By Sharath Muddaiah, Head of Global Business Strategy and Customer Success for IoT Solutions at Giesecke+Devrient
The logistics industry is rapidly embracing digital transformation. Disruptions in supply chains are impacting the safe and efficient transport of goods, while businesses face growing demands to deliver products faster, more affordably, and with greater sustainability. As a result, gaining real-time insight into the location and condition of shipments during transit has become increasingly critical.
This is where smart labels come in. These innovative tools are revolutionising supply chain tracking by turning any package into a connected IoT device, and their adoption is accelerating at a remarkable pace.
However, the swift rollout of these solutions is creating an enormous volume of data that must be managed effectively to boost operational efficiency, avoid stock shortages, and support proactive decision-making. A single label can generate up to 1.5MB of data over its lifetime. For all stakeholders to fully benefit as smart labels become more widely adopted, seamless information sharing across the entire logistics ecosystem is essential.
Revolutionising real-time tracking
Ultra-thin and roughly the size of a credit card, smart labels can be attached to anything from large parcels to small envelopes. This makes them perfect for situations where a bulkier tracking device won’t work, and ideal for closely monitoring valuable or sensitive shipments.
These labels leverage low-power cellular and GPS technology to provide organisations with precise location data. They also track ambient temperature and can detect impacts, helping businesses safeguard sensitive cargo. They also feature a tamper-evident design for added security. If a package is opened, an alert is triggered so corrective action can be taken, and the label itself is fully reusable, supporting sustainability goals.
At the core of real-time visibility into the location and condition of goods in transit lies the massive volume of data being generated. Collectively, millions of labels could theoretically produce terabytes of data annually. To make sense of this data, Business Intelligence (BI) systems play a crucial role in making it accessible and actionable.
Business Intelligence and AI-powered insights
BI platforms analyse patterns, trends, and anomalies, presenting them through intuitive visualisations so users can clearly understand the location and condition of goods in transit. Armed with this information, businesses can make smarter decisions that enhance operational efficiency.
For instance, a smartphone manufacturer can attach smart labels to individual devices, enabling them to track every unit as it is distributed to stores across a country. With BI technology providing real-time inventory data sent to each retail location, potential shortages can be spotted early. This enables supply chain management that minimises unnecessary delays, prevents stockouts, and ensures a better customer experience.
In the years ahead, smart label data will increasingly be used by AI to trigger automated responses rather than depending on human decision-making. For example, AI could independently reroute trucks onto faster or more fuel-efficient routes. It could also redirect in-transit inventory to better match customer demand. As AI systems grow more accurate and proactive, they will be able to fully optimise logistics processes with minimal human involvement.
Collaborative data sharing for all stakeholders
Smart labelling delivers significant advantages to organisations that adopt it, but these solutions are often deployed in isolation for internal tracking purposes alone. Yet supply chain operations involve multiple parties — warehousing partners, logistics providers, manufacturers, and retailers — and when they don’t share access to the same data, the potential value smart labels can offer across the broader ecosystem is severely limited.
The solution is to build a shared platform where the data generated by each label is available to authorised users throughout the wider supply chain. This fosters better coordination and more informed decision-making. For example, retailers can improve their sales forecasts by leveraging real-time delivery updates from couriers.
Making data accessible across the ecosystem presents challenges that need to be addressed, including interoperability, cross-border connectivity, network compatibility, and data protection. However, these obstacles are gradually being overcome as smart label technologies continue to advance, enabling secure and reliable data sharing.
Converting shipments into actionable intelligence
Smart labels provide the opportunity to transform every shipment into a source of valuable, actionable intelligence. Combined with powerful BI platforms and emerging AI capabilities, organisations can shift from reactive problem-solving to proactive supply chain management.
However, the true value will only be unlocked when smart label data is shared effectively among all participants across the broader ecosystem. By establishing secure, interoperable frameworks for data exchange, manufacturers, logistics providers, warehouses, and retailers can all operate from a single shared view of reality — minimising disruptions, protecting sensitive goods, optimising inventory levels, and driving more sustainable operations. Smart labels may start as a simple upgrade to tracking, but they have the potential to fundamentally reshape how supply chains are coordinated, measured, and improved.
Author biography
Sharath Muddaiah is Head of Global Business Strategy and Customer Success for IoT Solutions at Giesecke+Devrient. He holds a master’s degree in Telecommunication Networks. With over 20 years of experience, his career spans from contributing to the development and deployment of GPRS in its early days — when the packet-switching protocol for wireless took over a minute to deliver an email — to today’s rapid integration of IoT technologies.
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