistics industry by providing a snapshot of industry information and expectations, with anyone in the industry welcome to participate in future reports, which are scheduled to arrive every quarter.

Vincent Fletcher, the Founder of CartonCloud said: "On behalf of the CartonCloud team, I would like to extend my appreciation to all who participated in the inaugural Index. The Index has been designed to delve into crucial issues facing our industry, including how businesses view the current economic climate, how they expect to perform over the next six months and what opportunities and challenges we face.

"Tracking sentiment in the logistics industry each quarter will help us understand where we are, where we have come from, and what the road ahead might look like. There are many forces at play in our industry and the Index will empower us to collectively analyse their impact over months, years and even decades."

The survey was compiled from 50 members of the logistics industry during the first quarter (January to March) of 2021 to find out their thoughts on the current industry climate, their business prospects and expectations for the coming six months, and asked participants to respond to eight questions on a 1-5 scale, from poor to very good, aiming to explore participant insights and responses in order to highlight industry opinion and forecasts across the following topics:

• Current economic climate
• Workforce and hiring
• Industry activity & business opportunities
• Technology advancements & adoption

The detailed, 36-page report, details of how to download are listed at the end of this article, has all of the results in full, but to summarise, the inaugural report shows a high level of optimism for the current economic climate, and strong views of industry success and potential growth in coming months. This optimism and perceived growth opportunities are further reflected in an overall high likelihood to hire new staff.

With an optimistic view on the current climate and increased workforce on the horizon, plans to grow and expand are high. The highest value activities for achieving growth in the coming 12 month were seen to be general increases in demand for logistics services, expanding the range of services offered and additional investment in B2C or e-commerce capabilities.

This growth was not without concerns for meeting increasing demand and expectations. Hiring and upskilling the workforce to meet the requirements of increased demand was seen as a key challenge for both warehouse and transport industries.

Operational staff especially saw workforce capacity as a concern in coming months.

Participants saw an opportunity for growth in the adoption of technology across both warehouse and transport industries. In this snapshot, we saw a higher perception of technology adoption in the transport industry compared to the warehousing industry. While there was a general perception of an opportunity to increase and enhance technology adoption across the industry, the adoption and use of automation and robotics was not seen by participants as a high value activity over the coming months.

Interestingly, a significant number of senior management and business owner participants cited their own lack of digital vision and support as a key inhibitor in their business’s adoption of technology.

Workforce knowledge and skill was also identified as a key barrier in the use of technology, with digital training and upskilling seen as a high value opportunity for the coming months, across warehouse and transport industries, in order to boost digital operations.

Technology advancements and adoption

When it comes to technological advancements and adoption, these are a significant driver in the growth and development of the logistics industry, changing the way we work and do business. However, both warehouse and transport industry participants saw a high opportunity for technology adoption in their business, a view shared by owners and senior management, supervisors and operational staff.

Headline statistics include:

• 50% of transport respondents believe that there is a high and very high level of technology adoption in the business, whereas only 33% of warehouse respondents believe this to be true in their own businesses.
• 40% of operations participants believe that there is a very high level of technology adoption in the business compared to only 18% of senior managers and business owners.
• Only 11% of supervisors / managers believe there is a high level of technology adoption in their business.
• 60% of transport and 43% of warehouse and transport participants believe that the biggest challenge for building digital operations is insufficient knowledge and talent, whereas the highest response for warehouse participants was that financial o nvestment requirements were the biggest inhibitor.
• Both operations and senior manager and business owner respondents saw insufficient knowledge and talent as the biggest inhibitor for building digital operations. This was also reflected by a view held by most supervisor/manager participants, that a lack of digital training and culture is the biggest challenge for building digital operations.

If you are in the industry, CarltonCloud would love it if you could take 60 seconds to take part in its Q2 CartonCloud Logistics Index, which is here.

Once you complete the Q2 Survey, respondents will get the full Q1 CartonCloud Logistics Index results delivered straight to their inboxes.

CartonCloud was built to provide affordable, easy-to-use and automated software for businesses in the logistics industry. The CCLI represents a new avenue for CarltonCloud to support the industry, one where knowledge is power.

you can participate in the next quarter's CCLI, here.

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