Companies ought to know the market in which they operate very well. Especially when strategic decisions have to be made. Only then can they define new sales markets and target customers or take trends and future developments into account in their strategy.
The basis for these decisions is sound data. However, using valid statistical data to describe logistics is possible only to a very limited extent, as this is a cross-sectional industry. In other words, logistical processes and services are part of almost every industry, with the result that official statistics underrepresent logistics or hardly describe it at all.
Digitization is now increasing the availability of data in the logistics environment, but it does not increase transparency. For more data to actually lead to better decisions, it must be qualified in a well-founded way. This in turn requires a grasp of how to select the correct and relevant data, recourse to a cross-sector database and corresponding process and domain knowledge.
That explains our ongoing research, to extract the data that is important for the logistics market, get to know companies, build up new databases and prepare them for specific target groups. So that the logistics market gradually becomes more transparent.
Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services at Fraunhofer IIS