Supply chains are not just about moving packages from Seattle to Bentonville anymore. They are about moving data — lots of it — securely and reliably. With all the talk around automation, AI, and digital transformation, the modest MFT still does a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes.
A delayed shipment results in a missed deadline or a halted production line, or worse, a dissatisfied customer and potential penalties. A missed invoice is a sign of disjointed data integration, where the support is anxiously searching for that missing data point in a black hole. The data breaches have been proven to erode the trust involved between the trading parties.
Your systems are as strong and resilient as your weakest link. Often, the mystic onboarding process introduces friction amongst the business partners with severe consequences for failing to meet the goals required to achieve true supply chain efficiency. What can we say about the data that has to flow through these systems? It is a nightmare to observe existing systems and a recurring nightmare if you must add more integration points.
In this blog post, I want to emphasize some of the behind-the-curtain magic that MFT enables, with consistent, reliable, and secure data transfer across the silk roads around the world.
Evolution of supply chains
Economies of scale have largely determined how traditional supply chains could stay competitive and largely coalesce around increasing profits and yielding better margins. The shift in the digital age allowed newer players to enter the market where success was determined by rapid responses to market changes, faster innovation, and customer satisfaction. The customer remains largely the same, the value remains the same if not better. But the speed at which this is handled is the lever that was activated to meet the need for volume.
Cloud services are a good example of how economies of speed have emerged out of the assembly line of digital supply chains. New KPIs were established, and newer approaches were designed to handle an idea. An idea leads to a product being built, shipped, cared for, and maintained in the life cycle. Cloud services can thank the globalization of the economy and change in customer behavior — everything I need must be the best, and I need it now to make this a reality.
Using technology to stay competitive
Modern enterprises and businesses fuel this flywheel by employing good observability into their processes to make better decisions, continuously improve their People-Process-Technology to meet the technical demands, and innovate with the latest and greatest engineering to stay focused on their “customer satisfaction”.
The fastest car alone won’t win the race. Solving these challenges will result in a strategic advantage over the competition. The digital supply chain race is not just about the segment you are in. It is about rapidly expanding the segments. The precision required to create and retain customer satisfaction makes organizations become radically efficient. IT is one core aspect of it that can help maximize returns on investment.
The ultimate benefit, though, is businesses having the insights into adapting their strategy to changing times, needs, and situations — be it tariffs, pandemics, or any business climate. The Art of War truly has morphed into boardrooms operating with data-driven practices to help keep the supply chains profitable.
Modern “silk roads” needs
The rosy picture is not always so. IT, the alleged savior of the ecosystem, has struggled to meet the demands of the data integration explosion. Every data point is critical to making complex decisions. The integration points, that is, producers and consumers, are sprawling around the digital and analog worlds. The real-time maturity is subpar owing to legacy processes and architecture.
MFT has perpetually delivered data on time, reliably, and securely. But MFT alone doesn’t move the needle in the secure digital supply chain.
A modern “silk road” needs:
- Better traceability: process and transaction
- Proven track record of achieving compliance mandates and rules of the jurisdiction
- Strong tolerance to handle any type of integration patterns and exchange (protocol) mechanisms
- Parity with cloud ecosystems
- Context-aware security and access
How does the future of MFT look in supply chains?
MFT has always played the role of backbone infrastructure for secure data exchange. This tool reliably transmits purchase orders, business documents, shipment notifications, and provides track and trace to the entire supply chain. It’s a testament to the longevity and resilience in the B2B ecosystem. As we move ahead in time, this will also be looked at to get the right uplift.
In transportation and logistics, the roads and rails keep the stores stocked. The rail industry, for instance, runs on data — the digital intelligence that governments, freight companies, and other service operators rely on for a well-orchestrated dance for the right stock to be placed in the right store as per demand. This is a highly sensitive messaging infrastructure that expects on-time, reliable delivery that scales. The ability to connect to a variety of cloud services and protocols is the required versatility.
Managing shipments is one stated goal for on-time delivery, and the condition of assets for optimal usage keeps the operations efficient. The transition from batch traffic to a real-time trend is already in place. Vendors like Axway can bring out the right tooling for the right data integration pattern, connecting anything, anywhere, is the capability set that is needed.
Connectivity, security, and modern supply chains
Connectivity is MFT’s biggest advantage. Modern supply chains demand a high variety of integration protocols, a spectrum of file sizes, large transactional volumes, pre-processing and post-processing, data transformations, and mapping against standard formats. MFT is typically used to connect the ERP systems, mainframes, cloud storage services, and a plethora of enterprise apps reliably by being the true data integration platform.
Data security is the primary reason why a need for a reliable MFT function exists within your organization. Subscribing to the news cycles around data breaches is nauseating and bone-chilling at the same time. With the latest threats and vulnerabilities, how do we keep up with the risk and still manage your business? Transactions involving currency, credit cards, consumer goods, protected assets, and confidential information flow through these digital channels. Leaving the door open for vulnerabilities in supply chains is not an option.
MFT solution should provide resilient infrastructure that reduces your downtime for patching security fixes and secure alternatives to the otherwise less secure protocols of communication. Data/transport encryption standards are constantly evolving to meet the quantum phenomenon, a massive advancement in this realm. MFT converts the top-level security features into configurable options, turning the nightmare of managing tens or hundreds of partner connections into a simple click of a button.
Visibility that powers decisions
This change is prominent in the logistics world. The digital twin concept evolves organically with the enterprises’ journey towards modernization. Digital ecosystems bring a fair amount of agility by optimizing business processes with automation and scale.
How do you keep up with the rigors of data security and privacy? And the SLAs that require incident management.
MFT addresses these requirements with foundational capabilities, such as security at rest and in flight for your data and files. Providing the right visibility of incoming and outgoing is not enough, as supply chains thrive on rich data. MFT provides end-to-end visibility that is rich with event and processing states, as well as hooks to connect your business processes to add context and metadata. The true measure of real-time achievements is how well-connected your ecosystem is. Files cannot be left behind, and MFT elevates your file-based data exchange infrastructure to the operations center.
Regulatory and compliance mandates drive supply chain teams to provide visibility and an audit trail, depending on the goods being transferred: money, pharmaceuticals, or consumer goods.
See also: Why MFT matters for enterprise compliance and risk reduction
A well-architected MFT brings your entire data exchange network to measurable and quantifiable operation. The classic ‘Where is my file?’ or ‘When is my order going to be fulfilled?’ are answered with detailed metadata that is tagged for each file transfer or transaction.
MFT provides visibility that will work for your needs — be it monitoring, alerting, or aggregating — and enables you to operate with awareness of what is going on in your data exchange network. The openness of the data that is being recorded is often connected back to the analytics platforms. A help desk operator can then handle such requests without having to bring in IT.
Obstacles in getting there
As you are focusing on the future, let’s break down the immediate hurdles that might bring trouble.
First, the fragmentation of data, whether it is a cloud-only process or an on-premises application. This delineation needs to be broken. The data that is unreachable is a giant barrier to modernization. This could stem from several unspoken reasons, whether it is behind a firewall, lack of exchange protocol, lack of automation, or lack of scale. This level of rigidity needs to be identified and eliminated with flexible integration that scales across the ecosystem.
Second, the absence of responsive visibility hampers the agility required for modern supply chains. What we can’t monitor, we can’t measure. What we can’t measure, we can’t improve. This is a double-edged problem that hampers efficiency and effectiveness required for a modern supply chain. Every ecosystem citizen needs to be visible to observe and actionable to respond to meet the business needs.
Third, the partner onboarding and collaboration. Bringing newer producers and consumers is the baseline expectation for modern supply chains. It is important to understand that any barriers created by the systems that are onboarding newer partners on the skill level, or technical capabilities will break the onboarding process. This is one of the most critical processes that catapults businesses to grow. Experience and automation should play together like a symphony in the context of the onboarding process. Too much automation, and a lack of experience or vice versa, leaves users with a bad aftertaste. Apart from the challenge of onboarding, operational inefficiencies across other related processes inhibit the growth of business.
Last, the security posture, or lacking attention towards cybersecurity risks and threats. This is a scary picture. The statistics are always gloomy, and many vendors provide quick fixes. Track record matters, and evolution towards modern security principles is necessary.
Overcoming the obstacles
Supply chain transformation and the introduction of data as a component certainly present abundant challenges. Modern IT has to play catch-up to keep up. How do we overcome the obstacles?
Fragmentation of data is the modern plague. For decades, the emphasis has been on the “file transfer” component of MFT, often sacrificing the “managed” part by relying on administration consoles and data centralization techniques. However, the amount of data that needs to be processed these days is simply too much — companies often operate hundreds of MFT applications. Modern MFT sheds light on your file transfer system’s operational health in one central control panel, so you don’t have to wonder where your files go anymore — modern MFT has that answer for you.
New partner onboarding is a painful process, but modern MFT makes it more streamlined than ever before. Modern automation tools, especially with the emergence of artificial technology, help organizations reduce repetitive steps in onboarding, freeing up resources for more strategic decision-making and minimizing errors associated with manual input. MFT solutions today provide scalability supporting your business growth and modernization.
Modern supply chains require foresight, and gaps in visibility may be costly. Enhanced visibility tools of modern MFT, like real-time monitoring, help teams anticipate failures before they happen and trace issues instantly — all without disruptions, downtime, and frustrated partners and customers. With better transparency and faster analysis, your supply chain management turns from reactive firefighting to proactive resilience.
See also: Can you see your MFT failures coming? If not, here’s why it matters
Security is no longer a foolproof superstructure but a core feature baked at the fundamental level. Many industries have regulations and compliance requirements around data management and storage. Moreover, these regulations constantly change and are often different in various jurisdictions. As I wrote earlier this year, “Compliance is no longer just a checkbox — it’s a moving target.” Even worse, a data breach can lead not only to regulatory fines but also significant reputational costs. Implementing Zero Trust methodology and partnering with integration vendors will help you build your security front door.
See also: Zero Trust security model: A modern approach to MFT
Industry leaders rely on Axway MFT to stay compliant and avoid security incidents. Axway MFT solutions provide end-to-end encryption for secure data exchanges and constant 24/7 monitoring of your systems with compliance enforcement. Automated alerts and enhanced visibility bring downtime and failed transfers to zero, allowing you to upgrade and update your file transfer systems with no disruption to your normal operations. Axway’s solutions can be installed on a wide range of operating systems and environments, bringing flexibility to your systems. With Axway’s pay-per-use subscription model, your file transfer solution grows along with your business.
Ready to enhance your MFT scalability and visibility?