A. Shippers rely on trusted partners with more expertise and resources to handle critical parts of their supply chains. While this makes sense from a cost and efficiency standpoint, dependency on partners reduces visibility and control, and even makes shippers more susceptible to external circumstances or disruptions.

For example, crisis-level capacity shortages during the 2020-22 time period revealed significant vulnerabilities in supply chains and standard practices (e.g. annual RFPs). Carrier tender acceptance rates fell from the 90% range to the low 70s despite rising costs, wreaking havoc on budgets. The typical annual procurement cycles started happening more frequently, even reducing to quarterly or monthly “mini-bids.”

As pricing power shifted in favor of shippers, many have been optimizing costs, enhancing resilience, and revamping procurement processes. Some are bringing functions in-house, while others are implementing stricter oversight of their logistics service providers (LSPs). Shippers are also increasingly relying on data and analytics tools to monitor market conditions, shipping lanes, carriers, and costs.

Q. What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of bringing operations in-house rather than relying on LSPs?

A. Shippers are outsourcing certain functions at a lower rate compared to five years ago, as indicated by DAT’s annual shipper survey. While the following categories are still typically outsourced, there has been a steady decline in the percentage of companies outsourcing these functions:

• Transportation procurement
• Transportation planning
• Transportation execution
• Carrier management
• Freight payment
• Greater visibility and control of operations help shippers proactively anticipate and solve challenges.

New technology enables fast and transparent relationships between shippers and transportation providers, facilitating stronger carrier relationships.

Relying on a single approach to truckload procurement can lead to missed opportunities, increased work, and higher costs. More shippers are adopting a combination of dedicated, contract, and spot relationships to cover loads, resulting in enhanced efficiency, productivity, and comprehensive coverage.

Q. What are the advantages of data and analytics for shippers?

A. Whether shippers bring certain functions in-house or not, data and analytics assist them in making more informed freight decisions; access to accurate and timely market intelligence through rate and network analytics is the key to success.

Analytics solutions offer visibility into past, present, and future spot and contract market rates, enabling strategic sourcing, planning, and cost management. Shippers can gain lane and carrier insights to prevent routing guide failure, secure reliable capacity, and build resilience. With these solutions, shippers can confidently make operational decisions, regardless of their approach.

DAT iQ delivers the deepest, broadest, and most accurate market data in the industry, with more than $150 billion in transaction data, supported by powerful analytics capabilities and expert guidance. To learn more, visit www.dat.com/Empower_iQ

But with the frequent twists and turns—some anticipated, some not—encountered in the supply chain journey, that simple formula is far easier stated than accomplished.

In many accounting departments, too much happens on the path of products moving from here to there that is out of sight, out of mind and, as a result, out of control. But significant cost efficiencies are there for the taking if companies examine their own data to unearth the potential savings buried there.

“Intelligence is the holy grail,” notes Joe Juliano, president and CEO of MercuryGate, a transportation management system provider.

Put another way: Knowledge is power. “Using data and information in a way that organizations can make decisions—that’s the key,” says Reid Klosowsky, of Freight Think, a transportation advisory group that he and fellow supply chain veteran Bill Maroney formed in partnership with NT Logistics.

“You need to know your cost, by customer and by location, to be able to do a deep dashboard dive into understanding your total costs,” adds Lynn Gravley, president and CEO of NT Logistics.

Dave Cole, COO of Willy’s Fresh Salsa, based in northwest Ohio, illustrates the point with an issue resulting from the pandemic. “A lot of distribution centers were short on personnel, so we ran into detention fees,” he recalls.

Those fees are charged if trucks arrive beyond a 60- to 90-minute grace period of the scheduled time for pickup. These added costs surfaced in a review of the data.

“We’re always looking at detention fees to see if we can control them,” Cole says. “It has an impact on our ability to reduce our prices to our customers.”

By utilizing the tools needed to stay on top of the costs associated with supply chain fees, as well as freight payment/audit, visibility and just-in-time shipping, shippers and the logistics providers who serve them can manage expenses that have a material effect on their supply chain balance sheets.

Optimizing the loading and unloading process can dramatically reduce costs.

Power at Every level

In the real world of limited resources, are such powerful data-tracking tools the sole province of industry giants who also possess the human resources—in accounting and other departments—to translate the information into more cost-effective methods of operation?

“If you asked me that question a few years ago, my answer would have been yes, but now the game has changed,” says Tom Nightingale, CEO of AFS Logistics, which provides global logistics management services and information technology solutions.

“There are so many robust transportation management software solutions and viable freight audit and payment platforms that enable a small and mid-sized company to have the level of sophistication, at a reasonable price, that was reserved for the biggest companies a few years ago,” Nightingale says. “And they can compete very effectively.”

“There is more ability now than there was 30-plus years ago for smaller and mid-sized companies to have the availability of information,” concurs Stuart Nakayama, president of Lynden Logistics, a full-service transportation and logistics provider that is part of the family of Lynden companies.

Companies of all sizes would be well advised to seek out data-mining solutions that will help guide their shipping and audit operations. “There are resources available that they can access to be able to make some of those decisions,” Nakayama says.

The power of the knowledge waiting to be uncovered in the data cannot be overestimated. “Shippers can look for anomalies and behavior, and they can look for existing patterns,” says Maroney.

The tools that enable accounting departments to see and analyze costs at every point in the supply chain constantly expand and improve.

Connecting Through API

“The technology that has been the greatest help for shippers to manage their freight has to be digitization and API connectivity with carriers,” says Brian Thompson, chief commercial officer of SMC³, which provides LTL transportation pricing data and technology solutions.

Simply expressed, API, which stands for application programming interface, enables different applications to communicate with each other. Thompson says that API offers three essential benefits:

1. Quality and cost control. “Shippers can now pull shipment-level quotes directly from the carrier systems,” Thompson says. “This ensures the quote will match the invoice as long as the shipment size and characteristics are entered correctly and completely.”

2. Visibility. “Constant connectivity allows the shipper to quickly ascertain when a shipment has been delayed or gone awry so that adjustments can be made to reduce the impact of the service challenge,” he explains.

3. Retrieval of documents for audit. These documents include the bill of lading, invoice, delivery receipts, and weight and inspection certificates.

Companies no longer need to “manage by anecdote,” Klosowsky says, including anecdotes that may or may not have broad, relevant application. Instead, data-driven, on-the-ground insights often illuminate expenses and possible ways to save that otherwise may be overlooked.

If the devil is in the details, the angels—that is, the cost-saving opportunities—can be found there as well.

“Many times, it’s just behavior modification,” says Gravley, adding that changing order patterns to better reflect data-driven insights could save as much as 10 to 20% in freight transfers.

As an example, Maroney cites “cube efficiency”—making sure there’s not too much air in a box or trailer.
Absent cube-efficiency data, shippers may take an unscientific—and sometimes counterproductive—approach to solving the problem by, for example, loading fewer boxes on containers and dispatching more trucks than should be required, he says.

Klosowsky cites the MercuryGate toolkit as one solution. “They built out a control tower, and they have capability to load SKU level data on shipments,” he says.

“Software called Mojo allows users to do optimization,” he adds. “It uses an algorithm that looks for all the different combinations to provide the lowest-cost result.”

Mojo, which sometimes is compared to Oracle Transportation Management and other transportation optimization software, is designed to analyze shipments, rates, and constraints to produce load plans that can dramatically reduce costs.

Sustainability also comes into play. “When you fill your containers and trucks more efficiently, you shorten the length of haul and cut down on redundant moves and other inefficiencies,” Maroney says. “You save money, improve profitability, and pollute less. It all goes together.”

With software solutions so rapidly evolving, shippers may question whether they have sufficient resources to continually review and update their technology to stay at the cutting edge.

Not a problem. “This is where a configurable, cloud-based transportation management system (TMS) stands out,” says Juliano. “The TMS is always up to date, enabling shippers to leverage new features whenever they are ready to use them.”

During the pandemic, Willy’s Fresh Salsa, based in Swanton, Ohio, incurred troubling detention fees when distribution centers were short on personnel. Lesson learned; today the company controls detention fees so it can not only save money but pass those savings on to customers.

Prepare to Pivot

While there is expense involved in accessing transportation management consulting services and software to better configure your company’s supply chain, the results will pay off in both good times and bad. The pandemic caused historic interruptions but other events, such as major market swings and international conflicts, also have taught the logistics sector and other businesses that forecasting for change is essential to long-term success.

“If you ship internationally, you can take these past issues and make decisions on risk,” says Nakayama. “You incorporate risk calculations into how you run your balance sheet. If you don’t plan for that additional potential from the outset, then you risk having some big sways.”

Those sways can devastate a balance sheet, a critical lesson for all companies.

“It depends upon your company’s goals and directions and the pace you’re trying to move at,” Nakayama says. In this regard, he says, smaller companies may have an advantage.

“For instance,” he explains, “if you are a large whale in the ocean, it will take a bit of time to maneuver and turn 45 degrees to continue where you want to go. But if you’re a smaller fish, even a minnow, you’ve got the ability to pivot quickly.

“No one is to say that the minnow is not able to optimize better or worse than the larger fish,” Nakayama adds.

Negotiate and Verify

Also critical to optimizing cost efficiency in the supply chain is setting the right prices before the journey begins.

“Shippers of all sizes, but particularly small to mid-sized shippers, tend to feel like they can handle their freight negotiations on their own,” says Nightingale. “They are increasingly up against sophisticated pricing functions within the carriers.”

As a result, he says, shippers may miss “subtle but no less impactful” charges that are embedded in the charges they accept.

“Pricing functions within carriers have gotten so sophisticated now that they are able to effectively target those items that can make them the most money and, at the same time, be most likely overlooked by shippers,” Nightingale says.

Once rates are negotiated, it is likewise important to audit your invoices—and, if indicated, to seek assistance in that process as well.

“The typical accounting department may not be qualified or doesn’t understand what a freight classification is in, say, an LTL shipment,” says Juliano, who emphasizes the need to “ensure that the rate that was negotiated was actually billed and subsequently paid.”

Smart shippers turn to knowledgeable sources to provide that nuanced analysis, guidance and advice.

“You have to look at it not just customer by customer, but order by order,” Cole says. “Fees are so dynamic that you have to have someone who lives and breathes this every day.”

The lesson is: Learn the answers to pass the test. “Most costly mistakes in LTL that shippers make could be avoided with additional education,” says Thompson.

The shippers who optimize their supply chain journeys from start to finish—including carrier processes, rules, and pricing methods—will conclude their journeys with optimized balance sheets.

6 Tips To Strengthen Your Supply Chain and Boost Your Balance Sheet

Small- and mid-sized companies sometimes fail to regularly analyze the expenses they incur during the supply chain journey. As a result, these smaller companies often overlook savings opportunities that could reduce their shipping costs by 10 to 20%. Experts suggest these six tips for ongoing review:

1. Examine cube utilization.  Is every container maximized? The more specific, the better. Analyze each trailer and every box to ensure they are filled to capacity.

2. Know your costs.  Again, the deeper the dive, the better: Analyze your spend by every customer, every trip, every location.

3. Collaborate.  Honesty and transparency in your business relationships are vital not only to maintain your customer base, but also to unlock cost cuts. Which party along your supply chain can leverage its own relationships to reduce expenses?

4. Harness technology.  As challenging as it is to keep pace with constantly evolving—and improving—software, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic offerings in the supply chain, the potential savings are well worth your time and attention to keep up. If you lack the internal capacity to do so, hire a consultant.

5. Audit your bills. Freight audit and payment data is a treasure trove of information. Invoices serve to track your supply chain journey, but they can be overwhelming. The money associated with those seemingly arcane details, however, is too significant to ignore. Are there unnecessary services there? Do the charges and the services match? Check it out.

6. Look ahead. Change is a constant. Don’t just expect it; plan for it. Forecasting for supply chain disruptions should be built into your balance sheet.

Chad Kennedy, group product manager at DAT Freight & Analytics, shared his advice in a recent Inbound Logistics podcast, and Will Post, CSCP, offers three key takeaways:

1. Conduct thorough market research and benchmarking to identify your highest cost lanes. Use this data to target these lanes for improvement and negotiate better rates with carriers. Do this before running an RFP.

2. Avoid taking your below-market lanes out to RFP and potentially losing your best partners. Instead, have a strategic conversation with your carriers and work out a mutually beneficial agreement.

3. Update your fuel surcharge program by adjusting your miles per gallon assumption to reflect carriers’ increased efficiency. This will help you save money on fuel costs and renegotiate better rates with your carriers.

After the pandemic wreaked havoc on sourcing operations, it’s imperative that businesses don’t get caught flat footed again. In the 2022 MHI Annual Industry Report, 78% of supply chain leaders report accelerating their digital transformations in the wake of the pandemic. But in truth, some of the systems they’ve implemented are too narrow and don’t integrate as frictionlessly as they need to.

Brands and retailers that outsource their supply chain need to optimize processes from end to end by implementing a multi-enterprise platform that can streamline workflows from sourcing, logistics, and product development to vendor, order, and quality management. Such a platform allows these processes to work together seamlessly and mitigates risks by creating guard rails and notifications.

Digitalization creates visibility into prices, supply bases, and costs, enabling predictive sourcing and allowing buyers to negotiate more transparent agreements. When brands and retailers have visibility into sources and suppliers they weren’t already using, they’re better able to mix and match materials during the specification and procurement process. This visibility is key to sourcing competitively.

The Right Tool for the Job

The needs of supply chain departments are vast and varied. As port backups become pervasive, logistics departments require timelier, more reliable data. Sourcing managers need efficient systems for managing global networks of suppliers. Merchandisers also require smarter systems for confirming orders with suppliers and for receiving status updates on existing orders.

Quality managers, meanwhile, need better systems for controlling risk and for viewing and auditing the historical performances of vendors. And all departments need to know whether shipments are arriving on time.

A digital transformation with the right multi-enterprise platform addresses all those problems. A connected supply chain management software suite can extend the data that businesses are already entering into their product lifecycle management system and make it available to all stakeholders.

For compliance teams and supply chain sustainability managers, the benefits of digitalization with a multi-enterprise platform are especially profound. Due to recent government regulations, large brands and retailers face more stringent requirements. To meet them, they need complete documentation of all their suppliers, and they need to document the full chain of custody of materials.

Supply chain mapping and chain of custody documentation also allow businesses to more accurately back up the sustainability claims they make about their products.

Businesses that adopted standalone digital solutions have taken an important first step. But to reap the full benefits of digitalization, they need to ensure their digital transformation covers their entire supply chain processes. It’s the surest way companies can prepare for the unknown and set themselves up for success.

A. Today everyone has access to the same vast offerings in the logistics technology arena. Typically, one solution won’t solve your problem, but it will offer data that enhances your staff to make better and faster decisions.

Differentiate from others by putting your own spin on the data or use it in combination with other tools. It’s important to note that technology and data must also evolve with your company and the industry you compete in. This means your data must be constantly updated. If done correctly, you can maintain a competitive advantage.

Q. How can data solve logistics problems for shippers?

A. The number one area where data can make an impact is helping companies improve their operations. This includes everything from which delivery routes to use to better forecasting of supply and demand. Data can be used to optimize lead times, help inventories reflect market demand, and improve on-time production and delivery.

The goal is to make the supply chain efficient and predictable. And in turn, many times companies can find ways to cut costs without sacrificing service or speed.

Q. What data is best?

A. Depending on the situation, you should identify the problem or area requiring improvement. With so much data available, some mistakenly review every type of data that’s collected.

But when it comes to knowing what logistics data to prioritize, it often comes down to a few key areas:

• Order fill rate — is everything getting shipped that should be?
• Units per hour — how fast can the order be picked, packed, and shipped?
• Mispick rate — how many shipments are being received by customers with the wrong product?
• On-time delivery rate — are the delivery timelines for customers being met?
• Orders per truck — are the assets being used efficiently?
• Perfect order rate — how often is everything going right?

While it can be incredibly valuable for businesses to spend time reviewing raw data to gain an advantage, context is key.

R2 Logistics offers industry-leading supply chain management services to shippers of all sizes. R2’s transportation management system allows customers to rate shipments and receive real-time visibility into their logistics network.

For more information, visit www.r2logistics.com.

2. Not all data comes from your ERP. Consider data from user reviews, surveys, customer behavior, industry news, and social media posts. Harnessing big data from both structured and unstructured sources provides you with the information needed to improve your end-to-end supply chain.

3. Gain insight from unstructured data. Suppose a celebrity sings your product’s praises on national television and demand goes through the roof. By monitoring and incorporating your social media sources into your data analysis, you’ll be better situated to reposition inventory on short notice.

4. Create seamless data exchanges. Disparate systems need to seamlessly exchange structured data, but these systems are often still siloed. Use APIs and cloud platform technology to create seamless data exchanges.

5. Layer in AI and ML for deeper insights. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)provide opportunities to “learn” from your data to deliver predictive insights. You’ll gain advantages that include prescriptive ideas for optimal outcomes.

6. Clean and Maintain your data. Insights derived for your supply chain are only as good as the data you use. Incorporate data cleansing processes to remove entries that do not belong. Eliminate duplicate data, which occurs when you combine data sets from multiple places. Fix structural errors that may arise when data is transferred from one place to another.

7. Use a data-driven approach. Strategically use your data to better manage production, distribution, and inventory in real time. A data-driven approach empowers faster and more informed decision-making. This approach improves your supply chain’s ability to react to sudden changes, such as moving containers to a less- congested port.

8. There’s an app for that. The proliferation of apps for just about anything has generated countless downloads—and more data. Using these apps, you can integrate data to provide deeper insights. For example, data from a weather app can be combined with transportation routes for a better estimated delivery time, which improves customer satisfaction.

9. Mitigate risk and disruption. Due to the pandemic, the term “supply chain” is now both recognizable and meaningful to the average person. Using structured and unstructured data together—coupled with world events such as pandemics, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, or war—can severely disrupt supply chains directly and indirectly. Critical business functions, including determining points of manufacture and distribution along with levels of inventory, are all affected. The good news is that harnessing all the available data in concert with supply chain optimization software and relevant expertise can mitigate risk for your company.

10. Model what-if scenarios to create the optimal supply chain. One of the most effective uses of supply chain data is “what-if” analysis, which allows you to model different aspects and operations of the supply chain with a holistic view to better understand the impact of your decisions and, thus, reduce risk. Inventory, network, and transportation models are common.

South Korean technology company LG Electronics unveiled a new delivery robot that can serve both indoor and outdoor environments, which could be a game-changer for contactless delivery and services. The four-wheeled robot can adjust the gap between its wheels to self-adapt quickly to uneven terrain for a smoother ride.

Food delivery services could be on the menu for these new robots. Last winter, LG debuted its BaristaBot to serve coffee to workers at its headquarters in Seoul, and began using its CLOi robots to make deliveries from convenience stores to people inside its LG Science Park. In July 2020, LG partnered with Woowa Brothers and the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement to develop robot waiters.

The robot was developed in conjunction with MIT Associate professor Sangbae Kim at LG Boston Robotics Lab. The company plans to test run the robot at the end of 2021. LG has already commercialized indoor delivery robots and tested outdoor delivery robots.

Big Tech Takeover

Big tech is the biggest economic winner during the pandemic, as global lockdowns push retailers, supply chains, and consumers to use their e-commerce and fulfillment services. As the digital wave continues, Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft report record-breaking profits:

• Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reports a Q2 revenue of $61.8 billion, a 62% increase on the same period in 2020, and a profit of $18.5 billion, more than twice its profits in that period in 2020.
• Apple made a $21.7 billion profit for the three-month period ending in June 2021, its best fiscal third quarter in its 45-year history, boosted by strong sales of the iPhone 12 and growth in its services.
• Microsoft reports revenues of more than $46 billion for the quarter, an increase of 21% compared to the same quarter last year.
• Collectively, the market value of Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook is now worth more than one-third of the entire S&P 500 index of America’s 500 largest traded companies as their share prices soar during the pandemic.

Sony’s Picture-Perfect Automation Strategy

Sony predicts that robots will completely take over manufacturing for its cameras, TVs, and smartphones as the entertainment company tightens its focus on consumer electronics, providing services that keep consumers coming back.

Automated production lines could cut costs by 70% at Sony’s main TV factory in Malaysia by fiscal year 2023 compared to 2018, the company says. Sony also aims to use a combination of factory workers and robotics in its smartphone and camera manufacturing.

Sony will supplant the factory automation with a greater focus on online sales and data analysis, using artificial intelligence, to cut manufacturing costs, says Kimio Maki, head of Sony’s electronics businesses.

Sony has stabilized its TV losses in the past decade, shifting to smaller-volume, higher-end products. While the company continues selling to consumers, a meaningful part of its growth will also come from professional products, such as crystal LED displays for virtual video production and ball-tracking technology for the sports entertainment industry, Maki says.

Dell and Google Search for Hard Drive Recyclability

Faced with rare earth metal supply shortages and unsustainable mining practices, tech companies look to recycle used hard drives. At the same time, the Biden administration recently flagged government data center hard drives as a promising source of the rare earth elements, Grist reports.

An estimated 22 million hard disk drives age out of North American data centers each year. Data centers are the world’s largest consumers of those drives, which are one of the largest end-products for rare earth magnets. The United States generates nearly 17% of all used hard disk drives—the largest share globally, the report says.

If all these devices were recycled, they could supply more than 5% of all rare earth magnet demand outside of China, researchers estimate. Some researchers, tech companies, manufacturers, and recyclers have explored giving those materials a second life.

In 2019, Google, hard disk drive manufacturer Seagate, and electronics refurbisher Recontext collaborated to remove 6,100 magnets from Seagate hard drives in a Google data center and insert them into new hard drives. The results show that rare earth magnets can be reused on a large scale, and their carbon footprint was 86% lower than new ones.

Dell also launched a pilot program with Seagate and Recontext to harvest magnets from computer hard drives with its take-back program, yielding 19,000 pounds of rare earth magnets for reuse.

While it may be a long time before the magnets are recycled on a large scale, the Biden administration may prioritize these efforts. Such programs could also help the electric vehicle sector develop its own rare earth magnet recycling process, the report says.

Technology Powers Back-To-School Shopping

Even with uncertainty surrounding the back-to-school experience, consumers will spend $37.1 billion on back-to-school shopping in 2021, the National Retail Federation predicts, a 9.4% uptick from last year. And 2021 is seeing an even greater demand for technology purchases, with parents wanting their kids to keep up. Back-to-school tech trends include:

Getting gadgets: Spending on tech gadgets is expected to grow 48% from last year and reach parity with computers and hardware, says a Deloitte report. Computer spending will be up 28% this year. Parents will splurge on gadgets for their kids, such as cell phones, tablets, wearables, and e-learning programs.

Tech over retail: Getting the latest wearables and gadgets is more important than having the most fashionable outfits this year, with spending on clothing and accessories flat over 2020. Many gadgets also reduce the necessity for traditional supplies, such as pens and notebooks, which will advance only slightly this year.

Tech-enabled shopping: Parents plan to curb in-store spending and increase their online spending, which is up from 37% in 2020 to 39% in 2021. More back-to-school consumers plan on using tech-enabled shopping tools this year, such as voice assistants, digital wallets, and buy buttons on social media. Many parents with children in school are now leading-edge millennials and trailing-edge GenXers, making adoption of these advanced capabilities easier.

Getting social: More parents will turn to social media to help with shopping, rising from 25% last year to more than 40% in 2021. They aren’t just interested in product offers; 42% visit retailers’ social media pages to determine if they are worthy of their business. This calls on retailers to make their branding clear across all channels.

The origin and destination offices for importers’ supply chains are not simply adjacent silos, they are orbiting planets. Bring both sides together on a central supply chain management platform so they can work together in real time on the same shipment file.

—Bryn Heimbeck
President
Trade Tech

The lack of a platform that integrates data and provides visibility to volume, dwell, railcar availability and train bunching, and truck capacity and driver shortages.

—Tom Martucci
Chief Technology Officer
Consolidated Intermodal Technologies

Data. From suppliers not sharing data with producers to manufacturers not knowing when to ramp up or down staffing, the lack of good data or lack of access to it can hurt everything from productivity to shipping.

—Carl Schweihs
President and COO
PeopleManagement
a TrueBlue company

The disconnect between strategic planning and day-to-day tactical supply chain optimization. The functional areas that contribute to both ends should collaborate to make deliberate trade-offs to remain aligned overall with the big-picture strategy. Give enough latitude to respond to daily business needs—but without jettisoning strategic progress.

—Troy Prothero
SVP, Product Management, Supply Chain Solutions
Symphony RetailAI

Sales and operations teams are often disconnected. Lacking a unified view of the customer leads to a weak, inconsistent customer experience—and lost sales. Customer relationship management software helps put everyone on the same page.

—Mark Buman
Chief Revenue Officer
Magaya

Ineffective packaging management causes shortages, loss, expedited freight, and an overall poor performing supply chain. To break this silo, companies must look at their supply chain holistically and implement a packaging and asset management system.

—Mike Garcia
Market Manager—RPM
ORBIS Corporation

Compliance. Despite impacting nearly every aspect of how goods are shipped (packaging, documentation, carrier selection, etc.), compliance responsibilities are often separated by business unit, function, or location. Establish reliable and repeatable processes across all divisions and locations and integrate compliance into other operational systems, including TMS, WMS, and ERP.

—Mario Sagastume
VP Software & Customer Success
Labelmaster

data flow throughout the supply chain. Embedding cross-functional metrics, dashboards, and (ideally) organization enables informed decision making, transparency, and value company-wide. The more teams know about the full value chain, the more successful each team will be.

—Omer Abdullah
Co-founder and Managing Director
The Smart Cube

In forward logistics, products are identified by universal product codes (UPCs). However, when a product is returned, there is no system to identify it. To break down this silo, I advocate for a reverse UPC classification structure based on specific conditions and accessories to facilitate faster refurbishment, accounting and reconciliation, and resale.

—Scott Huddle
Chief Supply Chain Officer
goTRG

Lack of visibility across modes can create silos, especially for global shippers that combine ocean, air, intermodal, and over-the-road transportation. Working with a provider that offers technology and expertise across modes is critical to gaining visibility and ensuring exceptional service.

—JJ Schickel
CEO
Omni Logistics

The lack of shared networks. Collaboration up and down the value chain to drive business-critical process is still driven by antiquated systems that are incredibly manual or inflexible. Disruptive organizations are empowering agile teams to innovate their processes continuously while remaining connected.

—Peter Rifken
Principal Solutions Consultant
Quickbase

Traditional linear supply chains prevent companies from looking beyond the first tier, leaving the global flow of goods and materials vulnerable to disruption. A digital business network brings trading partners together for better visibility and collaboration.

—Tony Harris
SVP and Head of Marketing & Solutions
SAP Business Network

The biggest silo is between planning, procurement, and sourcing. Primarily driven by a lack of data transparency and integration, this is exacerbated by insufficient resources and unclear business processes. A digital supply chain platform that provides a single source of data and integrates business processes is the key to breaking down this silo.

—Lachelle Buchanan
Director
Logility

The biggest supply chain silo is data. There is so much information being exchanged across the supply chain—between ERP systems, carrier and 3PL systems, bills of lading, customs declarations—but they all exist in separate systems. Unifying this data is key to true supply chain visibility.

—Tony Pelli
Practice Director, Security and Resilience
BSI

Systems integration across the supply chain from manufacturing, inbound transportation, warehousing, and outbound transportation is one of the biggest silos within the supply chain. For most companies, different systems are used to run their business across the four functions of their network. Most of the time, the manufacturing systems doesn’t talk to the inbound side or their warehouses. This makes forecasting and labor planning more difficult for each portion of the supply chain.

—Greg Forbis
EVP of Strategy and Business Development
RJW Logistics Group

Data silos across logistics operations. Estimates show 69% of companies don’t have a holistic view of their supply chain. Shipment visibility solutions can provide end-to-end tracking of the location and condition of shipments across multimodal supply chains. Reducing dwell times, improving ETAs, and customer delivery schedules are critical.

—Stuart Ryan
Vice President, Other Industries Sales
HERE Technologies

Primary silos are between sourcing/buying, planning, and operations. Leaders must look holistically at their operation, opposed to focusing on each function, helping to streamline processes, evolve physical networks, and implement solutions to drive insight and innovation. This can be done through more advanced digital capabilities, clear leadership alignment and data-driven decisions support tools with cross-functional input and enterprise objectives.

—Matt Comte
Operations Transformation Practice Leader
PwC

Lack of transparency around efficiency and trailer utilization in over-the-road shipping. Our research estimates more than 50% of trucks are currently moving underutilized. Filling trucks to capacity through AI-created shared truckloads and publishing metrics help break this silo.

—Chris Pickett
Chief Strategy Officer
Flock Freight

The dock environment is a vital component of the supply chain. However, it can be a bottleneck, caused by inefficient, disparate, and antiquated systems. Integrating technology and hardware to empower dock associates to connect to systems on the move creates those all-important commodities in the supply chain—speed and accuracy.

—Ravi Panjwani
SVP, Marketing and Product Management
Brother Mobile Solutions

The biggest supply chain silo is transportation. Providing transportation visibility across the supply chain including to customers, suppliers, and logistics partners opens up the silo.

—Chris Jones
EVP, Industry and Services
Descartes

By far, with the impact on shipping from COVID issues, transportation is the biggest silo to overcome. With the 3G networks that so many electronic logs are configured for being decommissioned, until carriers are able to upgrade we could suffer a micro-shortage of capacity. It all depends on how agile the carriers are at upgrading to 4G. This is a silo that can only be toppled by proactive carrier engagement.

—Brian C. Gaffney
Supply Chain Specialist
Natural Fiber Welding

Mature supply chains have developed sales and operations planning departments, but transportation isn’t typically involved. Given variables like capacity volatility, unpredictable lead times, and product shortages, breaking down that silo could help shippers conserve resources and strategically plan for capacity needs.

—Aaron Galer
SVP, Strategic Partners
Arrive Logistics

Typically, each supplier tier is siloed from the next, and most companies have low, if any, visibility beyond their first-tier suppliers.

—Jeff White
Founder and CEO
Gravy Analytics

One of the biggest silos is visibility to supplier value chains. Transparency through the second and third tier of the supply chain provides valuable insights for serving customers.

—Hemant Porwal
EVP—Supply Chain & Operations
Wesco International

Supplier information lives in multiple locations across an organization, many of which are poorly connected, creating data silos. The resulting challenges in visibility, risk, and spend put supply chain resilience at jeopardy. To move forward, an organization-wide commitment to supplier-centricity and master data management, built upon active supplier experience management, is crucial.

—Anthony Payne
CMO
HICX

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AI solutions help parse massive volumes of data from a wide range of sources that companies can then use to understand customer behaviors, supply chain fluctuations, and other business insights.

ML goes hand in hand with AI. It uses self-optimizing algorithms to imitate the way human beings learn. When used in combination with AI, ML empowers businesses of all sizes and across all industries to transform data into insights.

AI and ML enable demand forecasting models that track and analyze historical data to predict upcoming consumer demand cycles. Soft goods companies can use this insight to find ways to keep pace with customer requests year-round.

AI- and ML-based modeling enables soft goods businesses to identify and resolve supply chain roadblocks as well. Since these companies continuously capture data and insights, they can assess the state of their supply chain at any time and constantly explore ways to improve operations. This helps avoid supply chain disruption, maximize productivity, and minimize operating costs.

In addition to using AI and ML-based modeling, soft goods companies can launch and maintain a successful supply chain by taking these steps:

1. Establish a "one-number" plan. One-number forecasting involves creating a plan based on a single operating number. The plan is demand-driven and gives a business the opportunity to make modifications if market conditions change. A one-number forecast can be beneficial for soft goods companies, since many factors can suddenly alter demand.

Use historical data to establish a one-number plan across your supply chain. Create plan goals and maintain flexibility. Assess the plan regularly and make changes as needed.

2. Monitor in-season performance. Soft goods companies commonly use complex spreadsheets for supply chain planning, but these lead to inaccuracies.

Track in-season performance of your supply chain to ensure you maintain a steady stock of in-season items that hit the mark with consumers. This also allows you to cut down on items that fail to meet consumers’ expectations before stock-outs and markdowns are required.

3. Use customer segmentation to your advantage. The best soft goods supply chain plans are built with customer segments top of mind. Companies that segment customers and localize assortments are well-equipped to deliver the right products to the right consumers at the right time. They can accommodate customer requests as well.

Set up your customer segments based on preferred apparel and accessories and fine-tune your supply chain based on these segments. Over time, this will optimize your supply chain planning, sourcing, and replenishment strategies.

4. Streamline S&OP. Sales and operations planning (S&OP) helps soft goods companies determine how much merchandise is required to achieve their goals. Effective S&OP requires a business to account for its people, processes, and technologies.

It is crucial to use S&OP technologies that support integrated business planning and help develop processes that simplify supply chain operations. They also provide supply chain transparency to the point where different departments can work together to analyze data, generate insights, and find ways to help your business achieve its goals.

A. When working with a digital solution, ensuring the reliability of that solution is critical. Tracking a shipment through digital partners is helpful only until a problem occurs.

Backups and fail-safes keep business moving. Companies cannot become completely dependent on an automated solution but should rather make sure digital initiatives support the process and do so consistently.

Digitization shouldn’t simply move or mask inefficiencies but address them within the enterprise. Part of that is the capturing of data, not just in support of creating the transformation, but also creating ancillary information as part of having a digital system in place of a manual one.

Q. How do you acquire reliable and useful data from digital transformations?

A. Data has to be linked to processes and action to be meaningful. Generating even Zettabytes of data is next to useless if that data is not understood within the process and what the resultant actions are from generating it. Logistics is still, in many ways, about the blue dot—or where is my thing right now? But that’s not really a meaningful piece of information.

What we really want to know is—when will my thing get there—and even further—how does that relate to my supply chain or timeline needs?

Understanding how raw data truly connects to actions and processes is critical to understanding its importance. Obtaining useful data is all about process and action. If you can answer the question of how a particular person would use the data, you’re on the right track. This takes the right tools and skillsets to action.

Transportation companies, like many other industries, must transform their approach to be data-driven and have the partners and/or team members to drive that approach.

Q. How has having a holistic digital transformation and data approach enabled Trinity to meet industry challenges?

A. Digitalization cannot be considered in a silo; it needs to be approached from a holistic perspective. In logistics there are many pieces of information coming from a variety of different sources. Approaching document retrieval digitally, for example, has created tremendous efficiencies in the organization; however, digitizing anything uncovers issues that were addressed by people in the manual process but show up as gaps in the digital approach.

That data needs to be captured and evaluated as part of the implementation to understand when exceptions are occurring and how to deal with them. Understanding both the positive and negative datasets inherent in any digital transformation allows us to create an effective implementation. That effective implementation frees up our team to spend more time building relationships with each other, our shippers, and carrier customers which is the ultimate goal of digital transformation and technology in general.