In late 2023, Descartes conducted a survey of 1,000 supply chain and logistics decision-makers across North America and Europe across three sectors: manufacturing, distribution and retail; carriers; and logistics services providers. The study showed that the workforce problem is pervasive, with 76% of respondents indicating they are facing notable shortages. The study also provided insight […]
With economies cooling and COVID more manageable, the general thinking has been that companies would see the workforce shortages of the past few years subside; however, this does not appear to be the case. Post-pandemic, organizations are still struggling with labor shortages, as well as knowledge workers and the leaders they need to thrive. In […]
Near the end of 2021, I had the chance to make the early call on Logistics Viewpoints on what 2022 would look like across five major logistics themes. Unlike the folks projecting election results these days, I was a little more accurate and the 2022 projections have set the stage for what will happen in […]
Two seemingly conflicting trends are coming together that, if addressed correctly, could provide retailers with a competitive advantage and make them more profitable. First, consumers are increasingly concerned about the environment and are more willing than ever to act to protect it. Second, the pandemic kicked online buying and home delivery into “high gear” as […]
The rise in fuel costs, especially diesel, is significantly impacting the bottom line of many B2B companies such as distributors and wholesalers. While the transportation department bears the brunt of high fuel costs, it may not have much ability to mitigate the impact of these costs on the broader business as many of the causes […]
Ecommerce has been on a roll for the last two years. This level of consumer activity has translated into record volumes of home deliveries. But, let’s face it: since the pandemic started, home delivery performance has not been great. Earlier in 2022, we conducted a survey of 8,000 consumers across North America and Europe to […]
With Christmas goods in stores before Halloween this year, I thought there was no reason that we shouldn’t also get a jump on 2022 predictions. Many major challenges of 2021—capacity constraints, ecommerce growth and driver shortage—are rolling over into 2022 and, in addition, the environment and machine learning are becoming more important for logistics and […]
Home delivery strategy, tactics and performance is one of the most hotly-debated areas of logistics. The pandemic has increased the importance of home delivery, but also decreased the quality of home delivery performance. As logistics professionals, we can dive into the data to understand how we are performing operationally and rationalize the results against all of the last-mile challenges every retailer has been facing, but what do consumers actually think?
Pick your country, but you will find the same story: there are not enough drivers to meet transportation demand and the situation is not likely to change for years. Ecommerce experienced significant growth globally during the pandemic and is not slowing down as countries continue to open up. Other country-specific factors, such as Brexit which […]
There’s always been tension with the optimization technologies used for fleets or common carrier transportation. The solutions that solve the toughest and most unique problems and deliver differentiating results are also the most complex and require significant domain expertise to implement and maintain. Those companies that make the skills investment reap the largest rewards in […]
Despite all of the advances in route planning technologies, most logistics organizations still see a wide discrepancy in the results that their planners produce. Some planners consistently generate route plans that are lower cost, better utilize resources, and deliver the best customer service. Considering that these planners are using the same route optimization technology, how […]
Delivery and service appointment scheduling strategies have been aggressively evolving for more than 10 years. In my conversations with customers, I continue to learn how far they have advanced and the expanding impact that logistics technology can have on the enterprise. TyresOnTheDrive.com, now Halfords Mobile Expert (HME) part of Halfords Group PLC, a UK provider […]
As more of the economy comes back online, distribution-oriented companies find their business in one of the following situations: volumes are up but costs have risen faster or, volumes are down considerably, and they don’t appear to be coming back any time soon. In both cases, the objective is to right-size distribution operations to drive down costs and dramatically improve productivity. Now is the time for distribution companies to look hard at their current fleet strategies, tactics and use of technology to make a step change in operational performance. Here are two ways fleet operators can make a difference.
We’ve been receiving a number of questions from customers asking how to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 (aka coronavirus) on their operations, employees, customers and carriers. The good news is there is a lot that can be done now with your existing logistics and supply chain solutions. You could also quickly take advantage of new […]
Over the last 10 years, I’ve had the chance to work with companies that have turned home delivery into a competitive advantage or reduced their costs by using counterintuitive strategies and tactics. On a recent trip to Europe, I had a chance to catch up with a customer who, for several years, has been using […]
Real-time transportation visibility has become a powerful tool for shippers and logistics services providers (LSPs). Because the market is so hot, a number of transportation visibility vendors have entered the space and, to get attention, have made big claims about their tracking capabilities, which are misleading potential users. What we are seeing is a bad […]
The over-the-road capacity challenges of the last year have caused a lot of shippers to rethink their carrier acquisition and retention strategies. While the capacity situation is better than in 2018, the capacity challenge never goes away and carriers across the board have learned to become more particular about which shippers they will do business […]
Too many larger transportation projects fail to deliver value over time or end up being scrapped because there was inadequate investment in a long-term post-go-live support and growth strategy. The most successful enterprise-wide transportation management programs don’t stop with the successful rollout of the system. Instead, they go on indefinitely, delivering more business value over […]
For all who are familiar with the saying “There are 3 things that matter in realty: location, location, location”, there are also 3 “Ls” for delivery productivity: less, less and less. Time is the enemy of delivery productivity and the less loading, less unloading and less driving time spent, the more deliveries can be made. […]
Transportation execution solutions and, in particular, visibility solutions, are hot. There are a number of macroeconomic factors driving the adoption of transportation execution systems. Technological innovations such as cloud computing, logistics networks and real-time GPS are increasing the importance of transportation execution solutions and redefining how transportation is managed. With all these new capabilities, how can transportation execution solutions help? Here are 6 points to consider. 1. Think “TMS+”. Most transportation management systems (TMS) provide limited execution capabilities (e.g., rating, booking, tracking, document management and settlement) in breadth or depth.
With the advancements made in GPS-based real-time tracking of commercial transportation over the last several years, visibility has become a hot topic again. Today, we can know the location of our freight on an almost instant basis and even get accurate predictions of when it will arrive. Recently, I was with a large retail customer […]
If there was a subject that I should not be writing about now, it’s this one. Mobile applications and technology have advanced considerably. However, too many implementations struggle to rollout successfully because they underestimate the challenges that exist in getting drivers to use it correctly and consistently. This is becoming a critical issue, as Customer […]
Fleets are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they can be a competitive differentiator for companies that compete on delivery service. On the other hand, they can be expensive to operate. So, what makes for a successful fleet operator? In our Fleet Management Strategies of Top Performers, Descartes recently surveyed 130 companies with fleets across […]
Most logistics technology projects have their return-on-investment (ROI) center around the benefit they provide to the logistics organization. That is far from the complete picture.
I’m beginning to wonder if we have hit an inflection point where investment in logistics technology will broadly create business performance gaps. We recently partnered with several organizations to look at business strategies, tactics and logistics technology. The message was clear – investing in technology was the number one strategy. However, success doesn’t necessarily look […]
Getting benefits from a modern transportation management solution that has just gone live is just the first wave of value available. There’s a lot more that can be gained when companies recognize that transportation management solutions are more than execution systems. With the ability to model alternate scenarios, logistics organizations can more accurately model the […]
Pool distribution as a store replenishment strategy is more relevant than ever because of decreasing margins and the need to move goods quickly to stores in reaction to changing consumer demand. Pool distribution is a great example of the power of the “network effect”, as it leverages numerous retailers and pool operators to substantially lower […]
Forwarders and brokers are a critical part of international supply chains. They operate in incredibly competitive markets that can be characterized by tight margins and highly influenced by regulatory change. This past spring, we conducted a benchmark study with over 100 forwarders and brokers to evaluate how macroeconomic changes were impacting them, the strategies and […]
The strategies, tactics and technology of home delivery are evolving quickly and constantly. It’s tough to keep up with the innovation that is happening in home delivery and also sort out the reality from the hype in the press. As Chris Cunnane described in his report Descartes Evolution – Logistics in Motion, we conducted a […]
Now that I am finally off the road for the balance of the year, I had a chance to sit down and look at some of the macro trends of 2015 and how they could impact logistics operations and technology providers in 2016. In some respects, the biggest trends are continuations from the past several […]
Stepping Out of Paradigms Dictated by Technological Limitations of the Past One of the biggest opportunities to dramatically improve supply chain performance occurs when traditional supply chain functions are decomposed and reinvented as integrated business processes. Few supply chain practitioners would dispute that notion. However, when it comes to their technology strategy, too many practitioners […]
Last October, I wrote a post introducing the concept of the Customer Facing Supply Chain and how it expands the value of the supply chain in the enterprise. There has been a lot of interest in understanding how to create a customer-facing supply chain. The following is such an example for retailers and their home […]
Cash is the life blood of any organization and the supply chain is one of the most powerful ways to maximize any company’s cash. If you listen to publicly-traded companies’ earnings calls, the CFO will talk about cash generation from operations and days-sales-outstanding (DSO) as 2 important metrics of company performance. The right combination of […]
When I heard this saying, I thought it so profoundly related to one of the core challenges to supply chain excellence, an inflexible mindset. Too often in supply chain management we are bounded by our approach to supply chain problems, not the problems themselves. For example, one of the greatest challenges in supply chain management […]
This past week, I had a chance to spend a few hours with the folks at a large global food manufacturer discussing the evolution of their mobile strategy. The company has been using GPS-enabled mobile technology with its thousands of sales and merchandising resources for over five years. What started as a strategy to track […]
Retailers and distributors are increasingly turning to drop shipping to increase the number of products they offer, minimize the inventory they carry, and reduce order cycle times. While drop shipping (sending goods directly from the supplier to the customer), has been going on for quite a while, it’s now getting into more sophisticated product areas […]
Running Professional Services at Descartes for the last nine years, I’ve seen this old adage come up time and time again. It hasn’t mattered if the customer was implementing a TMS, Visibility, Route Planning or Mobile solution – I’ve seen “grand” projects crash or get endlessly mired and not produce the anticipated business results. The […]
Supply Chain Visibility systems are tough to describe and even tougher to implement. Companies with complex and multi-channel supply chains often struggle because they failed to harness the true complexity of the supply chain. Our experience shows that there are “natural laws” for a visibility system implementation success. Breaking down the solution to the core […]
There is no escaping the social media hype in today’s press. While the platforms are not necessarily geared for logistics, there are important parallels in logistics to what has made the social media market so successful. Taking a look at some of the fundamental challenges in logistics shows how social media-oriented logistics solutions can address […]
According to Merriam Webster, one of the definitions of half-life is a period of usefulness or popularity preceding decline or obsolescence. It is important to match the half-life of your business processes with the half-life of the technology investments you are making. With the half-life of many business processes dramatically shrinking, the notion that every […]
Are you saturated by all the cloud hype? Recently, a leading analyst firm published a report on cloud computing that listed 24 variations. It’s tough to name a vendor that does not claim to have a cloud offering. With all of the confusion, it’s hard to identify what part of cloud technology will really benefit […]
Whether you are an importer or forwarder acting on their behalf, we are all familiar with the “80/20” rule and how it applies to trading partner integration strategies. We focus on fully integrating the 20% of the trading partners that make up 80% of the volume for purchase orders, transportation, customs filing and shipment tracking. […]
One of the biggest challenges to large-scale mobile rollouts is consistent use by the workers in the field. Unfortunately, it’s not unusual to hear that companies have mobile initiatives that are struggling or stalled because they cannot get their mobile workers or drivers to consistently use their mobile applications. While as leaders and managers we […]
Traditional thinking is that government transportation compliance programs, such as hours of service (HOS) regulations, cost companies money. If the focus of your compliance efforts is solely to meet the regulation, then I concur. But, that approach is a lost opportunity to reduce operational costs through better driver and vehicle performance. Instead of just meeting […]
Who would think that the movie Forrest Gump would provide a great analogy for logistics operations? Unfortunately, the movie quote “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get” applies to the inbound operations of too many retail and distribution companies. Despite the best laid plans using concepts such as […]
Logistics networks have been around for 30 years in many forms, from cargo community systems to mode-specific and general value-added networks (VAN). In the beginning, these networks were built on highly proprietary technology that required complex integration. Their use was limited to the largest and most technologically sophisticated companies. The Internet weaned companies away from […]
