The logistics industry has always been volatile. Constant changes include geopolitical unrest, regulatory change, weather events, natural disasters, government sanctions, trade pacts and the global and domestic economics that drive global trade. This requires increasing sophistication and integrated capability, far beyond just pure visibility.
Machine learning, natural language processing and sophisticated automation of logistics execution, combined with deeper trade and logistics data and a wide range of up-to-date information sets and real time events, create actionable insights to plan, manage, predict, avoid or minimize disruptions. Deep, accurate global visibility, aggregated and cleansed, enhances planning and management of freight movements via ocean, air, road and rail. But the supply chain is more than freight movements.
The pandemic created a boom for international trade along with many problems. It highlighted that a large and global network is much more valuable than a tech-led digital freight forwarder. The future of digital freight forwarding is that all successful players will be digital with global execution capability and sophisticated technology. A pure play digital startup without capacity can’t compete.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply chain moved from “just in time” to “just in case,” as visibility only reveals bottlenecks after they happen. Post-COVID, higher interest rates, tighter margins and improved network capacity return focus to just-in-time delivery, productivity and efficiency.
Many LogTech startups targeting a single problem are struggling; funding has dried up, cash-burn/land-grab models are no longer rational, if they ever were.
Substantial improvements to logistics and the supply chain are much more complex than simple logistics visibility, which is increasingly a commodity. Automation, data science, NLP and many other AI advances add value to the future of the industry, but real solutions require long-term focus, substantial investment and innovation targeting a wide range of issues. The only viable, long-term solution will be integrated and whole of problem domain.