| | MAY 20208IMPERATIVE TO PUSH THE LOGISTICS ENGINE FORWARDBy Rupesh Kohli, Regional Director ­ North & East & Director Airfreight, Geodis India Private LimitedVANTAGE POINT What are your thoughts on the cur-rent state of logistics Industries in India that is accelerating the increas-ing digital transformation? Transparency, Speed, Interoperabili-ty, Ease of Doing Business are the fun-damental pillars of the future digital transformation of our industry. Howev-er, much is still to be fulfilled by various Private and Govt. agencies and interme-diaries. We are witnessing piecemeal and patchy digital transformation. The pace at which progress is being made to enable digital solutions leaves a lot to be desired. From authorizing AEO certifi-cation to export and import documen-tation filing; from export incentives claim, to import duties and taxes as-sessment; from transportation permits (E-waybill), to warehousing, FTWZ, SEZ etc. and from customer invoicing, to GST credit. All need to be brought under one Blockchain design. Once again Cloud technology can en-able platform solutions. It can also pro-vide flexibility and scalability, as well as standardised and harmonised process-es across a complete supply chain. All such synchronization must be backed with a strong encryption (hacker proof) system. If we want to move towards 5 trillion economy, we need to push the Logistics Engine to run seamless and ever faster to encompass hours and Not Days. There are few other industries in which so many experts ascribe a high importance to data and analytics over the next five years, than transportation and logistics ­ 90% compared to an av-erage of 83%.8, according to a recent survey. The sector has never had access to more data. There are vast opportu-nities here to improve performance and serve customers better. That's especial-ly important for those LSPs or carriers who have grown through acquisitions, and currently rely on a patchwork of legacy systems. The potential is huge, but the industry has thus far been slow to seize it.Look at it this way ­ The process of digitization can start from the first activity of production right up to the consumer. When governmental and regulatory interfaces can be integrated seamlessly under one system, we will witness a revolution in our Logistics Throughput. Where do you see growing demand for new logistics technology and the key challenges for emerging lo-gistics industry?India is still unchartered territory and technological utilization is con-centrated only in the commercial hub of the country. There is a vast rural interface still untapped. Farm to Con-sumer will set up an ideal mechanism of integrated Logistics and only tech-nology can make this happen. Also var-ious industry technologies and systems are not compatible with each other; there are breaks at multiple touch-points and governmental in-terfaces. There are dif-ferent systems and then again systems working in isola-tions. I foresee a remarkable rev-olution in the demand for Logistics Technology. Such a demand will help to build the required infrastructure to make things happen in hours than in days.The existence of challenges is gate-ways to new opportunities and prog-ress for the nation. It is good that there are challenges, as these will lead to new and smarter way to utilise the existing resources or create new resource to make life easier. With the speed of data communi-cation, there will be new avenues that can result in solutions to our existing challenges. The first is to have the "Can Do - Must Do Attitude" ­ this is biggest Rupesh Kohli
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