Predictive analytics in logistics

You have a warehouse, transport, orders, hundreds of suppliers and thousands of customers. It seems like you have everything under control. But then there is an unexpected surge in demand — and your warehouse is empty. Or, on the contrary, the number of orders has dropped sharply, and trucks with goods are already on the way. Do you know why this happens? Because you do not forecast.

And here predictive analytics will come to your aid. If you still do not use it, your business is built on luck.

Where and how predictive analytics works

Inventory management: predicts when and how much goods will be needed; minimizes "dead" goods in the warehouse; helps to buy exactly as much as needed - no more and no less.

Route planning: analyzes traffic jams, weather conditions, driver workload; helps to build optimal routes in advance; reduces fuel costs and speeds up delivery.

Risk assessment: finds weak links in the supply chain; predicts where failures or delays are possible; allows you to prepare a plan "B" in advance.

Demand management: detects trends and seasonal fluctuations; helps to adapt logistics to real demand; reduces the likelihood of failures during peak periods.

Transport maintenance: predicts when equipment may fail; plans maintenance before breakdowns; reduces accidents and increases the service life of vehicles.
This is when you don’t just look at past data, but analyze it to understand what will happen next. It’s like a superpower – to see tomorrow’s traffic jams, delays at the border, growth or decline in demand, failures in the supply chain. To see and make a decision even before a disaster happens. Because logistics is not just “delivering,” as Sargona Private Capital experts explain. It’s “delivering on time, in the right volume, with minimal costs.”

Errors in logistics are expensive: transport downtime – you lose resources. Product shortages – you lose customers. Excess goods – you lose money on storage. A failure in the chain – you lose your reputation. Each of these points is a real loss that can be foreseen. But this requires analytics, not intuition.

What is predictive analytics

Sargona Private Capital Greece experts offer a checklist that you can start implementing today if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

Collect data: without quality information on each of the above points, there will be no analytics - start with an Excel table.

Identify key metrics: which processes are critical for you - delivery, warehouse, service?

Implement a simple analytics system: start with cheap solutions that will help you build forecasts.
Here are some of them:
  • Microsoft Excel / Google Sheets + Power Query. Allow you to collect, clean and analyze data using built-in forecasting tools. Ideal for the start.
  • Power BI / Google Looker Studio. Helps visualize logistics processes, track trends and make simple forecasts without deep knowledge of analytics.
  • Zoho Analytics / Tableau Public. Convenient for creating dashboards and visualizing the dynamics of demand, stocks, routes.
  • Google AutoML Tables or BigQuery ML. Allows you to build forecasting models with minimal technical knowledge if you have already accumulated large volumes of data.

What to do right now

Build scenarios: what if demand grows by 30%? What if the supplier misses the deadline?

Train a team of specialists: predictive analytics is not a toy for IT specialists, it is a decision-making tool for everyone, advise Sargona managers.

If you think that you can wait or do without it, know: those who do not analyze, pay for their mistakes. Predictive analytics is your insurance against chaos in the future.
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