A lack of up-to-date IT infrastructure is holding back the 3PL (third party logistics) industry in the region, according to Pharma World Holdings (PWH).

Maher Kheder, business development group director, PWH, said surveys show that 35 per cent of users, or more than one in three, are dissatisfied with their 3PL provider’s IT skills.

Many older 3PL providers use outdated legacy IT systems, which leads to compatibility problems when they try to share information with their clients, he said.

“Incompatibility means there often can be information sharing but it is seldom in sync, making processes time consuming and costly,” said Kheder.

While newer equipment is available, many 3PL providers are reluctant to upgrade due to the impact it may have on their operations, he said.

“Although the pricing of new IT infrastructure has significantly decreased over the last three-five years, the migration process is a time consuming task that can mean putting a temporary stop to operations. For this reason many 3PLs are reluctant to tackle this.”

As a relatively new provider, Kheder says that PWH have had the benefit of being able to learn from others, research and analyse the current 3PL environment, and draw on the long experience of PWH’s shareholders in order to incorporate best practice throughout their offerings.

Through PWH’s unique, one-stop offering, they centralise logistics providing storage, inventory management as well as purchasing and re-invoicing to the distributor.
Seamless integration between providers and customers is essential due to the vendor managed inventories employed by PWH.

“A vendor managed inventory is all important to a 3PL in their ‘middle man’ capacity. These ensure supply is in sync with demand, and allow services such as automatic billing for storage and tasks per customer, management reporting, flexible per customer configurations, per customer cost, and profit and loss functions for competitive pricing.

“Our WMS also supports inventory planning and supply chain management (SCM), order fulfilment, shipment tracking, transportation with load and route optimisation, distribution, customer relation management (CRM), and supplier relation management (SRM).”

The sharing of so much information inevitably leads to security concerns, so the system requires constant monitoring.

“Hacking aside, backup in case of failure of hardware, or inter process communication is a large consideration. You need to bear in mind that this is a mission critical system which can’t afford down time - we understand the impact that would have on the business supply chain,” said Kheder.

With that in mind, PWH has invested heavily to ensure its system is as reliable as possible.

“We have applied standard information technology procedures including backup and disaster recovery planning.  We also conducted external threat-risk assessments through system penetration consultancies in order to seek international certification,” he said.

Such an advanced system enables automatic alerts to be sent through the internet, email or SMS throughout the entire workflow. 3PL is designed to save customers time and money, and regular updates further enhance this benefit.

“With a state-of-the-art server and network setup, warehouse operation processes are transparent to process supervisors via wireless network and RF units, and clients and customers can check the status of their work orders online over the internet via a secure link,” said Kheder.

“Customers can even check the temperature in our warehouse from anywhere in the world,” he said. –TradeArabia News Service