Businesses need to better prepare their operations for sales in an increasingly borderless digital economy and instill greater resilience and stability into their supply chain and logistics framework to future-proof their businesses. 

Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao will be hosting its annual Global Smart Logistics Summit from 9 - 10 June 2021 to conduct a 360 deep-dive into the logistics sector, from global and regional trends, to talent development and technology innovations that drive an industry-wide transformation. 

Attendees will be hearing first-hand from Alibaba’s senior executives - chairman and group chief executive officer Daniel Zhang, chief technology officer Cheng Li, and Cainiao’s chief executive officer Wan Lin.

Rise of Innovative Supply Chain Model 

With the advancement of logistic technologies in the past few years, the logistics industry has seen a wide-scale implementation of big data, cloud computing, unmanned vehicles and the Internet of Things (IoT). 

In 2019, Cainiao announced that it would be working with other industry partners to create 50 billion yuan (US$7.25 billion) in value for the industry over the next three years, with plans to roll out advanced technologies and services, like the newly developed IoT platform across China. 

Today, over 3,000 partners and 3 million couriers on Cainiao’s open and digitised global platform to share information in real-time, standardise industry protocols, and identify anomalies and inefficiencies along the value chain to help partners improve their operations. 

The use of IoT and data analytics further empowers logistics firms and businesses with insights that can predict consumer demand ahead of major sale events to improve customer experience while leveraging smart warehouses that rely on automation and cutting-edge technologies to increase productivity and accuracy.  

Sustainability and Green Logistics

As e-commerce continues to grow and fuel consumption, businesses have become increasingly concerned with environmental issues, which has paved the way for green logistics. Businesses have found ways to leverage technology to develop more environmentally-friendly, sustainable practices that also create more resilient and effective business strategies. 

Through the use of a smart packaging algorithm, Cainiao can assess items based on their category, volume, weight and surface area before matching them to the most space-efficient means of packaging. This improves packaging efficiency for about 290 million packages each year and reduces the amount of waste produced by over-packing by 15 per cent in 2018. 

In introducing the use of electronic shipping labels to replace larger sheets of traditional labels, Cainiao helped to save 2.2 billion pieces of paper during last year’s 11.11 global shopping festival, and also reduced total carbon dioxide emissions by 500,000 tons in the entire year 2020.  

Logistics as Your Ace Card

In today’s highly competitive and uncertain economy, it has become critical for businesses to create a more seamless and resilient logistics and supply chain infrastructure that can cater to customers in the digital economy. Here, the digitisation of logistics and supply chain holds the opportunity for businesses to streamline operations, improve efficiency and cut costs, and ultimately reinforce their business resilience. 

As such, logistics is no longer an afterthought. It has become a game changer and a strategic business advantage for those that successfully establish a stable and extensive cross-border network.