Public Web Data as a Tool for Tracking Global Supply Chain Disruptions
The world is increasingly becoming interconnected, and today, global supply chains are of more importance to business. They make it relatively easy to flow goods from producers to customers in any place in the world.
The systems are complex and even more so prone to being disrupted by geopolitical tensions, natural disasters, pandemics, or other forms of sudden changes in the global environment. Structured public web datasets offered by data providers like Coresignal have strongly set a foundation for observation and reduction of supply chain disruptions.
What is public web data and how to use it in the supply chain
Public web data is any information available to everyone on the internet. It consists of different things, such as news articles, social media posts, government reports, financial filings, or even shipping data from e-commerce platforms. Most would be said to be unstructured, lying across a million sources, but all of this could be brought together with the modern tools here of big data analytics and machine learning.
The need for supply chain visibility currently is the largest priority that businesses are putting in place to help mitigate risks to their business continuity. Improving the visibility of the supply chain should certainly be the number one priority for 55% of businesses within manufacturing. Historically, supply chains have been monitored through a range of internal sources—supplier-provided reports and logistics tracking systems.
The benefits of public web data to stay informed on supply chain
According to Statista, the global supply chain management market was forecasted at 15.85 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 and is expected to reach almost 31 billion U.S. dollars by 2026. Supply chain disruptions have huge ripple effects across industries and markets. These include delayed production, higher costs, and lost revenue from geopolitical events, natural disasters, and unexpected shifts in markets. More and more, companies are monitoring supply chain disruptions—mitigating these risks by turning with increasing regularity to public Web data.
Real-time insights and early warnings
The top drivers of supply chain disruption in 2022 are loss of talent/skills, human illness, and transport network problems. More often than not, traditional supply chain monitoring ways—a duty normally assigned to traditional ways of monitoring supply chains—track lagging indicators such as quarterly reports or internal communications that may not give warnings of a disruption. Public web data enables real-time tracking of events that may impact the supply chain.
News articles on political upheaval in a manufacturing country or social media posts about labor strikes can give signals of an imminent disruption. Companies can use web scraping tools in combination with natural language processing algorithms for collecting the data, analyzing it, and identifying trends and anomalies that could potentially signal an impending disruption.
Predictive analytics and assessing risks
Predictive analytics not only provide real-time insights but also can help direct unforeseen disruptions. This predictive capability is particularly valuable in industries with complex supply chains, where even small delays can have significant downstream effects.
Examples include leveraging tool integrations that have been completed to connect public web data to advanced analytics and machine learning models in order to support predictive tools for forecasting potential disruptions. For example, online search spikes for a "chip shortage" could be used as a predictor for impending electronics supply chain disruption. Proactive measures through these prediction tools may also allow businesses to source alternative suppliers or reschedule production to secure their continued operations.
Comprehensive and diverse data sources
Public web data contains all information from an incredibly huge number of sources and, hence, is able to provide a more holistic view of the potential supply chain risk factors: globally sourced news, government reports, shipping schedules, weather forecasts, and even satellite images.
Through this pool of information, businesses can know the holistic factors that might affect their supply chains. To be specific, the pandemic COVID-19 is being tracked through web data in public domains that details virus spread, government lockdowns, and shifts in consumer behavior.
Conclusion
As global supply chains grow more complex, so will the demand for real-time, end-to-end monitoring tools. Public web data is already central to this evolution and will be even more so because of its extent and availability. Using this data will enable businesses to get a competitive edge, be more resilient, and ensure that their supply chains keep running in times of disruption.
