We at Holisol are focussed on 'Customized Last-Mile Delivery.

We are seeing a huge trend towards measuring fulfilment as a key metric.

- Naveen Rawat, Director & Co-Founder, Holisol Logistics

A leading supply chain organization providing tech enabled end-to-end supply chain solutions, Holisol works on the value proposition of Design-Implement-Manage E2E logistics to offer customers an experience of working like their own extended team, with affordable strategic and operational expertise. Headquartered in Delhi, Holisol has a workforce of +250 supply chain enthusiasts who are continuously building value through leadership, innovation, and relationships. Naveen Rawat, Director & Co-Founder, Holisol Logistics shares his views on the changing trends in the supply chain eco system. Excerpts from the interview…

How do you assess the transformation of the Indian logistics ecosystem with the emergence of Logistics 4.0 and what are the factors driving this transformation? 

Logistics 4.0 has succeeded in putting 'digitalisation' at the centre of the industrial agenda for transformation. Consequentially, we have seen a sure trend towards digitalization in supply chain logistics, more and more customers are digitalising their supply chains and opting to work with digitally enabled logistics service providers; Covid19 has accelerated it many folds.

The whole logistics ecosystem has clearly understood the imminence of going digital. Digital transformation provides more transparency in the supply chains and thus improves overall supply chain management. Digitalisation and automation can increase productivity by around 30 %.

Companies that rely on digitization and automation can create significant competitive advantages by reducing their costs and at the same time increase customer satisfaction by delivering better in terms of 'Speed, Accuracy and Reliability'. Due to the growing importance of D2C and e-commerce channels the supply chain requirements are becoming more agile, complex and demanding, the only way to manage is to combine technologies, networks and knowledge digitally.

How do you assess the emergence of the supply chain as an epicentre of digital enterprise and what are the key technology requirements?

The companies have been investing in front-end digitalisation for a while, especially driven by the e-commerce wave in India. The service supply chains have been digitalised for quite some time. However, the need for a bigger focus on product supply chain digitalisation emerged when companies saw that 'early adopters' are ahead of the curve and are winning the race in the marketplace. The recent disruptions in supply chains across the world demonstrated enough that the companies who have adopted digitalisation have better resilience and are quick to recover, the phenomenon greatly proven by Covid19.

Holisol as a leading service provider, how have you leveraged the advantages of such disruptive technologies in your entire ecosystem? 

Holisol's vision is to create an end-to-end digital supply chain platform to drive growth by improving forecasting and product availability through augmented analytics and seamless fulfilment at the lowest possible cost.

For the same, we are constantly deploying in-house developed logistics tools to orchestrate and control our core operations including warehousing, transportation and last mile deliveries and customized tools for value-added activities like packaging, refurbishing, asset tracking etc.

On top of all these operational systems, we have deployed a customer focussed AI/ML analytics tool to constantly monitor and analyse the huge data being generated and come up with predictive and prescriptive actionable insights to accurately forecast sales and supply chain events benefitting customers in taking decisions about their supply chains. The focus at Holisol is to profitably combine technologies, networks and existing knowledge in the company to make logistics 4.0 a success for the customers.

What are the major bottlenecks in moving towards digitalized supply chain? 

The real value of the digitalization will accrue if all partners in the supply chain ecosystem are digitally enabled. Hence the digitalization focus has to be both on internal and external processes in order to coordinate material and information flows from raw material suppliers to the end customers more efficiently. We will need to create a digital supply chain not only for individual companies but also to make various values and supply chains networked compatibly. The major bottlenecks remain the dis-integrated view of supply chain digitalisation, availability of talent to drive these initiatives, digital inequality among supply chain participants, budgetary allocations to name a few. 

We at Holisol, are trying to address these challenges by creating end-to-end logistics tech-stack created for all participants in the supply chain, with the focus on digitalising the customer's supply chain. And we do not mind customising it to capture the uniqueness of any supply chain. The idea is to 'enable' the digitalisation of customers' supply chain.

What do you think the strategic imperatives for the healthy growth of the Indian logistics ecosystem, including policy and reforms?

Industry status to logistics, having one body to comprehensively plan, implement and manage various logistics sub-segments, creating logistics education policy and introduce professional courses at all levels, incentivise logistics players to digitalise and share information, making land acquisition / change land use easier, introducing labour reforms, pacing-up the development of freight corridors etc are some of the national initiatives along with the already introduced ones like E-way bill, GST implementation etc which can help India get to its goal of reducing logistics costs and bottlenecks to add competitiveness to the rest of the industries.

An integrated logistics policy has recently been announced, with a focus mainly on the development of integrated transport infrastructure. A national logistics policy must go well beyond incorporating other key drivers like integrated multi-modal logistics, labour regulation, city logistics and traffic management planning, and skill development.

What is the bearing of emerging trends like omnichannel logistics platforms, mobile apps, the rise of subscription services, and increased automation for constant communication with the customer on a service provider like Holisol? 

The writing is clear on the wall - 'adopt' or 'perish'. These trends have pushed the service providers like us to put the technology at the centre of our thinking about our future. It is no more a choice that we have, we must do it to remain relevant and survive in long-term.

We at Holisol ensure that the information exchange is real-time and transparent throughout the value chain with having real-time data exchange through EDI / API with our customers. We also ensure that our customer's customer also has access to all the relevant information to have enhanced customer experience and satisfaction.

How do you tackle the 'last mile connectivity' issues? 

We at Holisol are focussed on 'Customized Last-Mile Delivery' as an integral part of our end to end logistics solution proposition to our customers. The key features of our last mile solution are Speed, Reliability, Predictability and Communication. Technology plays an important part in achieving the same. All our delivery operations are controlled using an android-based in house Delivery Management System (DMS), allowing real-time visibility of the shipments in the network at all times and the ability to transparently share that information with our customers and also with our customer's customer. We have also integrated with major payment gateways to offer electronic payments on delivery as an alternative to Cash on Delivery (COD).

What do you think some of the top trends in warehousing? What is the transformative impact of automation and digitalization on the warehousing segment?

With the growing focus on D2C, warehousing requirements are becoming more agile and complex. There is a need to handle and ship out an increasingly large number of orders in less and less time. This will require warehouses to be as close as possible to the end customers. This will result in more and more warehouses. Also, as the real estate cost close to the city is going to be much higher as compared to the outskirts of cities where the traditional warehousing clusters are operating. These in-city warehouses will require new structural design and significant automation to ensure optimal utilization and throughput.

Few key trends in our opinion which will define warehousing in the future are:

-  Interconnected logistics requiring connection in real-time between all the stakeholders in the supply chain.

-  Transformation of work from hard manual work to a tech-enabled environment

-  Machines working alongside humans to bring in more flexibility and reliability

-  Warehouse building, infrastructure and processes becoming more and more environment friendly

-  Use of Big data & AI to improve warehouse planning and performance.

Brief us on the measures taken to support your customers during this crisis? 

We are proud of the fact that we were resilient enough to support our customers during the crisis. For a few of our customers in the essential sector, we managed to ensure 'Zero Disruption' and continued to keep their supply chain running even under a challenging and constantly changing environment. Also, with the gradual opening of the lockdown, there has been a major shift towards D2C as the physical retail continues to be impacted. We have worked along with our customers to operationalise and expand the D2C capacities, across multiple locations, by augmenting teams & infrastructure as required.

How do you foresee the future trends in the logistics space?

We are seeing a huge trend towards measuring fulfilment as a key metric along the supply chain. It is just not the fulfilment to the end consumer but ever along every leg of supply chain right from raw material to the line to the logistics intermediaries, everyone is being pushed to 'deliver on time & in full'. Demand-side complexities have shifted and made supply sides equally complex. Consumers are being spoilt for choices and in-turn the sellers want logistics service providers to adapt and solve problems of complexity in logistics. 

D2C will continue to grow, this will require faster access and reach to the customers and hence businesses will have to think in terms of spreading their inventories, as far as feasible, to multiple locations/facilities.

We have a network of fulfilment centres across multiple locations in India offering our customers ready access, and flexibility to expand their fulfilment footprint in the country. In addition to a faster and cost-effective access to their customers, this also allows the customer to mitigate the business risk of disruption in one facility / geography.

What are the core strengths and competencies of Holisol, and what differentiates Holisol?

Our core strength is our ability to understand our customer's business and accordingly come up with a supply chain solution best suiting their needs. We are proud of our 'thought leadership' which has allowed us to come up with innovative solutions. Our value proposition of design-implement-manage makes us operate as an extended arm of our customers, thinking like them, solving problems as their extended team, and taking ownership of their deliverables / KPI. And our customer-centric approach towards using technology further reinforces our commitment towards making our customers successful.

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