FreightTech Strategy with Guest: Joe Juhnke

Episode 4: FreightTech Strategy with Guest: Joe Juhnke | The Extra Mile Podcast by CarrierDirect

In this episode,Bain & P-Mutt chat with Joe Juhnke about Tech Strategy in freight, transportation, logistics. FreightTech is not one size fits all: You need to know your business and what differentiates you.

Joe discusses the Benefits of having a Central Data Repository

You can start to work with BI.

You can start to pull workflows off your TMS and begin to build them out in a way the allows you to replace what isn't great about your package and customize what you need.

Learn more in this blog post by Joe about the star schema structure.

Integrations in Freight and Network Building

We have a convergence of data in transportation & logistics. Companies have stopped building firewalls: They are accepting that we’re all going to be connected eventually. This is exciting because the companies that are returning real-time rate quotes are getting the bids. Users are making the easy choice. This is a huge shift for our industry. Many companies don't have dynamic rating programs yet, and hyper-dynamic pricing is going to be a game changer.

TMS providers and other data providers are providing open APIs. This is a huge opportunity! Integrations in freight have their challenges, but there are solutions.

Buy vs Build

Buy what you can and build what will differentiate you.

Download our free buy vs build guide for freight by clicking here.

What is Tech Strategy in Freight?

It's roadmapping, it's vision, it’s tech deployment. It’s starting to understand your differentiators. Change management and training orbit tech strategy.

Tech strategy is not one size fits all.

Tech strategy for a company that specializes in flatbed brokering is going to be different from a business doing dry van or liquids or reefers.

For reefers, we need real-time temperatures. For example, a distributed ledger that allows us to certify the temperature throughout transit.

Flatbeds don't care about temperature, but flatbeds are highly customizable. Imagine real-time rate quotes for a flat bed.

One part of tech strategy in freight is figuring out how to get faster and more nimble.

No tech strategy should be a single, large decision. You should have milestones and a north star, but you should be agile in working toward these. Take small, measurable steps! For example, build a low cost item like a workflow or an application, then measure its performance against your baseline. What you learn from this will inform your next cycle. This feedback loop is small iterations.

Essentially you should be reevaluating your plan annually. You want to be making progress toward your north star, but you also want to be nimble enough to pivot when you need to.

Every company should take a moment to ask themselves:

• What is our tolerance for change?
• What is our fear of change?