Data Collection Solutions Are No Longer Optional

Competing in the new millennia, given the increasing challenges of a global economy, companies must improve their decision support capabilities to manage supply chains more precisely and productively in real time.

Decisions are only as good as the information that they’re based on. And, information is only as good as the data it is composed of. In the “Connected Age”1, supply chains are evolving to smart supply networks with systems and personnel that are always connected, always on, and always mobile.

The smart supply network is driven by data feeding enterprise applications and business analytics to enable synchronized decisions to support the optimal flow of goods throughout the network. Automated Data Collection technology provides for the electronic capture of data in a variety of functions and transactions eliminating nearly 100% of the errors associated with manual data capture while improving the productivity of the data collection process.

There is an old adage in information technology: “Garbage in, garbage out.” While automated data collection (ADC) solutions are not new, they are evolving with the automatic identification (AutoID) technology and enterprise technologies to provide more timely and accurate data; but, more importantly, more robust data.