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Issue 6 2018 - Freight Business Journal


Zencargo takes the stress out of the supply chain


IT


London-based digital freight forwarder Zencargo actively manages the logistics of some of the fastest growing businesses across Europe. It regards technology as a “critical tool that will enable efficiency in the industry, helping shippers increase visibility, make faster decisions based on data and streamline their operations”, says co-founder and head of growth and product Richard Fattal. He explains: “We know that


the freight industry suffers from issues of visibility and communication, it’s difficult to


find out where all your shipments are in their chain and there are lots of points of contact. That’s why we have built our platform to enable our clients to review the progress of their shipments and manage all communications associated with a shipment. This helps logistics teams quickly stay on top of their goods as they know where all of their products are and can implement their actions plans to ensure that their system runs smoothly.” The Zencargo platform offers a


range of benefits for the user. “Our dashboards are a central hub for


Global supply chain services giant Panalpina has become the latest of the big multimodal forwarders to establish a department dedicated to developing cutting-edge logistics technology. It has established the Panalpina


Digital Hub in order to “promote innovation in freight forwarding and logistics”, it said in a statement. The Zurich, Switzerland-


based Hub is intended to exploit the


latest technologies such


as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, predictive analytics and blockchain which are likely to revolutionise supply chain operations in coming years. The Hub is led by Panalpina’s


Luca Graf, who reports directly to company chief executive Stefan Karlen. As well as exploring innovative technologies and developing new digital solutions for customers, the Hub is also expecting to engage with various digital start-up companies. Karlen explains: “We, like many


of our competitors, are challenged by new market entrants with innovative business models and digital approaches that improve upon the old way of doing things. Additionally, our customers increasingly demand the digital experience they have become accustomed to as consumers: they now expect a similar experience in a business-to-business environment.


“It is therefore obvious that


the frontier of freight forwarding and logistics does not lie in new modes of transport, but in digital transformation. Knowing that, we want to shape our industry’s future with innovative digital solutions that create new levels of value for our customers and accelerate growth for our company in the years to come.”


Disruptive technologies


Of the various state-of-the-art technologies on which the Hub is focusing its attention: “IoT is a technological development whereby all sorts of devices like smartphones or computers are connected to the internet. In the short term, IoT can help us streamline our processes and create more efficient supply chains. The challenge will lie in deriving the relevant actions from the wealth of IoT data,” Graf says. “Predictive analytics and


artificial intelligence will optimise products and services and create new ones, as can currently be seen in Amazon’s recommendation engine,” he points out. And, finally: “Blockchain


technology, which creates a digital record of every transaction made in a decentralised and secure way using cryptography, has the potential to disrupt the industry in the long term by impacting contracts, freight payments, chain


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communication with suppliers, we save all notes for each shipment securely in the Cloud. This saves our clients hundreds of hours siſting through emails, stopping critical information being lost and preventing manual errors that can hamper operations. “But our


key point of


differentiation is that we enable our clients to manage by exception. We enable our clients to quickly review all shipments that are encountering issues, such as a delayed cargo ready date, so that they can act fast and implement a solution to prevent problems arising. Our app runs analytics on the cause of delays or issues to reveal systematic faults for our clients, so that they


can develop processes to manage their suppliers better.” Zencargo was only established early 2017. However,


in says


Fattal, the business is founded on over 75 years of experience of the freight and logistics industry, and: “We have combined that experience with our passion for technology to create a platform that delivers a digital solution for logistics. Our platform enables shippers to immediately realise the benefits from technology, real time access to information, automated notifications and transparent communications. We are also on a relentless drive to improve, continuously releasing new features designed to take advantage of the latest technology to help our clients


Panalpina prioritises innovation


of custody, and other issues facing the industry,” Graf asserts. Another priority will be making


the most of the innovative ideas of small, digital start-up companies. “We will engage with promising digital start-ups and work closely together with our colleagues in Air and Ocean Freight, Logistics, IT and finance, to bring viable and value-adding digital solutions into daily practice,” Graf says. “For the moment, we are


focusing on European start-ups of a certain maturity. Further down the road, we will expand our network to the US, Israel and China,” He sees three options to engage with start-ups: to partner with a start-up and act as a vendor for certain applications (soſtware as a service); to enter into a strategic partnership where the start-up develops customized solutions for Panalpina, allowing the company to enter new markets; or Panalpina could also buy a stake in a start-up.


Greater expectations


Graf talked to FBJ about the genesis of the new Panalpina Digital Hub. “Changing customer expectations are really the key driver behind the creation of the Panalpina Digital Hub,” he said. “Customers


increasingly


demand the digital experience they have become accustomed to as consumers in all aspects of their digital lives: they now expect


forwardcomputers.co.uk Luca Graf, Panalpina


a similar experience in a business- to-business environment. These expectations


are fuelled by


evolving disruptive technologies and the increasing number of LogTech start-ups that apply the new technologies. “As more and more venture capital is pumped into our industry,


streamline their processes.” Major changes are taking place


in the world of logistics-related technology, and new businesses such as Zencargo are playing a leading role in the industry’s rapid change. Fattal considers: “Near- term developments will see the creation of a digital infrastructure that joins up all parties involved with a shipment.” No longer will logistics


teams have to manually enter information in shared spreadsheets and emails: “Data and information will instead be communicated automatically, in real time, enabling logistics teams to transfer their focus away from getting visibility on their


shipments to managing exceptions and improving their


start-ups can scale more easily, too. But scalability and – closely linked to that – the operational backbone – remain big challenges for many start-up companies. This is our chance to engage, collaborate and learn from the growing digital ecosystem in order to improve the customer experience and operational efficiencies.” He and Panalpina are looking


for a certain sort of partner. “For the moment, we are focusing on European start-ups that have been around for one to three years and with five to 30 employees. Further down the road, we will expand our network. At the end of the day, we are interested in start-ups that can provide convincing solutions for specific challenges that we and our customers face.” But can the huge, global players


like Panalpina work effectively hand-in-hand with small start- ups to exploit the best that both


supply chain. Digital freight forwarders, like Zencargo, are leading the charge to create easy to use technology that delivers on this promise and reduces the manual burden on logistics teams.” Technology is helping to level


the playing field between small cargo agents and the global freight forwarding giants, he believes. It is “enabling younger players to create automated processes that replicate the services that would have needed huge operations teams in the past. We are pushing the boundaries as our services work in real-time, without human- error, and create more developed solutions that enable our clients to manage global procurement strategies,” Fattal concludes.


have to offer? Is there not every likelihood that the large will swallow up the more effective of the smaller start-ups? A fair point, Graf concedes, but insists: “We have given this a lot of thought. The Digital Hub can act as an intermediary between the start- up ecosystem and the corporate world. We are confident that we will find a way of collaborating that works for everyone.” Graf concludes: “Digital


solutions are getting more and more sophisticated and they certainly have a great potential for disruption, especially if you consider that the way the freight forwarding and logistics industry works today has not fundamentally changed in the past 20 years. We’d rather prepare and be ready for significant changes in the next five years rather than in ten to 20 years.”


Intelligent freight management Forward Computers has catered to our every need and


bent over backwards to ensure that we make full use of


ForwardOffice, configuring it to suit our business and staff. They have even adapted their system just for us, so they are certainly very flexible - and worth every penny.


Gaz Hodson, Operations Manager, Advance Forwarding limited


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