Organizations are starting to rethink their approaches to supply chain disruptions due to the ongoing global supply chain crisis. Building a supply chain risk management plan based on data analytics is the best solution to navigate future disruptions. Here are three ways that insights from location data can help businesses overcome supply chain disruptions.

Location analytics provides organizations with the insights they need to create an effective supply chain risk management plan. One way to reduce risk within a supply chain is to keep suppliers informed of changes within the market.

In the past, the ebb and flow of the market could either be cause for celebration or could shut down an entire operation. Understanding consumer behavior trends is key in a fast-paced world where market trends are always shifting. With enterprise location intelligence, leadership can understand consumer interests and preferences in the real world. This means that the market’s flow will never come as a surprise, and organizations can better prepare for bottlenecks due to consumer demand and reduce the risks associated with too much inventory.

While it’s important to understand overall consumer market trends, businesses also need to consider how their customers are impacted by supply chain disruptions. If a particular product is in low supply, then loyal customers might look elsewhere. To prevent this from happening, businesses should take into account what customers are interested in and keep those products in stock.

A risk management plan should always include preparation for natural disasters that can disrupt supply chains. By analyzing location intelligence, industry leaders can determine how people react before and after natural disasters.

These insights from consumer movement patterns could be utilized in a couple of different ways. For example, hurricane season is coming much earlier than before. Things like water bottles, batteries, flashlights, and candles are in demand during this time. When it’s announced that a storm is going to hit the Florida coast, organizations can prepare to manufacture and distribute highly sought-after items to their business partners. By analyzing human mobility data, the organization can avoid supply chain disruptions as much as possible and can get supplies to people in need.

A large piece of the risk management puzzle is monitoring the relationships within an organization’s supply chain. Understanding the end-to-end network of manufacturers and suppliers can help better prepare organizations for disruptions so that changes in inventory or any other unprecedented events do not impact distribution and logistics.

With supply chain data analytics driven by location intelligence, organizations can predict upcoming changes to increase traceability and reduce risk. These insights can also provide organizations with the ability to understand anomalies with their supply chains and have visibility into the business activity of competitors. In this way, companies can create the ideal risk management plan to reduce risk and catch anomalies with their supply chains before disruptions occur. 

For more information on using location intelligence to predict and prevent future supply chain disruptions to business operations, contact us to speak with an expert.