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Logistics
■ Extensive compliance and regulatory mandates require deeper due diligence from supply chain partners when trading across borders. Depending on the number of parties involved and details required, this can extend and potentially complicate supply movements.
■ Manual re-entry of data into documents between separate systems can, again, cause confusion, and potentially lead to investigation into the veracity of data captured and signed off on.
Crucially, legacy document checking and signoff processes exist for both cross-border legal and food safety reasons. There are many corners that simply cannot be cut, while at the same time, food and drink perishability is at stake.
The FAO, referring to UNEP statistics, states that around 13.2 percent of food, globally, is lost in supply chains before it even reaches retail. It’ s a figure that paperwork delays are contributing to.
Some of this is fixable now rather than after a full rollout. Teams can cut a whole layer of re-keying by making shared documents fillable PDFs rather than scans or printouts, so partners complete fields directly and the data arrives structured. It works best as one component of a wider plan, which is easier to build once you know where the slowdowns actually sit.
Where teams usually get slowed down
The potential slowdown issues raised above can occur at various points on a food supply chain. Teams may get slowed down with:
■ Customs and cross-border clearances, where manual data entry is required, and where delays may occur in securing certificates to assure food safety
■ Supplier onboarding checks, where new partners are manually checked for tax and safety compliance
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