Inefficiencies in the supply chain are costing UK businesses more than £1.5 billion, says Zencargo

Digital freight forwarded, Zencargo, has stressed that inefficiencies in the supply chain are costing businesses in the UK £1.5 billion per year.

Based on its detailed analysis of industry data (taken from more than 100 shipments across a cross section of UK industries), Zencargo has found that UK businesses are tending to waste more than three hours on average per individual shipment.

Countrywide, this equates to more than 100 million hours of wasted time per year, which is the equivalent of 50,000 employees’ annual working hours, for procurement, managing suppliers and freight related admin.

Furthermore, the study performed by the freight forwarder has indicated that Brexit will further impact this efficiency problem as shipments with non-EU countries tended to involve 17% more wasted time that those to EU countries.

A way in which this issue could be lessened is through the use of simple technology to help automate communication throughout the supply chain. Zencargo reports that with these changes it may be possible to deliver productivity gains in the region of £1.5 billion each year, which would represent five percent of the government’s annual target for productivity gains from digitisation.

“Technology is the main building block to bridge the productivity gap in the UK,” stated Alex Hersham, CEO and co-founder of Zencargo. “Lack of communication harms productivity in any business, factor in complicated and often outdated supply chains and problems very quickly escalate. Now is the time to invest and innovative in technology so we can truly compete on the global stage and at the same time benefit on a productivity level.”