In early 2024, the IMF reported that Suez Canal trade dropped by 50 percent year over year in the first two months. Ships were rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, adding ten days or more per delivery. Then came the strikes on Iran, the threat of Hormuz closure, and another wave of rerouting decisions made overnight.
Most retailers and distributors I spoke with during that period said the same thing: their people knew what needed to happen. The problem was their systems didn’t.
That gap between what experienced teams understand and what legacy infrastructure can show them is not a crisis. It is a problem arising from long-standing structural deficiencies. The disruption just made the situation impossible to ignore.
Most Systems Were Built for a Supply Chain That No Longer Exists
ERP, WMS, TMS, and planning systems are built around assumptions: standard routes, lead times, supplier rules, and replenishment cycles. Those assumptions are encoded deeply in workflows, reporting logic, and how stock status is calculated and displayed.
When shipping routes collapse, those assumptions don’t update. A rerouted shipment becomes simply “late.” The system cannot tell you whether that stock is available, blocked, duplicated across two purchase orders, already allocated to a customer, or still being forecasted to arrive on its original date.
So, teams do what teams always do when the system fails them: they build spreadsheets. They create side trackers, manual exception lists, and shared files that capture what the system cannot. Those spreadsheets keep the lights on, but they create new problems in the form of duplicate data, inconsistent inputs, and decisions made based on different versions of the same information.
We saw this pattern across furniture, grocery, pharmaceuticals, fashion, and B2B distribution. The industry didn’t matter. The pattern was the same.
What a Furniture Supplier Learned in Three Days
One of our customers, a supplier in furniture, home, and textiles, faced a sudden breakdown in its inbound flow. The legacy ERP could only show purchase orders as late. It couldn’t give planners a usable view of which goods were still in transit, which were at risk, which were already allocated to customers, and which needed immediate review.
As a result, sales teams were working from outdated arrival assumptions. Warehouse teams had incomplete inbound plans. Planners were at risk of issuing duplicate replenishment orders because original purchase orders looked stalled but hadn’t been formally closed.
Within three days, we built a working layer on top of the existing systems: what we call a Stock and Shipment Control Cockpit. It pulled together open purchase orders, warehouse stock, shipment updates, sales allocations, and planner notes. It matched container data to reduce duplicate records. It gave planners a single bird’s-eye view: available, allocated, at risk, and blocked for review.
The legacy systems stayed in place. What changed was that the team finally had a layer that matched their actual operating reality.
Is Replacing Legacy Systems the Only Solution?
Replacing an ERP takes 12 to 24 months and significant capital. During that time, the business still has to run. And when a disruption hits — whether it is geopolitical, seasonal, or demand-driven — the business has to adapt in days, not months.
The companies that moved fastest during the Suez disruption were not the ones with the newest systems. They were the ones that could build a working layer above their existing infrastructure quickly enough to match the changed reality.
A pharmaceutical distributor we worked with cut duplicate data entry by 60 to 70 percent in the first week. They accomplished this not by replacing their planning system, but by consolidating exception views across ERP, distribution center stock, shipment signals, and expiry-sensitive inventory into one ranked queue. Human planners then decided what to act on. The system gave them clarity, but the judgment stayed with them.
What This Means Beyond the Crisis
The disruption is the visible version of a problem that exists in stable conditions too.
Every time a retailer launches a new channel, enters a new market, or changes a supplier relationship, they face a version of the same gap: existing systems that were not designed for the new operating reality. And yet, replacing them is not a realistic short-term option.
The companies building resilience now are not waiting for the next crisis to expose the gap. They are building modular layers above their core infrastructure — layers that can consolidate data, surface exceptions, and give experienced teams a cleaner way to act.
That is not a technology story. It is an operations story. Technology is just a means of getting there faster.
The author, Antons Sapriko, is Founder & Executive Chairman at Scandiweb.