The Great Resignation has resulted in an acute labor shortage across the world. Even today, more than two years after the pandemic first hit, workers are still quitting their jobs and dropping out of the workforce entirely or searching for new positions that offer better benefits, more pay, and the ability to work remotely.

In May 2022, 4.3 million workers in the United States voluntarily left their jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As a result, many businesses struggle with bare-bones workforces as they try to keep their operations going. Businesses are especially challenged with managing their supply chain functions: logistics, invoicing, creating bills of materials…the list goes on.

The world’s supply chain woes have been well documented, with COVID-19 disrupting global shipping, transportation, and manufacturing industries. The shipping industry lost 1.52 million workers since March 2020, and a shortage of 330,000 truckers is forecasted through 2024.

Although the Great Resignation and the global supply chain disruption might seem like separate occurrences, they're closely intertwined and are exacerbating one another. At a time when businesses need to be extremely creative and agile in managing their supply chains, their most important assets—their people—are abandoning them. How can they address this?

Although no easy answers exist, technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) can help. Put them all together, and you get intelligent automation that can help you bridge the gaps in your supply chain processes while streamlining them and making them much more efficient. Intelligent Automation can also:

• Abolish manual inputting of data for a wide variety of tasks
• Eliminate human error
• Boost return on investment (ROI).
• Enable 24/7, 365-day engagement with suppliers across all time zones
• Integrate leading legacy applications and tools to work together