IT\\\ Making IT work
Mike Bryant asks Richard White, CEO of WiseTech Global, a cloud-based soſtware systems developer for the international logistics industry, how he sees the needs of his company’s wide-ranging customer portfolio changing over time and what he expects the future IT requirements of the world’s logistics operators to look like.
“Customers are now much more focused on automation (involving the removal of labour costs and the computerisation of repetitive processes); electronic integration (connecting our customers with their customers, carriers and service providers through electronic communications); increased productivity of staff (scheduling, and managing workflow and workload better); and shared services models than at any time in the past,” he says. “As such, we have been
focused on how to extend and expand our support of these critical
business needs and
have been investing heavily and leveraging technology to create these effects.” As to the future, “I think the real
issues in the next three to five years are going to be having enough focus, commitment, technical and financial ability to capture, adapt and leverage as disruption happens,” White predicts. “Models that have worked for 50 years are going to be challenged. The real skill is being poised with enough interest and resource to adapt and leverage from disruptive change.” As the industry changes, so
too do the demands on IT. But there are also more powerful, long-term factors at work. “Many industry-driven changes are fairly soſt, slow and incremental,” White suggests. “The real pressures from industry are the same pressures and conflicts that have been there for many years – pressure on margins, difficulty in growing, complex management of a disparate organisation, difficulties in managing the volatile environment of international logistics. But I see these as second- order issues, as they are likely to improve on a continuum rather than be resolved or dramatically addressed. “I do, however,
see many
successful businesses that do not have these conflicts and are doing things differently. Technology is key to leveraging a logistics business, but the ‘siren
song’ of self-development is now clearly a failed model, with so many expensive examples of IT project failures and huge sunk cost developments being canned without commercial outcome. The real leverage of technology is how you select, acquire, utilise and amplify your (hopefully) ‘state-of-the-art’ IT platform and how you maximise the benefits and minimise the operational costs of manual
systems and
unskilled labour, while moving to a value-based sales approach rather than price-based thinking.”
The importance of innovation
WiseTech currently has over 500 staff, and more than 60% of these people are engaged in product development. “So, whatever we do, we are very, very product, quality and delivery-centric,” White insists. He likes to focus the entire business on a number of key areas: Productivity and being the
centre of everything. This is both within WiseTech Global (which uses its own flagship product, CargoWise One, across the entire company as its operating system) and in its customers’ businesses. The aim is for WiseTech soſtware to dramatically increase the throughput of customers’ operations without increasing their staff head count (in some cases by adopting fully automated
business processes). Deep functionality.
“We
care about our product’s capability and we are always advancing the ability of the product to support our customers and the international and domestic logistics industry in every way possible. Functional capability means that customers can manage more of their business via CargoWise One and do more with less because of that functional capability,” White argues. Powerful integration. WiseTech needs to connect
its customers to the complete logistics world – to carriers, governments, suppliers, partners and others – and it does that in ways that White describes as “powerfully automated and electronic in nature”. Global and local compliance.
Operating a logistics-related enterprise has become a complex and
risky business,
and governments and the industry itself enact more and more regulatory requirements, pushing an increasing burden onto WiseTech customers and the industry, White suggests. WiseTech provides a deep and long-term focus on meeting and managing many regulatory burdens, he says. “Compliance obligations are built right into the system so that it is a part of a workflow and as easy as simple as we can make it.”
Crystal ball
“Ten years forward, I believe that the industry will be very different in some ways and quite similar in others,” White explains. “It is clear that technology is a major driver, but no one in logistics adopts technology for its own sake – it is a question of getting better outcomes, better and more reliable delivery, lower costs, higher efficiencies and more visible and predictable outcomes. “E-freight is a partial answer,
but there are many things that are more disruptive and fundamental
Issue 7 2015 - Freight Business Journal
than e-freight. Five years ago the taxi industry was fairly stable and there was no one player; now, Uber is delighting its customers and frightening taxi owners and drivers and upsetting regulators –
Uber is the largest taxi company in the world and its customers almost all love it. “This sort of
17 transformation
is not only possible in logistics, it is absolutely going to happen,”
he insists. “It will either happen to you (without your consent) or to your advantage, when you have technology, systems and management vision to leverage the change.”
Technology will be key weapon in battle of the forwarders
Small- and mid-sized freight forwarders need innovative technology if they hope to remain competitive with logistics giants, according to a new white paper published by consultants Ti and technology provider Kewill. As recent acquisitions have
shown, large forwarders are increasing their scale not only to leverage their buying power and geographic scope but also to develop their range of services, especially those that add value and increase margin, the paper argues. If the small- and medium-sized
independent freight forwarders are to compete effectively they will need to become smarter and more efficient and enhance their offerings
- in an environment
where manual data entry is currently still widespread. For some, this means developing expertise in
niche sectors to
differentiate their services. Others will evolve from pure forwarders to fully developed logistics providers. Kewill chief marketing
officer, Evan Puzey said: “Cloud computing gives freight forwarders, particularly the small- to medium-sized companies, the logistics toolkit they need to remain nimble in a highly competitive market with thin margins.” “In the future, highly functional
systems, operating as a single application – covering every aspect of operations from pricing, order management, shipping, warehousing and transportation management – will emerge,” added Ken Lyon, one of the white paper’s authors.
“These will be
available as subscription services in the public ‘Cloud,’ accessible via a variety of computing platforms.” The paper’s authors add that,
for small and medium sized forwarders, technology will need to be quick and easy to implement and provide much better end-to-end visibility. At the other end of the spectrum, logistics giants will also need to adopt Cloud solutions that remove the need for huge internal support functions. They also say that scale
can be a help but it is also a hindrance in terms of agility and the implementation of innovative technology. However independent forwarders will need to become smarter in order to grow and lock in customers. They must exploit the opportunities that the democratization of technology has brought about as well as using the experience, expertise and decision-making capabilities of their employees.
http://info.kewill.com/ti-kewill-2015
Strong start for AMI’s on-line cargo portal
The UK arm of airfreight and express wholesaler AMI has produced a new on-line Quote&Book portal, modelled on AMI’s Express click2ship model, launched in 2010. AMI-approved agent customers enter shipment details
to obtain
immediate quotes and prices can then be filtered using AMI’s consolidation or direct AWB service, as well as by airport of departure, direct or deferred services. Customers requiring additional value added services can also request these via the site -
including a nationwide collection service, HAWB production, NES entries and security screening. Prices will appear as all-inclusive, but customers can also view a detailed break-down. Quotes can be printed, emailed and/or stored on the system for subsequent retrieval when the enquiry becomes a booking. In its first phase release, Quote&Book caters
for Airport-to-Airport export shipments; a second phase, covering Airport-to-Door (DDU/DDP), is due for release later in 2015.
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