How can you use cloud storage to streamline supply chain management?

Modern supply chains are characterized by enormous and often conflicting data sets, which makes their management essential in the supply chain function. Cloud storage has taken its place in becoming the next big innovative solution in improving flexibility, scalability and accessibility of supply chain management at multiple levels. 

 

Advantages of Cloud Storage in Supply Chain Lifecycle 

 

Cloud storage offers a multitude of benefits for supply chain management, including:

 

• Enhanced Visibility: Essential information about the stocks, shipment tracking details and purchase orders give the complete picture of the supply chain. 
• Improved Collaboration: To quickly and securely exchange documents and information with partners and suppliers and improve the efficiency of cooperation. 
• Increased Efficiency: Automate procedures such as document handling and order elimination of manual input as well as other repetitive tasks that exist in the process. 
• Scalability and Cost Savings: Cloud storage is elastic and will suit your data storage requirements as they grow meaning that there are no physical hardware investments to make. 
• Disaster Recovery: Data backed on the cloud allows the business operation to continue even during calamities such as disasters or the crash of hardware devices. 

 

Different Types of Cloud Storage Cater to Supply Chain

 

• Object Storage: Suitable for the storage of formidable unstructured data such as photographs, videos, and data captured from IoT equipment in your supply chain network. 

 

• Block Storage: The structured data for example inventory databases and financial records are best stored and managed using this kind of database. 

 

• File Storage: Offers the well-recognized structure of the file system to store documents, contracts and other files which would be shared among the team members. 

 

Security Models for Cloud Storage of Supply Chain Data 

 

There are three main cloud storage models for supply chains:

 

• Software as a Service (SaaS): Get a dozen prebuilt applications and storage infrastructure subscriptions. 

 

• Platform as a Service (PaaS): Create applications that are tailored for supply chain data on a cloud platform for the latter’s purposes. 

 

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Get full management of storage strictly in the context of the cloud.

 

Best Practices of Cloud Storage for Supply Chain Management 

 

To optimize your cloud storage use, consider these best practices:

 

• Data Governance: It also incorporates clear policies that regulate access to data, its security and retention to guard the data from compromise. 

 

• Data Classification: The organization of data requires that data is sorted into groups depending on how sensitive it is and how it is accessed. 

 

• Integration: Synchronize your cloud storage with other supply chain management applications which are already in use. 

 

• Security: A cloud storage provider should have adequate security measures as well as encryption in addition to access controls to the information. 

 

Examples of Cloud Storage Applications 

 

Several cloud storage providers offer solutions tailored for supply chain management: 

 

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): Provides many services such as S3 or Glacier for large and inexpensive storage of data in the cloud. 
• Microsoft Azure: Offers Blob storage for object storage and Azure Files for file-based data and business-specific solutions for the supply chain. 
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP): It has known Cloud Storage specifically for object-based data storage and Cloud Filestore for file storage needs along with solutions tailored for specific industries to address supply chain challenges. 

 

When set up with cloud storage solutions, businesses will get increased operational output, more effective communication, and the much-needed analysis of their supply chain to gain competitive advantage. Thus, it is time to adopt the cloud and open up all the possibilities for your supply chain.