PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Logistics technology leaders who recently gathered at the Transportation Intermediaries Association’s Technovations event highlighted challenges of balancing technology investment with budget constraints in the current freight market.
A common theme: Be strategic and selective with technology implementations, while maximizing the value of existing tools and vendor relationships.
Several speakers, representing companies including FreightVana, SiLo, C.H. Robinson (NASDAQ:CHRW), Sunset Transportation and Kingsgate Logistics, emphasized the importance of understanding how current technologies are being used within their organizations.
According to the panel of experts, this process should involve auditing usage data, soliciting feedback from front-line employees, and identifying opportunities to improve adoption and efficiency.
“We did guided exercises [with employees]. One of those exercises was asking, ‘What new technology this year at Sunset has been implemented effectively?’…,” said John Sutton, director of corporate support at Sunset Transportation. “We knew that that answer was going to probably come lower-middle of [expectations], which it did. But the point of it was to open them up to the next question that was coming: ‘What is technology that we should be evaluating that we’re not evaluating, that you would want to immediately adopt?’”
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The conversation also touched on the delicate balance between core competencies and market pressures. Speakers acknowledged the challenge of asking technology vendors to continually expand their offerings, while also needing those partners to remain focused on their areas of expertise.
“It’s an interesting economy because you want your FreightTech vendors to expand with you and fix more problems so you don’t have to bring in other providers. But at the same time, you want people wildly focused on their core competency. So we’re asking a lot of people in this room to stretch,” said Don Everhart, chief technology officer at FreightVana.
Strategies like pilot programs and phased rollouts emerged as ways to test new solutions without disrupting critical business operations.
“The most success that we’ve had is primarily in pilot groups,” said Sutton. “A lot of the vendors that we’ve spoken with are open to doing a pilot group at a reduced or significantly reduced cost, and that’s been a very large help in being able to identify the [technology] gaps, get them plugged, and move forward with implementation, such that whenever we’re ready for a full rollout, we’re good to go on day zero.”
Effective technology implementation was another key theme. Speakers shared lessons learned around driving user adoption, managing shadow IT (unauthorized technology use) and calculating return on investment.
The group emphasized the importance of having clear success metrics, transparent communication and the willingness to sunset underperforming solutions.
“We’re getting a lot more intentional about [trying technology], and then if it’s not working, be OK with saying that didn’t work and asking, ‘What did we learn from that not working?’” said Cody Griggs, vice president of digital brokerage at C.H. Robinson.
Lastly, the conversation highlighted the value of the logistics technology community as a resource for learning and growth. Speakers encouraged their peers to leverage networking opportunities, industry events and peer-to-peer relationships to expand their technical capabilities in a constrained market environment.
“Good news is, we’ll survive this,” said Brian Roy, head of business operations at SiLo. “In some ways, this could be a renaissance for many of us, but we’re also able to partner and work alongside each other and have conversations like this that really will move the needle.”
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