The Extra Mile Podcast by Metafora
By Metafora
The Extra Mile Podcast by MetaforaJun 29, 2022
Freight Tech Conversation with Sean Santiago
In this episode, hosts Adam Perlmutter and Teresa Ronquillo chat with a very special guest, Sean Santiago, SVP of Technology Platforms at TI/NTG. Sean shares about his journey to freight tech, the highlights and challenges along the way, and the exciting advancements he’s seeing in the space.
Background
Sean brings nearly 20 years of experience in the industry, with a diverse background encompassing various roles and responsibilities, primarily in the 3PL space. He began his career at a small mom and pop 3PL in Florida, specializing in refrigerated freight and backhaul optimization, which provided him with invaluable niche market experience. From there, he transitioned to a larger brokerage where he spent 11 years in a variety of positions from carrier sales to operations. It was during this time that Sean’s career took a techie turn, as he became more involved in automation and discovering ways to enhance productivity without increasing workload.
As Sean’s interest in technology continued to grow, he gradually shifted towards the IT side of the industry, ultimately landing a role with UPS Freight’s LTL department. There, he worked on developing a digital supply chain before joining TI/NTG in 2020, where he currently works.
What First Interested Sean about the Tech Side of T&L
When asked about what sparked his interest in the tech side of the industry, Sean shared that for years, colleagues had been suggesting he explore the field. Despite his lack of technical background and training, he was often the person who caught mistakes before a release went to production. Eventually, he took the advice of others and decided to try his hand at tech. It turned out to be the best career decision he ever made.
When asked about some of the most notable advancements Sean has seen in freight tech over the course of his career, Sean commented,
“I think some of the biggest advancements of the last couple of years have been advanced analytics, the ability for NLP, which is natural language processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. All that has brought pricing, route optimization, and freight matching to a completely new level. That is really, really exciting and I think it still has a ton of improvement to go.”- Sean Santiago
Sean Comments on TI/NTGs Biggest Accomplishments Since 2020
Digital transformation: TI/NTG started a digital transformation in 2020 and they’re wrapping the initial part of that program up this year.
Beon Shipper Platform: This is focused on small to medium size shippers. It can handle everything from spot quoting and shipment generation and tendering loads, not only to NTG but other carriers or providers.
Beon Carrier platform: This application is geared toward dispatchers and managing their interactions with the brokerage.
Build vs Buy: It’s The Hybrid Approach for TI/NTG
At TI/NTG, they have a strong belief in the proprietary approach, which involves acquiring or building unique solutions that set the company apart from its competitors. For industry standards or other basic requirements that do not provide significant differentiation, the company follows a “buy” approach to accelerate the process. Integrating purchased solutions is often simpler and quicker than creating something from scratch. By adopting this hybrid strategy, TI/NTG can focus on creating truly innovative solutions that drive their business forward.
TLDR: Buy what you can. Build what will differentiate you.
Learn more about TI/NTG at https://tiholdco.com/ and https://ntgfreight.com/
Sean Santiago can be found on LinkedIn here.
How Sean Stays Connected to the Needs of the Business Sean’s Comments on Notable Advancements in Freight TechSean Notes Three Things He is Bullish About for 2023
Interested in chatting with a SME from Metafora? Request a free discovery call here!
Building Sand Castles with Ed Burns
Background
Ed is a relationship builder who connects shippers and carriers to keep freight moving. He oversees the operations and profitability of Burns Logistics, positioning it as the premier relationship builder in the transportation space.
In his free time, Ed enjoys spending time with his family, reading books, and writing zany LinkedIn posts. He also has a passion for building sandcastles. What does he mean by that? Keep reading to hear his inspiring explanation.
Ed grew up around trucking and freight. His dad, “Big Ed”, was an LTL sales guy, so Ed quickly became familiar with sales calls and manufacturing facilities. While working in marketing for a while, even starting his own digital agency, Ed stayed involved in his father’s industry, attending conferences and offering his marketing services to trucking and freight businesses.
A few years ago, he sold his agency to start working with his father at Burns Logistics, a transportation sales agency that is always connecting people.
What inspires your content and fuels your creativity when posting on LinkedIn?
When he posts on LinkedIn, he tries to combat that by posting intentional and thoughtful content. He mentioned: “One thing that I think is desperately missing from the world today is thoughtfulness in our conversations. There's a desperate need for cordiality and thought provoking content that engages in conversation, and I believe that social media should foremost: be social… you're establishing relationships with other human beings who are living and breathing and have thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes and dreams and failures.”
The Theory of Building Sand Castles
If you've ever built a sandcastle, you know that eventually, the waves will wipe it away. There's all these things that want to destroy your sandcastle could be a dog running along the beach or a tractor that comes along to break it, or kids trying to kick it down.
Similar to how ocean waves come in and out, affecting the sandcastles that we work to build and rebuild, the economy ebbs and flows in ways that can destroy your business if you're not prepared.
“If in our work we can build something that's inspiring, and other people can see the good in what we do, and they can have a takeaway from that… we can inspire them to try to build as well. Then we're touching on creating something of significance, which is what we all want.” - Ed Burns
Connecting with Others
Ed believes that having a big network, relationships, and conversations are valuable in the transportation industry. If you start asking yourself, “who can I help today?”, “how can I help them?”, “who can I connect with?” or “what are their problems?” it starts getting a little bit easier. You have a point of critical mass where you can just start connecting dots together, but that takes a long time to build it. Don’t try to force it!
Ed Talks Freight Tech
Ed mentioned there's something extraordinary coming on. A few years ago it was ‘TMS’, I would go to these conferences out here: Big Data, IOT: These were just buzzwords. But the conversation around tech in transportation and logistics has come a long way.
The issue now is that we have two main entities creating freight tech.
You have the industry-specific legacy tech. This was created by industry vets who have a good understanding of what tech needs to do, but this tech is often unappealing and tends to be less user friendly. There is also room for innovation since tech is so rapidly evolving.
You have people from outside the industry coming in and sharing their own freight tech solutions. This stuff looks beautiful and it's super intuitive and easy to use, however it tends
Customer Service and Why It’s Important with Pawel Wencel
Our hosts Adam”P-Mutt” Perlmutter and Teresa Ronquillo chat with an expert on the topic… Pawel Wencel, Customer Service Manager at Metafora. From what customer service is to what it isn’t, why it’s important, and how to measure its success, we dive into all things customer service with Pawel.
“People Never Forget How You Make Them Feel”- Pawel Wencel
Pawel’s Background:
Born and raised in the beautiful country of Poland in central Europe, then he moved to the United States when he turned 10. During his professional career he worked in a number of fields. He did recruiting for a staffing agency and then transitioned into healthcare manufacturing through a variety of roles and positions. He found Metafora through Shanna Greathouse with whom he used to work with at the healthecare manufacturing firm!
What IS Customer Service and what ISN’T?
Customer Service is not about solving unique problems. Customer Service is about fostering relationships through an ongoing collaborative experience that continuously delivers value to your customers or clients.
There are many ways to do this, including personalized onboarding, identifying and exceeding goals, recommendation of features, proactively asking for and implementing feedback, as well as celebrating each other's success and milestones.
From an organizational perspective it creates loyalty, strengthens reputation, and supports growth.
What it isn’t:
It is not thinking by yourself in a silo
It's not providing limited myopic solutions to problems.
Why is customer service important?
“It's if you're operating a business and if you're looking to maintain your customer base, providing customer support/ Customer service is an incredible way for you to retain customers”- Pawel Wencel
Pawel explains that customer satisfaction directly impacts customer retention, which directly affects revenue:
Strong Brand Loyalty
Higher Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Decreased Brand Abandonment
Retention ROI versus Cost of Acquisition
#FACTS:
Did you know companies with a customer service mindset drive revenue 4 to 8% higher than the rest of their industry?
Roughly 80%, 81% of companies view customer experience as a competitive differentiator.
Your favorite brands are the ones that treat you well and that you have a good experience.
It's more cost effective for a company to retain existing customers than to acquire new customers.
What has led to Metafora’s Customer Service success?
Team Leadership and Teammate Autonomy
Teamwork Buy-In and Collaboration
Setting Realistic and Clear Goals
Defining and Tracking Success and Performance
Going Above and Beyond User Expectations
Fostering Client and User Relationships
Effective User Onboarding and Ongoing Training
Establishing a Hierarchy of Support
Capturing and Implementing Feedback
Having the Right Tool For the Right Job
“Customer service it's not just a function, but necessarily it's just this little amoeba-like thing that touches everything in a good way.”- Pawel Wencel
How do you coach the team on how to handle customer service scenarios that are difficult in nature, e.g. angry customers?
Our team touches base regularly about our experiences/ We review what worked and what didn’t. We’re encouraged to have these courageous and challenging conversations that we can learn from..
Pawel coaches the team on empathizing and taking ownership and responsibility for the solution.
Pawel also coaches the team about taking accountability for driving each solution.
“Anything that's never happened, happens all the time.” - Pawel Wencel
Get to know the new EMP co host, Teresa!
Are you ready for a new season of The Extra Mile Podcast by Metafora? We’re beyond excited to bring you new topics, new guests, and a new… co-host! You know her as Metafora’s Marketing Director, and now she’s adding podcasting to her list of fave things about her job… Introducing: Teresa! Ronquillo. Listen now to catch a sneak peek into what’s in store with Season 3, and get to know P-Mutt’s new co-host.
Host Adam”P-Mutt” Perlmutter puts his new host in the guest seat in this short teaser episode for The Extra Mile Podcast by Metafora. He chats with Teresa about her career, her hobbies, and why she’s excited to be joining him as a host on the pod.
Marketing BackgroundTeresa started her marketing career in New York City, where she did marketing for children's books at Simon & Schuster. After five years in NYC, she took a big leap from NYC to Austin, Texas to join the marketing team at IBM. She credits her expertise in the buyer’s journey to her time there.
In 2017, she decided to take a year off from office life to teach yoga and work at a spa. YOLO.
When she missed the marketing life, she jumped back in to do content marketing for a small media company in Philly, PA. Then, mid-pandemic, she learned about Metafora and their need to build a marketing function. The opportunity sounded amazing and she joined the wonderful Metafora team in November of 2020. Since then, she is proud to slowly but surely be becoming a SME in all things transportation, logistics, and supply chain. (Yes! Ask her about buy vs build or capacity strategy!)
Always on the MoveTeresa has lived all over the place. Cities she has called home? San Antonio, Miami, New York, Austin, Philadelphia, to name a few. Most recently she has moved to a little town called Los Angeles, California.
What else is fun to know about Teresa?She is a passionate yogi and vegan, and an amateur comedian. In her free time you might find her performing stand up and improv comedy in LA. (What!?)
Marketing at MetaforaTeresa spends her workday managing all things marketing for Metafora. Along with her amazing marketing coordinator, Valentina Hoyos, (Lean Solutions Group shout out!) Teresa helps plan Metafora’s conference presence, develop and execute content strategy, build campaigns, manage agencies, and so much more. She is particularly proud of the Metafora blog and all the downloadable content that Metafora has published over the past couple of years.
“There's so much research, preparation, interviews, writing, and editing that go into our content.” - Teresa Ronquillo
What has Teresa learned during her time with Metafora?“I've learned so much about employee engagement and retention, both in the content that we've created and shared via our blog and social media, but also just from our own company culture.”
Teresa adds, “...I learned a lot this year about capacity strategy, and pretty much anything that we've put out content on. I genuinely feel like I learn so much in the process.”
A Look Ahead: Season 3 of The Extra Mile Podcast by MetaforaWe’ll continue to focus on training, training-as-a-service. We’ll dig deeper into buy vs build and a hybrid approach. Agile improvement will also be a spotlight topic for 2023. All this and more so be sure to like, share, subscribe, etc.
Training: More Important Than You Realize with Ryan Schreiber
Have you been hearing us talk recently about… training, training, and more training? Did you hear our recent announcement about Sync Logistics training? Well, the hype is still going in this episode of the Extra Mile Podcast by Metafora. Also, did we mention… it’s the season finale!!!! Don’t worry though, we’ll be back in 2023 with more great guests and conversations. Our host Adam”P-Mutt” Perlmutter and guest host Teresa Ronquillo chat with the one and only Ryan Schreiber, VP of Industry and Growth at Metafora. They discussed a very interesting topic: training and training-as-a-service. What’s the moral of the story? There is a business cost to not doing training or to doing training poorly. Conversely, if you train your people the right way, it’s an investment rather than an expense. This way, your employees will be trained based on what you need for the company and, more importantly, what you need from them. Training-as-a-Service: Sync Logistics Training Ryan shares the origin story of the brand name for this new training-as-a-service solution. Sync made sense for so many reasons, largely what it represents as the root word for many other words. To illustrate: Some of the training can be done synchronously. Some of the training can be done asynchronously. Sync is synchronizing the learning, as in standardizing it. Issues with the Current State of Training We dump too much on people early on, and then they often remember a bunch of stuff they don’t need to remember yet, and they don’t remember a bunch of stuff they do need to know at that point in their training. Companies don’t do enough training early on and then don’t have an opportunity to come back to the basics for many employees. Setting this foundation is crucial. Companies don’t do a good job explaining the “why”. Without the why, you’re simply just training your people to become automatons. The training sticks and becomes true knowledge when people understand why they are learning it, why it’s important, why it is the way it is, why the knowledge will help them in their role, etc. The focus tends to be on new hires only. There needs to be an equal focus on ongoing and developmental training. Consider: First time managers. How to have difficult conversations. Advanced capacity strategy concepts. What challenges does Sync Logistics Training tackle for transportation and logistics companies? Challenge: It’s hard to avoid management burn-out on training Challenge: It’s difficult to make digital training engaging Challenge: It’s hard to ensure that shadowing time for new hires is valuable, impactful, and not a waste of time for all employees involved Challenge: Improving a training program is costly Challenge: It takes too long to get new hires to a place where they are valuable contributors. What’s the thesis of Sync Logistics Training? The concept here is to take employees on a learning journey, beyond new hire training. It starts on day one, yes, you need to build a better new hire training program, but equally important are ongoing and developmental training. What type of companies would benefit the most from implementing a quality TaaS solution? Ones that want their employees to ramp faster Ones that want their customer and carrier experience to be better Ones that want to build a deeper bench Want to check out more of the content references in this episode? Well, then, here you go: Official Sync Logistics Training Website Pain Points addressed by Sync Logistics Training Metafora Holiday Gift Guide More training content on the Metafora blog
The Evolution of LTL with Curtis Garrett from FreightPlus
In this episode, Robert Bain chats with Curtis Garrett, Senior Vice President at FreightPlus and the founder and Chief Creative at Understand LTL. They have a deep conversation around the evolution of LTL, where it came from, where it is and where it's going. What is LTL? “LTL: it's easy to plug in some zip codes, some weights and a freight class, and get a quote. It all looks real promising and you just pick who you want to use. But it's often after you hit the book with that carrier, things can kind of go awry from missed pickups or the carrier not having enough capacity when they back into the dock, or literally space on that trailer to the black hole that is sometimes the line haul process, and just going by, scanning in and out of terminals, but not really knowing where the freight is exactly.” - Curtis Garrett LTL Complexities It is segmented and each segment doesn't always communicate as well as it should. You either have an empty truck or trailer in position or you don't. Freight Classes Density: NMFC (The National Motor Freight Traffic Association) items are moving towards just being full density based. If you have the weight and you get the cube of the freight, you end up with that pound per cubic foot, and then that's gonna fit on the scale until you know where the class needs to be. Packaging: Example: TV’S. Those are shipped in the box that's gonna be put on the shelf. So the box itself is a product as well. You have to make sure that it doesn't get scuffed or pierced or damaged.Configurability: How the freight loads into a trailer and utilizes space to then play with other freight. LTL Landscape About 55 to 60 billion a year as far as the true LTL market If you look at the top 25 to 30 carriers, they make up the 99% of that revenue going up to the top. The biggest, FedEx Freight, they're gonna be over 8 billion this year. The second in size is going to be Old Dominion, they should pass 6 billion this year. So there is quite a gap between first and second. And then you've got The Yellows, The XPOs, The T Force and Estes, etc. There's a lot that is tightly packed, they're always changing and leapfrogging. Then you have some very solid regionals, which are very good options to use. They're big enough that they have the resources, the capacity, the technology, but they are tightly focused on a certain region in the country with usually quicker transit times. Why would a shipper or manufacturer, anybody that utilizes LTL services, why would they want to utilize an LTL carrier? It depends on how much you are shipping at a time. What's the average pallet count or weight of orders that you're sending out?, LTL allows you to be nimble and strategic with getting your product to your customers or bringing raw materials or different products into your own facility. LTL Pricing Misunderstandings around pricing It needs to be simplified. It's complicated now because the carriers have a hard job. Managing the labor, the equipment, the facilities, the fuel, to account for all that and run some shipment data through your cost model. There's a lot of moving parts and a lot of variables. Curtis Garrett mentioned “I think, to simplify this, it's going to be a collaboration, a community effort between companies and people willing to experiment, take a chance, try something new, document that, turn that into a new pricing product, and just kind of move slowly there…It's just gonna have to continue evolving.” LTL Future Build a community Everybody from different party lines or different silos, can come together and share ideas and collaborate and get better. Learn more about FreightPlus at https://www.freightplus.io/
A deep conversation around Logistics Systems with Mike Mulqueen from JBF
Mulqueen also outlines big logistics technology changes, recent market trends, key technologies/considerations that shippers should be watching, and more!
“Our primary clients are shippers… that will use contract freight, LTL,, truck load, parcel. Oftentimes they'll have either dedicated fleets or private fleets, and we help them in a number of ways. My practice is focused on technology assessment and making a determination as to what technology or set of technologies an individual shipper should be using to achieve their desired end state.” - Mike Mulqueen
Implementation of TMS
The Challenges
Due to issues such as bad data, organizational changes, and turnover, businesses often do not reap the full benefits of their TMS. At JBF there is a practice called "Accelerate", which revolves around continuous improvement, providing organizations with training on specific applications, super users, and also doing a decent amount of modeling and acquisition events.
Exciting things in the logistics space
You get to solve big problems
Opportunity to have an impact on shareholder value and transportation
Transportation and supply chain has become forefront in everybody's mind
The complexities are so grand that you never stop learning
Transportation and logistics has so many sub components are very differ, each with their own unique set of problems to solve.
Truckload, intermodal, LTL, ocean, air, parcel. Then add to this all the complexity that comes along with geographic variables.
If you want to solve big problems, transportation will keep you on your toes!
How does JBF Consulting go about determining who is the right fit for clients?
Define the desired end state. Look across all key sub-processes of transportation for a shipper and in multiple different lenses.
Ex. How do you procure contract rates? What is your process for inbound transportation, be it international or domestic inbound? What is your process for outbound transportation?
Figure out what they're doing well and what they're not doing well. Then document what the opportunity is.
Understand the KPIs that will be used to determine success is also key in the vendor selection process.
That becomes the basis for JBF’s vendor selection.
“TMS applications are extremely reliant on good data. I need to make sure my rates, my contracts, my customer preferences, my time… all these different pieces are set up accurately, and it's not just a one time setup.”- Mike Mulqueen
Key technologies that shippers should be watching
Microservices architectures with defined user exits (i.e. web hooks that enable TMS customers to customize the solution)
Old paradigm of waiting for the annual release is (or should be) dead
Enable the market to build extensions
Machine Learning
Lots of hype, but this will be important in the long run
Focus has been primarily on two areas
Pricing
Predictive ETAs
Requires lots of data
Requires new skill sets for ML users, but potential is there.
Probabilistic Optimization
The world is uncertain. Probabilities need to be taken into account during planning
Ex: Should I put my fleet on Load X? Decision is determined based on the probability of a load originating near the termination of Load X.
Should I ship this UPS ground if the customer needs it tomorrow?
“You want your TMS system almost to have to be thinking like your dispatcher, your dispatcher's got all this knowledge in their head. They know stuff. I'm trying to make it so that my TMS system has that same level of knowledge and can make decisions appropriately.” - Mike Mulqueen
About JBF
Boutique consulting firm
Focus on transportation management technology
Primary clients: shippers!
Learn more about JBF at jbf-consulting.com/
Driving a Meaningful Company Culture with Randy Perkins from ITS
Nearshoring Productivity & Company Culture with Roberto Icaza
In this episode one of our hosts, Robert Bain, chats with a special guest… Roberto Icaza, Co-Founder, President and COO of Rapido Solutions Group. They discussed the successes and milestones that Rapido has achieved, as well as the benefits of adding near shore solutions to your business, such as having native Spanish speakers assisting with cross-border service offerings.
The Beginning of Rapido Solution’s Group:
- They started in Guadalajara, Mexico in 2019 working as a solution finder
- They began building high performing logistics teams
- They grew by understanding the market and networking
Successes & Milestones the business has achieved:
Rapido Solutions Group has excelled at finding quality talent and retaining them! They are proud of their ability to build good and lasting relationships between employees.
As Roberto Icaza mentioned, Mexico can offer a lot to US logistics companies not just in proximity, cultural affinities and great talent, but also, as logistics companies work to add a cross-border “mode” into their service offerings, they can leverage Rapido to help. Implementing a cross border offering has long been a challenge for US logistics companies due to the complex process, multiple parties involved, and language needs.
The Importance of Culture:
Rapido’s vision is to radically change the Latin American work culture and help their customers achieve sustainable growth. They believe that “people first” approach is very important to the productivity and success they are seeing.
Rapido’s culture:
- They make sure their employees feel that they have a voice, that they are heard, that they’re getting paid fairly, and they have great benefits.
- Activities such as focus groups, Rapido health benefits (nutrition, psychiatry, mental health, etc) and many other things so that employees are in a comfortable workplace environment and they can have tools to also grow both professionally and personally.
“Our culture is our DNA. Metafora’s mission is to make each of you the best version of you that you could be.” - Robert Bain
Rapido’s Future
- Hyper growth! Continuing to partner with great companies in the US and find ways to help provide solutions that they haven’t seen before.
- Big Focus: Infrastructure! Making sure they have the office space, the equipment and everything people need to set up for success in a hybrid model, in the office or even remotely.
Learn more about Rapido Solutions Group at https://rapidosolutionsgroup.com/
Roberto Icaza can be found on Linkedin here or can be reached by email at roberto.icaza@rapidosolutionsgroup.com.
Learn more about Metafora+, Metafora’s partnership program here.
Interested in chatting with a SME from Metafora? Request a free discovery call here!
M&A In Transportation & Logistics
Everything about M&A in this episode with our hosts Bain and Perlmutter and our special guest from Metafora… JT Engstorm!!! You will learn some of the main challenges of the M&A process. This process it’s so much more than the transaction, it's about finding the best match, where are the best synergies and who's the best partner.
Learn more about M&A services here!
Things you need to consider in the M&A lifecycle:
When is a good time to look?
If you’re buying:
- You want to find an asset that's a good investment. Ideally there is a strategic rationale above hitting performance targets. Ideally the asset also has a leadership team that aligns with your target future goal of future ownership of the business.
If you’re selling:
- Maximizing valuation.
- Finding the right home, being with the right people.
- Appropriate ongoing financial incentives
- A lot of executives don't pay themselves through cash comp. They're taking distributions off the business. So when they transfer ownership they need to be conscious of what the financial implications are on an ongoing basis so they can be appropriately incentivized to keep doing what they're doing.
How can a company reduce risk when buying or selling?
- Do a quality of earnings: You want to really deeply understand the financials of the business.
- Have strong legal counsel.
- Do an assessment of talent: Consider what could be done by a third party?
- Minimize access to your business: You’re only going to end up with 1 or 0 buyers. If you have 50 potential buyers, cool, but 49 of them are not going to buy you, and they go right back to being your competitor in the marketplace. This is more relevant to a seller.
It is a strategic risk when you have a potential competitor considering a buy and thus having access to your proprietary information.
After being merged or acquired, then the real work starts for the operators. They need to have a management and operating plan, peel another layer on the onion of who's going to be doing what. The business building doesn't stop, it's just entering a new phase.
Do you want to challenge the obstacles of the M&A lifecycle? Are you curious if your strategy is making a positive impact? Do you want to know more about your company's strengths in terms of M&A? We can help you out! Request a free discovery call here to learn more!
TIA Capital Ideas Recap
Most popular topics at TIA Capital Ideas Conference & Exhibition We are so excited to tell you everything about #TIA2022CON!! Our hosts Bain and P-Mutt from The Extra Mile Podcast were there, and in today’s episode they shared some of the key takeaways, like strategy focus, people and culture, customer acquisition and technology.
Key takeaways from all the sessions and learning labs that Metafora participated in: Growing a Brokerage Feels Tricky
📝 Strategy - Don't just set it and forget it. Make time regularly to extricate yourself from the day-to-day to revisit and focus on your strategy.
📍 Location Strategy - We’ve seen many different location strategy models that have worked and that haven’t worked. The key is to be intentional about what you want to work for your business.
📱 Freight Tech - “What is the best TMS?” is not the question you should be asking. First you should be considering TMS as one part of your larger, overarching tech strategy. Then, you need to consider: What is the best TMS…. for you.
⭐ Company Culture - It’s more than pizza parties and pop-a-shot. It’s about getting people onboard with a shared mission. It’s how your team feels about the business, how they feel about your customers. Shared company values that people connect with.
Capacity Strategy is Rapidly Evolving for Everyone What is Capacity Strategy? Capacity Strategy is answering two main questions: How do you go to market with your carriers? How do you sell liquidity to your customers? Your answers to these questions will inform how to build the rest of your capacity organization. Are you curious if your capacity strategy is working?
Could you use some pointers on how to implement a stronger capacity strategy? Want to learn more about how to become a preferred booking partner for carriers? Not to brag, but we have the answers to these questions. Request a free discovery call here to learn more!
Big News x 3! And! Special Guest: David Bell, Co-Founder of Lean Solutions Group
Season 2, Episode 3: Big News x 3! And! Special Guest: David Bell, Co-Founder of Lean Solutions Group
Big News Part 1: Metafora at TIA Capital Ideas Conference & ExhibitionWe can’t stop talking about #TIA2022CON because we’re so excited about it, and it’s finally here!! The Extra Mile Podcast Hosts Bain and P-Mutt will be in attendance from Metafora, so come by Booth 200A to say hello! While you’re there, you can chat with experts, explore partnership opportunities, grab some cool Metafora swag, and enter our “See How Far Your Business Can Go” sweepstakes! Want to know everywhere Metafora will be this week in San Diego? Well, you’re in luck because… there’s a blog for that! See all things Metafora at TIA Capital Ideas Conference & Exhibition here.
Big News Part 2: New Service Offering from Metafora: M&A!Metafora is excited to announce the launch of a new, transportation and logistics specific M&A capability. Our team is positioned within the industry to guide businesses throughout various stages of the M&A lifecycle: Defining an M&A Strategy, Building a Target Pipeline, Conducting Due Diligence, Transactional Support, and Executing Integration Activities. Using 2021 as a launchpad, Metafora is dedicated to serving, growing, and disrupting the transportation and logistics space into 2022 and beyond. Learn more about our M&A capabilities and sign up to chat with an expert here.
Big News Part 3: OFFICIAL PARTNERSHIP ANNOUNCED WITH… LEAN SOLUTIONS GROUP!Metafora and Lean Solutions Group are partnering to further the Transportation & Logistics Industry through Technology, Staffing, and Organizational Improvement. Lean Solutions Group will work with Metafora to provide recruitment, staffing, and team spin-up services delivered from the Lean’s nearshore satellite locations in Latin America. Metafora has developed a rapid operating model assessment to quickly identify what parts of an organization are best suited to move nearshore to optimize process and cost efficiency. Learn more about the partnership here.
The Evolution of the Industry and Why we Need a Carrier-Centric Mindset
Season 2, Episode 2: The Evolution of the Industry and Why we Need a Carrier-Centric Mindset with Special Guest: Kristopher Glotzbach
In this episode, Bain chats with special guest Kristopher Glotzbach about tech, automation, EDI, integrations in freight, influencers, and so much more.
Kristopher Glotzbach has nearly 30 years of experience in the freight industry. From valuable and significant time at CH Robinson, Uber Freight, FourKites, American Backhaulers, ShipWell and more, Kris has seen this industry evolve from a time when work was done with atlases and pieces of string and drivers calling in from pay phones to the complex tech game we play in now.
SHOW NOTES
The Evolution of the Industry
- Remember when lanes were mapped with atlases and string? And drivers had to call in from pay phones?
- Then came... the first proprietary TMS!
- Now we have a wealth of tech springing up like API integrations and automation software. Kris Glotzbach hot take: "I think what it's (tech) intended to so is really automate everything... and I think that in itself may be the problem. You're not going to be able to automate everything. What it should really be doing is making people's lives better."
- The best tech helps remove redundancy and gives prescriptive and guided actions.
- Then we began amassing large amounts of data, which was great but became Monday Morning Quarterbacking.
- Now with the addition of smartphones and ELDs we can start using this data to predict and prescribe the path of least resistance.
TMS, Tech Strategy, and Integrations in Freight
- TMS is not a tech strategy by itself, but TMS IS something that every brokerage that wants to grow needs to be mindful of.
- A TMS downstream is hard enough. A TMS for shippers, infinitely harder. With this, you're going upstream one level. You're getting into the planning horizon, etc. This is where it becomes more complex: A lot of disparate systems, integrations become a huge challenge.
- It's exciting to see now this evolution of digital tools that are bolt-on to existing TMS. (Buy what you can, build what you need to differentiate!)
Carriers and Data
- We need to work with carriers in a way that allows them to monetize all this data they are gathering.
- Yes, we are currently in a carrier-centric market, but no matter the market conditions, we need to maintain a carrier-centric mindset because carriers are the lifeline of this industry.
- With so many disparate systems now, we need to move to APIs where we can set up 1 to many integrations instead of the one to one integrations that happen with EDIs.
What does Kris see for the Future of Freight?
We'll see more of capacity as a service - or trucks as a service model. Trucks will roll off the line with tech embedded into it.
Automation and autonomous vehicles - We've made strides but we’re a ways from full automation or autonomous due to infrastructure, regulations, sophistication. Rather we will see more tech-enabled drivers.
“If I'm a small-to-mid sized broker, I really need to be thinking about tech.” -Kristopher Glotzbach
If you want to reach Kristopher Glotzbach, you can email him at kris@fleetops.ai.
What Does it Mean to be a "Shipper of Choice"? with Brad Forester of JBF Consulting
BIG NEWS! Adam and Bain share the news that CarrierDirect is now Metafora! So yes, that means we are now The Extra Mile Podcast by Metafora! You can read more about our rebrand here.
Also! Bain will be attending the Manifest conference in Las Vegas this week along with Peter Rentschler, Ryan Schreiber, and Shanna Greathouse. If you'll there too, see where to find Metafora at Manifest here.
Let's also continue to celebrate some of the amazing people highlights that our company achieved in 2021. View the people highlights infographic that Adam and Bain reference here.
We are also pleased to announce our partnership with JBF Consulting to deliver smart TMS solutions across the shipper and 3PL world. This is part of the partnership program: Metafora+.
In this episode, we chat with our special guest about how 3PL and shipper worlds are colliding. What does it mean to be a shipper of choice?
And without further ado, let's chat with industry star, managing partner and founder of JBF Consulting, and skin care expert, Brad Forester.
About JBF Consulting
Since 2003, we’ve been helping shippers of all sizes and across many industries select, implement and squeeze as much value as possible out of their logistics systems. We speak your language — not consultant-speak – and we get to know you. Our leadership team has over 70 years of logistics and TMS implementation experience. Because we operate in a niche — we’re not all things to all people — our team members have a very specialized skill set: logistics operations experience + transportation technology + communication and problem-solving skills + a bunch of other cool stuff.
2021 Year in Review with Peter Rentschler
What's new with P-Mutt and Bain? Baby Jack was exposed to Covid! But don’t worry, he's been tested since and he’s negative. Phew! Bain totaled 2155, the largest drug tested total in the world in 2021! Hence why he is known as the strongest man in logistics! And in this episode, our hosts chat with a very special guest CarrierDirect CEO Peter Rentschler. Together they reflect on learnings from 2021 and what we’re excited about for 2022.
It's the last episode of 2021, and we're excited to jump back in next year.
Show Notes
How did Peter get involved with CarrierDirect?Peter is from Detroit and he graduated from Indiana State where he studied computer science. He started his consulting career at Accenture, then he came to CarrierDirect in 2015 with the KJ McMasters who now runs Talent Solvers. It wasn’t long after Peter started here that Jett essentially threw him the keys and said “Turn off the lights when you leave.”
What does he make it a point to do every single day?Peter makes a point to stretch every day! He’s a big believer in the mind-body connection and he appreciates starting his day with the meditative quality of stretching.
What are the big takeaways from 2021 and what things do you feel will continue into 2022 and beyond?- Anything can happen. Businesses that will in the future are ones that are flexible and dynamic.
Expect the unexpected. How have you architectured your business and your systems to be dynamic and able to adapt to market conditions? This will be important as we move into 2022. - How you treat people matters. The pandemic has created employee mobility. If you run a logistics business in Chicago, you're not just competing against other logistics businesses in Chicago. Your talent is getting recruited by companies all over the country and potentially even the world.
- The spotlight on supply chain and logistics has been valuable for us, and this spotlight will continue into the new year.
- Importance and value of investment in technology and continuous improvement.
- Flexibility and being dynamic: These are ongoing themes from 2021 and will last into 2022.
- TI acquiring SwanLeap
- ArcBest acquiring MoLo
- Uber Freight acquiring Transplace
- CarrierDirect has been and will continue to be intentional about:
- What are our customers talking about
- What do we see as the trends in the space
- How can we position ourselves to serve those
- For example: With M&A being so important, we've increased our M&A work.
- Also, we heard so many companies expressing that integrations were a big pain point for them. This led to our development of Socket.
- Last but not least, Peter ends with a motivational note about happiness. He is a big believer in the idea that it takes energy to be happy. Devote time to your hobbies and take the time to take an inventory of the things that you are thankful for.
Happy New Year everyone! See you in 2022!
Episode 6: Collaborative Performance Management with John Stauffer | The Extra Mile Podcast by CarrierDirect
This episode P-Mutt chats with former colleague and close friend, John Stauffer, Co-Founder & COO at Isometric Technologies (ISO).
Bain is off this time, but will be back with us next episode. We’re recording this on Friday, Nov 19th... just around the corner from Thanksgiving week! Give us a listen on the way to your family festivities.
Housekeeping: Did you see us at FreightWaves F3 Virtual Experience? Catch anything you missed here. And congratulations again to the whole CarrierDirect team for making the FreightTech 25!
And now for our special guest... John Stauffer! John and Adam have previously worked together for 10+ years. They worked together at Echo and Uber Freight, they’ve partied together in Vegas, been on the same bowling team, built Echo’s carrier network in the Southeast and Canada. So many things! John has a ton of experience operationally as well as product management, and is currently the Co-Founder and COO at ISO.
Today P-Mutt and John Stauffer chat about improving the workflow process involved in scorecarding and auditing to create a better customer experience.
Seeing the scorecard process from a different altitudeAs John advanced in his freight career, he got to see the same issue from a different viewpoint. The main KPI was efficiency: Loads per head per day. John discovered that people were spending an outsized amount of time on this data reconciliation process - scrubbing scorecards.
Service is a differentiator in transportation & logisticsBetter service brings a larger award and/or access to more spot opportunities or mini bids. Account managers saw value in auditing because that’s where they found opportunities to improve service. They were also spending a lot of time scrubbing data to accomplish this. A light bulb went on when they saw the monetary penalties connected to shipper performance and how scorecarding and auditing could help reduce costs. The new challenge became figuring out how to improve this process.
ISO addresses workflow problemsISO pulls data sources from different systems, aggregates those, factors in SLAs, and applies those when processing transportation and order info. Thus, when creating those scorecards they are able to understand what the impact of a late delivery was and tie that back to the shipment. Ultimately, then the root cause of that failure point can be identified. Penalties can then be attributed to the responsible party.
Collaborative Performance ManagementCollaborative Performance Management is the concept that streamlines all the workflows. It should be on your radar because there is value to aligning with your carriers on performance. Collaborative Performance Management removes friction from relationships. It helps shippers strengthen partnerships with existing carriers and helps shippers understand how to become a shipper of choice.
Interested in working at ISO? Check out their careers page here or email them at careers@iso.io.
Interested in incorporating ISO into your business? Reach out via email at Hello@iso.io or find John Stauffer on LinkedIn here.
API Integrations in Freight with Sean Kelly
Congratulations to P-Mutt and his wife on their four year wedding anniversary!
Congratulations to Bain’s son Austin on getting into his first choice college with scholarship!
And, shoutout to all the awesome events CarrierDirect is participating in and hosting at this week's FreightWaves F3 Virtual Experience.
In this episode, our hosts chat with CarrierDirect’s Director of Product, Sean Kelly about API Integrations in Freight.
Leveraging APIs enables you to:- Increase connectivity with your customers, partners, and vendors
- Increase productivity
- Increase automation
- Prioritize APIs
- Integrate with them
- Make sure the upstream and downstream workflows are all in place to make it all work well
- You might want to integrate rating data to compare to your rate quotes
- You might need to deliver tracking information data back to a third party visibility platform
- You might be a freight broker trying to get more loads, so you want to integrate with one of your key shippers’ TMSs.
Learn more about the challenges freight faces in leveraging APIs here.
Read more about the evolution of APIs in freight here.
TakeawaysAn integration is only as good as the data that goes into it.
Integration not only makes the user's life better, but it can make all of us more productive, efficient, and sustainable as we move forward to the next generation of technology and supply chain.
The freight industry can benefit greatly from more players leveraging APIs, but managing this work in-house is time-consuming, expensive, and detracts your engineers from working on tech that differentiates you.
This is why CarrierDirect created Socket...
Interested? Have questions? Contact Sean at skelly@carrierdirect.com.
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 RepositoryYou 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 BuildingWe 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 BuildBuy 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?
Freight Industry Trends
Freight Industry Trends 2021 - 2022 | The Extra Mile Podcast by CarrierDirect
In this episode, our hosts chat about transportation & logistics market trends...
Bain & P-Mutt weigh in on The Talent War in FreightIn addition to the great resignation, we see an increasingly competitive market to attract and retain talent. Employers and employees experienced a lot during the pandemic, and the companies who truly used this time as a learning experience will come out ahead. Companies that are eager to get back to the way things work are setting themselves up for disappointment. Namely in regard to allowing more flexible working conditions, for example working from home if at all possible.
Other factors that impact a freight company's ability to improve employee retention are: Career Growth, Flexibility and PTO, Community Impact, Bonus Incentives, and Base Pay.
Read more about The Talent War in Freight in this article by our CEO, Peter Rentschler.
Bain & P-Mutt weigh in on #FreightTech: Automation
Technology in transportation & logistics can be a game-changer for business when implemented and executed thoughtfully. Automation can and should be part of your overall tech strategy. Simplify what you can so that team members have more time and energy to devote to higher effort tasks.
Bain & P-Mutt weigh in on Capacity StrategyAdam explains that you should be considering, "How do you source the best option versus the first option."
Capacity strategy is more data-driven approach to sourcing and matching loads and carriers.
Stay tuned for CarrierDirect's forthcoming ebook all about capacity strategy.
Bain & P-Mutt weigh in on Transportation & Logistics Mergers & AcquisitionsService offerings and personnel are two big things to consider in M&A.
Real success comes with the execution. Are the companies able to integrate smoothly?
Engaging in a merger or acquisition is the quickest way to expand and diversify operations.
Prediction: M&A is not likely to slow down anytime soon!
Growth Inhibitors & Accelerators in Freight
Bain and P-Mutt discuss some of the biggest growth blockers and growth accelerators for freight businesses. When done well, your freight tech strategy, training, and future state visioning are valuable growth accelerators. On the flip side, if executed poorly, these same things can inhibit your growth. When it comes to future state visioning, it's important to take time to really consider for your business: who do you want to be when you grow up? Set the vision and let everyone in on it! Your go-to-market strategy will support this vision and your company and individual goals should track to this as well.
Why Logistics Matters
In this first official episode, Bain and Ryan chat about why logistics matters and the intersection of consulting and logistics.
Show Notes
Bain and Ryan discuss Uber Freight's acquisition of TransplaceManaged transportation is sticky. Customers don’t churn very much. It has a lower margin but it’s predictable business. With this acquisition, it’s now something Uber doesn't have to go out and build itself.
The integration of these two businesses' tech and people will be key to their future success.
Bain predicts we haven’t seen the last of these big M&A deals.
The Intersection of Logistics and ConsultingWhen does it make sense to bring in experts for different projects?
You have to consider both sides: We start by discussing when it's NOT a good idea to hire a consulting firm to help your freight business.
It starts with openness and curiosity. If you think you have it all figured out, it doesn’t make sense to bring in outside help. It’s not going to be a happy working relationship for anybody if you think you have all the answers.
Even if you recognize things could be different and better, but you just want an easy button, that’s also a mindset that won’t work well with outside experts. You have to be open and curious, and you also have to be part of the process.
The clients who understand that their business could be better than it is today, but they’re not really sure where or why. They usually have a hypothesis, but they want help figuring it out.
Another great example of when it is beneficial to bring in outside experts is if you have an idea for the future of your business and you need help codifying it and then implementing it. Whether that’s a technology idea, an operating model idea, what have you, those are really the situations where it makes a difference to have people come in and help you with your business.
Additional HighlightsBain shares a helpful analogy where he compares the small things in logistics to the small things in weightlifting: Little things that matter and make a difference when you add them all up.
Logistics is complicated. One of the main things missing in transportation and logistics is predictability.
Meet the Hosts: Adam | The Extra Mile Podcast by CarrierDirect
In this clip, Adam introduces himself, shares about his freight background, his family, and why he's starting this podcast with Bain.
Meet the Hosts: Bain | The Extra Mile Podcast by CarrierDirect
In this clip, Bain introduces himself, shares about his freight background, his family, and what he wants this podcast to make you, the listener, think about. Your business, tech, growth, training, and more.
Introducing... The Extra Mile Podcast by CarrierDirect
Robert Bain, Consultant at CarrierDirect, introduces The Extra Mile Podcast by CarrierDirect!
We’re starting this podcast to dive into all things supply chain, transportation and logistics.
- What’s a TMS?
- Why are technologies going to change the game?
- Who are the movers and shakers in the industry?
- Why should you bring in experts or new talent and when should you do it?
We’re gonna talk about these topics and so many more on the most exciting logistics show out there: The Extra Mile Podcast!