I recently had the pleasure of interviewing George Abernathy, a true legend in the transportation procurement business, for my podcast. George is a Board Member & Strategic Advisor and is the very recent past President of Emerge.

Over the course of our conversation, George provided invaluable insights into this complex industry from someone with over three decades of experience. Here are a few of the many takeaways:

Deregulation Revolutionized the Industry
When the trucking industry was deregulated in 1980, it opened the door for thousands of new carriers to enter the market. This dramatically increased competition and drove down average freight costs. Deregulation created growth and opportunities that are still being reaped.

Procurement of Truckload Has Unique Challenges
Things like bid generation, carrier selection factors, and the "non-binding" nature of contracts make truckload procurement quite different from procuring other goods. George dove deep into these nuanced topics, providing helpful context for outsiders, those who are new to transportation procurement, and even seasoned professionals.

Routing Guides & Waterfall Systems
Carriers are assigned to lanes through a routing guide generated from the bid results. With thousands of carriers and uncertain demand, "waterfalls" allow loads to trickle down the guide if the top carriers can't accept.

Spot Market Volatility
Lanes with low and unpredictable volumes often fall out of routing guides, landing in the volatile spot market. George explained how platforms can better connect these loads directly with interested carriers.

Technology is Enhancing Procurement
While challenges remain, technology has accelerated innovation in transportation procurement best practices. More nimble bidding, strategic carrier relationships, and connectivity are allowing shippers and carriers to achieve mutual success in new ways.

If you listen to the podcast, you will come away with tremendous respect for the complexities of this industry and appreciation for visionaries like George Abernathy who are helping all participants optimize operations through knowledge and technology. It was a privilege to learn from such an esteemed expert.

Resources for this Episode:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jbl.12333

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Jeffrey Nicholson, CEO and Co-Founder of Tracer, for my podcast. Tracer was originally incubated within VaynerMedia to automate reporting and analytics, and has grown into a leading data intelligence platform.

Jeffrey has over 20 years of experience in digital marketing and data, previously holding leadership roles at VaynerMedia. He co-founded Tracer in 2018 to solve the challenge of bringing together fragmented data sources into a unified view.

A few of the many insights from our discussion:

• E-commerce continues to see strong growth, with the global market projected to reach $6.3 trillion in 2023, up 10% from the prior year. China's e-commerce market is already twice the size of the US.
• Fashion, at $870 billion in 2022, makes up the largest segment of the booming e-commerce market. While many doubted online clothing sales early on, consumer behavior has clearly changed.
• Most companies deal with over 100 partners across marketing, requiring complex data processing just to understand results. Tracer aims to give independence and control over this data.
• Contextualization is where most "tech debt" lives - different definitions of terms like "social" between brands make reporting a challenge. Tracer provides flexibility here.
• Key brands have partnered with Tracer to gain independence, collaborate better across teams, and optimize investments based on unified data insights.

It was fascinating to learn more about the rapidly evolving world of marketing data and analytics from an expert like Jeffrey.

On a recent episode of my podcast I talked with Dan Johnston, CEO and co-founder of WorkStep, about using data and analytics to create a better work experience for frontline employees.

WorkStep’s mission is to make the frontline a better place to work through the use of technology. Dan saw firsthand as a retail and supply chain worker the challenges faced by frontline employees, including lack of career growth opportunities, scheduling issues, and feeling disconnected from decision makers.

WorkStep’s software platform aims to address these challenges by collecting feedback from employees, analyzing data, and giving insights to HR and operations leaders so they can collaborate on solutions. Some key ways they do this include:

• Gathering sentiment data on various work themes like benefits, job satisfaction over time and across different employee groups.
• Using predictive analytics to determine what factors like benefits, management, job expectations actually correlate to important metrics like turnover, not just what employees report as issues.
• Employing AI to surface deeper insights from large amounts of employee feedback data.
• Empowering individual loop closure where employees who report issues directly receive a response, lowering their likelihood of turnover by 28%.
• Bringing HR and operations teams together around a shared data source to find collaborative solutions.

As the labor market remains strained, Dan sees WorkStep continuing to evolve by bringing the right insights to leaders more proactively and automating more of the process. Their goal is to make the employee experience more adaptive based on individual context like tenure. If they can deliver better understanding and faster actions, companies can create real change for their frontline workforces.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Andrew Leto, CEO and founder of Emerge, a company reinventing freight procurement. Andrew has an impressive background as a serial entrepreneur in logistics and technology.

Andrew has always had an entrepreneurial spirit and curiosity about business. As a young man serving in the Navy, he voraciously read every business book he could get his hands on. One book that had a profound impact on him was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It introduced him to ideas that helped propel him to start his first company without any money after leaving the Navy.

In the interview, Andrew shared insights into the traditional freight procurement process and why it is ripe for reinvention. Most shippers rely on emailing Excel spreadsheets to a limited number of carriers when procuring transportation. This locks out the vast majority of capacity from even bidding on the freight. By bringing more carriers into the bidding process through an online platform, shippers can achieve 10-15% lower pricing simply due to increased competition.

Emerge is tackling this problem by providing an online marketplace where shippers can run procurement events to source truckload, intermodal and drayage transportation. This benefits both shippers through lower rates, and carriers by accessing new freight opportunities that better fit their networks. Andrew is passionate about increasing efficiency in the highly fragmented trucking industry.

The interview also delved into opportunities around more efficiently utilizing private fleets and dedicated capacity. A significant percentage of private fleet trucks travel with empty backhauls, representing underutilized capacity. Emerge's vision is to connect this capacity to other shippers' freight needs through the marketplace. This could drive down transportation costs even further across the industry.

It was fascinating to gain Andrew's perspectives on reinventing an area as fundamental to supply chains as freight procurement. Emerge is pursuing an ambitious goal that could transform how transportation services are procured for the benefit of all players. Their efforts showcase the potential of leveraging technology and marketplace forces to increase efficiency in logistics.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Erhan Musaoglu, Founder and CEO of Logiwa, on my podcast. Logiwa provides a cloud-based fulfillment management system designed specifically for direct-to-consumer e-commerce businesses. In this post, I'll summarize key insights from our conversation on the unique challenges of e-commerce fulfillment and how Logiwa's solution helps businesses scale operations efficiently.

Key Challenges of E-Commerce Fulfillment

- High volume small orders: E-commerce involves processing thousands of individual customer orders per day rather than bulk shipments like traditional B2B warehousing. This requires optimized systems to handle the volume.
- Labor turnover: Warehouse staff turnover is high in e-commerce, so systems need intuitive interfaces that allow quick training of new hires.
- Fast delivery: Customer expectations for fast shipping means businesses need local micro-fulfillment centers. This requires systems with visibility across multiple locations.
- Dynamic requirements: E-commerce models change frequently, so systems need flexibility to adapt to new bundle options, carriers etc.

Requirements for Scaling E-Commerce Fulfillment

- Algorithms must optimize ecommerce specific tasks like split order shipments and personalized print packaging.
- Regular automatic updates to remove need for major on-site upgrades.
- Must connect directly with shopping carts and sales channels for automated order management.
- Must optimize shipment routing across multiple fulfillment centers to meet delivery speed needs.
- Flexible automation is needed to help adapt to changing needs with configurable rules, directed put-away logic etc.

The Future of E-Commerce Fulfillment Tech:

Erhan sees robotics, AI, and open architecture as key next innovations. Logiwa is already integrating robotics and developing AI for tasks like onboarding and benchmarking. The API approach also allows partners to build custom solutions on top of Logiwa's powerful core e-commerce optimization engines.

The pandemic, rising inflation, and labor market volatility have disrupted traditional work life, including how companies schedule employees. I spoke with three executives from Shiftboard, a workforce scheduling solutions company, about how their technology empowers employers and employees to adapt to the new world of work.

Shiftboard caters to manufacturing, healthcare, and energy industries—industries that never hit the "pause" button, even during global crises. During the pandemic, these companies struggled to attract enough shift and hourly workers to offset high turnover and absenteeism. With this constant volatility, employees’ need for flexibility grew, and scheduling complexity increased. Platforms like Shiftboard gained recognition for easing this complexity, offering greater flexibility to workers while maintaining shift coverage to keep operations running.

Surveys show the majority of hourly workers believe scheduling significantly impacts their work-life balance and job satisfaction. Employers recognize this and see the need to become more competitive in attracting talent. It's about more than just pay - workers highly value flexibility and work-life balance.

By automating scheduling through SaaS platforms like Shiftboard, employees gain 24/7 visibility into their work schedules, can more easily communicate with managers, and have options to pick up open shifts or trade shifts with coworkers. Increasing employees' sense of job autonomy improves engagement and reduces frustration and work-life conflicts.

On the employer side, employee scheduling automation increases workforce data visibility for operations leaders, ensuring schedule compliance with safety standards, fatigue policies, and union agreements. Intelligent algorithms ease complexity from varied shift requirements, flex labor pools, and contingent workers. After implementing preference-based overtime scheduling through Shiftboard, one client experienced a 47% drop in absenteeism.

The key takeaway is to prioritize listening to your workforce and continually adapting to meet the needs of employees. Surveys can identify areas where technology can alleviate scheduling issues and enhance job satisfaction. In today's competitive landscape, embracing digital transformation of employee scheduling is no longer optional—it's essential to becoming an employer of choice.

Shaveer Mirpuri, founder and CEO of Insite AI, recently appeared on The Matt Waller Podcast to discuss how artificial intelligence is transforming the consumer brands and retail industries. Insite AI, founded in 2019, uses AI to help major CPG companies optimize their retail channels, manage relationships, and drive revenue growth.

Some key takeaways from the interview:

Insight AI has achieved remarkable growth under Shaveer's leadership, tripling revenue in just 15 months. He attributes this success to 1) developing a great product with advanced AI capabilities, 2) bringing on smart people from CPG and retail who deeply understand the industry problems, and 3) establishing credibility and trust with customers.

The $19 million Series A funding raised last year will help educate consumer brands on their AI strategy and support their organizational change management as they adopt these new technologies.

Major opportunities for AI in consumer brands/retail include better data harmonization, more accurate demand forecasting, optimization of pricing/promotions/assortment, and interpretable AI to explain the recommendations.

Attracting top AI talent requires having the data and giving them the freedom to lead real change. Retention is about empowering them as founders and tying them to the vision, not just the company.

Partnering with large CPGs requires mapping their organizational structure and team motivations to orchestrate how they work together and adopt new solutions.

As a leader, Shaveer deals with the stress by focusing obsessively on how to accelerate explosive growth and getting passionately obsessed with problem-solving.

The interview provides fascinating insights into how AI can empower CPG brands and retailers to make better data-driven decisions. Shaveer makes a compelling case for how these technologies will transform go-to-market strategies, negotiations, and operational efficiencies in the near future.

Where the future of the retail value chain is being built.

As a supply chain management professor, consultant, and investor, my mission is to bridge the gap between academia, industry, and investment by advancing the understanding and implementation of innovative logistics and ecommerce technologies. I aim to foster effective and efficient supply chains, creating value for businesses, investors, students, the university, and society.