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Mobility – a driver of development in logistics and trade

August 5, 2010 | kora
Mobile phones and mobile technologies, not only due to their capabilities but also their ubiquity and accessibility, are becoming an icon of contemporary culture. The number of portable devices—which include not only phones but also all mobile equipment (such as code reading terminals, netbooks, and GPS)—is constantly growing. According to data from the International Telecommunication Union, in 2010, as much as 74% of the world’s population (nearly 5 billion people) will be equipped with a “mobile phone”.

The number of diverse applications for mobile devices is also growing:
– an increasing average duration of calls (in Poland, it is 26 minutes per day),
– thousands of sent and received SMS messages (approximately 2,500 per year per Polish GSM user),
– huge amounts of data transmitted thanks to the development of the mobile Internet.
Data indicating the dynamic development of this market and technology has not escaped the notice of the organizers of this year’s “Logistics 2010” Congress. One of the congress’s thematic sessions will be devoted to professional applications of mobile technologies in logistics and trade—technologies that not only support warehouse processes, serve to monitor vehicle traffic, and appear in electronic data interchange, but also increasingly act as an interactive communication tool between the brand owner (manufacturer or distributor) and the consumer interested in accessing information and services related to a specific product or commodity. The discussion on the issue of “mobility” in supply chains must begin with a general identification of the most important benefits and advantages of mobile technologies.

The most important of these include:
– speed: access to information independent of place and time, enabling efficient order fulfillment and customer service, as well as real-time data exchange supported by wireless communication,
– mass appeal: mobile technologies are used not only in companies but also by consumers. They thus enable the establishment of not only B2B relationships but also unique relationships between companies and customers,
– relatively low cost: the concentration of many technologies and functionalities (communication, Internet access, location and navigation, reading and writing information) in a single device, along with the continuous development of hardware and software, makes access to advanced technologies increasingly affordable.

However, mobility also presents certain barriers:
– technical: caused primarily by the size of mobile device screens and the capacity of memory for reading and writing data,
– limited security: meaning a higher risk of losing the device compared to devices such as desktop computers or notebooks,
– informational: important especially in the context of applications in trade where, considering the huge amount of content provided and data processed, the very important issue of the quality of provided information cannot be overlooked.

The continuous elimination of these limitations, while simultaneously developing new solutions that expand the benefits of using mobile technologies, makes products and services based on these technologies increasingly mature and well-thought-out. Therefore, every company focusing on innovation and new technologies should consider using mobile tools in its operations. The following part of the article will present the most important areas for the potential application of these technologies.

The article comes from the magazine “Logistyka” No. 2/2010.

L2010-2s45.pdf