AUDIT OF LOGISTICS PROCESSES AS A TOOL FOR INCREASING COMPETITIVENESS IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETS

Abstract

The paper examines logistics process audit as a managerial instrument that supports competitiveness in international markets in the context of digital transformation. It argues that, beyond product and price factors, export and cross-border performance increasingly depends on controlled lead times, stable service levels and predictable logistics costs. Digitalization integrates planning, warehousing, transportation and documentation through information systems and electronic document management, which shifts operational reliability toward the quality of data, the coherence of integrations and the correctness of control rules embedded in digital workflows. The audit is positioned as a comprehensive assessment of process governance that verifies compliance of actual operations with regulations, validates how logistics events are captured and translated into system statuses, and evaluates whether the control environment provides sufficient and traceable evidence for key supply chain stages. The study highlights recurrent problem areas: inconsistent directories and identifiers, fragmented data exchange between subsystems, discrepancies between physical movement and digital status, incomplete event records, and insufficient access control and change management. The potential of IoT and telematics, big data tools, machine-learning based detection of anomalies and forecasting, and blockchain solutions for recording and exchanging confirmations is discussed as a factor that increases transparency while simultaneously raising requirements for data integrity and accountability of primary inputs. The article proposes an audit logic centered on the “process –data–control” linkage, emphasizing the completeness of the digital trail, stability of status-change criteria and alignment between operational events and documentary evidence. The conclusions indicate that systematic alignment of audit procedures with digital control instruments helps reduce delays, claims and penalties, strengthens trust with partners and improves the reliability of decisions in international supply chains. Further research should focus on standardized metrics for data quality and status consistency and on audit methodologies for event-based monitoring in digital logistics.