AI in logistics: your job's safe – it's the 'next-gen' skilled workforce
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© Bastetamon
By Alex Lennane
The news from Flexport about its job losses continues to reverberate around the market – not least on LinkedIn, which is heaving with moral outrage over the way the redundancies were notified (email), the recent addition of several high-salaried Amazon executives to the management team ...
Comment on this article
Andrew Fisher
January 13, 2023 at 3:42 pmAs a customer of Flexport we have found their service levels have matched that of a traditional very large forwarder that we used previously, and still use for a smaller proportion of our business. What Flexport have proven is that their platform it always up to date with information from our shippers and the carriers which is something we have found immensely beneficial to our business processes. The search facility has to be likened to Google! With the “traditional” forwarder what takes a minute to look up on the Flexport platform could take a few email changes plus waiting time to get the answer we want, in this world that’s too long. The hard truth is that the traditional forwarders need to still provide the person to person service they always have done but add to that a platform that either matches what Flexport has or better it. If they think about it that will clearly save them a lot of operational time as well! If they don’t make the changes that their customers are looking for these traditional forwarders will find they will lose out to someone else that comes up with this combination of a great platform and service, which, to be fair for us Flexport have already done.
Ryan Clark
January 20, 2023 at 2:53 pmIt’s a great point Andrew. I am a competitor of Flexport but can see both negatives and positives.
I love what they’ve done with the software side of things, and equally quite annoyed as we spent far longer, with a smaller budget to develop many of the tools they have (ourselves, in house over the past 5 years). I haven’t used the Flexport system for obvious reasons not being a client, but I’d be hopeful what we have is similar – although I think we need constant development to ensure we’re not left behind. I’d say we need to catch up a little already but, again I have ideas of clients needs with a long wish list for developers myself (If I could only find some willing to come and do a years contract that’ll do us nicely!).
At the same time, what I don’t like about the new tech forwarders, or should I say don’t have any envious thoughts about, is the lack of actual traditional forwarding values/experience. There’s so many times when you just need that good ole ‘pull the rabbit out of the hat’ move that a forward is invaluable for getting out of a sticky situation.
This is why we gave our company the tag line of ‘Digital feel, personal touch’.
James Miller
January 13, 2023 at 3:55 pmI can never understand why digitalisation is such a polarising subject for so many. We need freight associations to help educate/show how technology can achieve (internal and external) efficiencies, and help their members understand how integrating an element of digitalisation (alongside the traditional forwarder offering/expertise) will allow them to become cost and value leaders for many years to come.