The Logistics Landscape and Technology’s Role
Podcast
The logistics industry is complex, with multiple players. As it’s so vast, there are gaps and challenges innate. In an attempt to narrow those and alleviate pain points, technology is playing a significant role.
e2log leaders and industry experts John Donnelly III, Co-Founder and CRO, and Adolph Colaco, Founder and CEO, joined Simply Shipped host Daniel Litwin to discuss the big picture of logistics, supply chains, and technology in this debut episode.
Colaco shared, “Supply chains are complex in terms of their construct. I’ve been able to work on all these dimensions in many parts of the world in 75 countries. What many don’t realize is if you receive a product in North America, it’s gone through a complex journey.”
“Supply chains are complex in terms of their construct. I’ve been able to work on all these dimensions in many parts of the world in 75 countries. What many don’t realize is if you receive a product in North America, it’s gone through a complex journey.”
Donnelly also has a rich career in logistics and technology. He was immediately excited about coming aboard at e2log. “The technology is easy to use, and the customer impact is fast. We’re excited to delight customers on a global scale and educate them on the buyer’s journey.”
Their collective knowledge and the expertise of their entire team shaped their vision for the technology. Colaco recalled, “It was shocking to look at the technology, or lack thereof, in the logistics space. Most of the largest companies in the world use the Microsoft suite of products to run their logistics.”
While the procurement side of supply chains is more standardized with ERP (enterprise resource planning) platforms, there are many more facets. From a platform perspective, e2log strives to bring the B2C experience into the B2B world of logistics. “Strategically, we want to simplify technology usage for logistics,” Colaco said.
With that foundation, the company looks to transform the logistics technology landscape and empower all the stakeholders involved.
Full episode transcript
This transcript is machine-generated from this episode’s audio and may contain errors.
Daniel Litwin:
Hey everyone. It’s Daniel Litwin the Voice of B2B and welcome to this simply shipped video brought to you by e2log. Again I’m your host Daniel Litwin and thank you so much for joining us on this introductory video on not only the e2log company and it’s founders but we’re also going to try to set the stage for some of the future conversations we’re going to have in our content all around technologies, strategies, and actionable takes for our global economies shipping paradigms and supply chain networks. So thanks again for joining us. If you want more information on what we’re going to be breaking down today or to learn more about e2log and its place in the logistics industry, make sure that you’re heading to our website e2log.com. Again, that’s the letter E, the number two, log.com. You’ll find plenty of information on our solutions and services and also more pieces of e2log content.
All right, so let’s jump in. For the uninitiated, if this is the first time that you’re stumbling on e2log, let me give you the breakdown of the company. So e2log is a cloud-based logistics orchestration platform that digitalizes the interface between the shippers of cargo and their logistics service providers such as freight forwarders, customs, brokers, truckers, et cetera. And this unique operating platform enables end to end order life cycle managemen and this is international as well as domestic shipments and via all modes of transportation for all types of cargo. So on today’s episode of the show, what we’re going to be doing is sitting down with the founding team at e2log to get the big picture of the company and our vision for why e2log is representative of a major need in the logistics industry today, what impact the company could have on the larger ecosystem of businesses that rely on an efficient and inter modal supply chain. And we’re also going to break down how the founder’s vision is shaping e2log’s approach, some of their differentiators and overall the positive customer impact for a more efficient and insightful logistics operation. So let’s go ahead and invite our two guests. I’m pleased to welcome and joining us in the studio, John Donnelly III, co-founder and CRO, as well as Adolph Colaco, founder and CEO, both with e2log. Adolph, how are you doing?
Adolph Colaco:
Doing well. Thank you, Daniel. Thanks for having me.
Daniel Litwin:
Absolutely. It’s great to have you in studio and John, great to chat again. How are you?
John Donnelly III:
Great Dan, great to be here and excited about it.
Daniel Litwin:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, like I said and like we’re going to be breaking down today, this is all about you all’s vision for the company, helping our audience better understand why e2log, why this is even a need in the industry today and really connect the dots with solutions, needs, and potential impact down the road for e2log at scale. I think the hope is we standardize e2log and it becomes a key piece of the logistics puzzle. So we’ll be kind of laying that foundation today. What I want to do first for our audience is get some intros and background on both of y’all as we are going to be digging into you all’s perspective and vision today. So again, we’ll start with Adolph. Can you give us your intro, just kind of as you as a professional, your background in the space and what your role has been in getting e2log off the ground.
Adolph Colaco:
Sure. So my entire career has been in supply chain close to 30 years. I’ve been very fortunate to be exposed to different dimensions of the supply chain. Supply chains are complex in terms of their construct so there is procurement, there is inventory management, warehouse management, logistics, trade compliance, there’s also the regulatory side like customs and others. So throughout my career, I’ve had an opportunity to work on all of these dimensions in different parts of the world. So I’ve been fortunate to live and work in four different regions of the world, but also do boots on ground supply chain work in 75 countries around the world. Now that has been instrumental in helping us at e2log be able to formulate the strategy around how do we need to solve the logistics problems, not from a theoretical standpoint alone, but conceptualizing technology and the solutions given that background of experience both from a standpoint of being exposed to different facets of the supply chain, but also the intricacies of how supply chains and logistics are run across the planet.
Daniel Litwin:
Do you feel that that global perspective, those 75 plus different countries that you’ve worked within and with, is that helping give you a better perspective of the needs in the industry today as well as the solutions that are actually solutions for those needs?
Adolph Colaco:
Absolutely. What a lot of people don’t realize is that whilst you may receive a product here, let’s say in North America, that product has gone through a very complex journey. And when you look at that, the product may be starting its journey on another side of the world where the nuances of operating a supply chain or running logistics is completely different. Sometimes the complexities are linked to say infrastructure. Sometimes it’s linked to the technology that is available there, sometimes it’s regulatory because of the complexities with crossing borders, completing customs, et cetera. So when you have a deep enough appreciation and understanding of how all of that runs and works, you can actually build towards better solutioning. So it’s made a big impact in terms of how we’ve approached this and this domain expertise does not exist just within our leadership team. In fact, we built the organization with a strong group of supply chain professionals who come from some top quality companies and have been involved in running global supply chains.
Daniel Litwin:
John, let’s get your perspective now, too. Give us your intro and background as a professional and again, your role in helping get e2log off the ground.
John Donnelly III:
Sure. Well, I joined the business in late 2021 to help really kind of grow the overall go to market team for free to log on a global scale. And as Adolph mentioned, we have tremendous supply chain experience in the company, great technology experience. And the company’s essentially built a BDC experience where supply chain executives to leverage from a platform perspective. And I was drawn to that amazing domain experience and the fact that technology is so easy to use. When I spoke to some of our customers, as I looked at joining the company, their experience with the platform was amazing. It was stunning in terms of their usability and ability to come up to speed on the software very quickly. So the customer impact was really fast and really got me excited about joining the business. And now I’m building the go to market operation around the company from a marketing customer success sales perspective to really help delight our customers on a global scale, the ones we already have and certainly new ones and really help to educate the buyers on kind of a buyer’s journey with our website to really enable them to educate themselves really positively about what our unique value proposition is and how we can help people in the supply chain space automate and become more efficient.
So I’m excited to be here in the technology space for about 25 years with companies like Cisco and AT&T and some other startups. So we’re just drawn to the amazing energy the team had and certainly kind of I guess provide that third pillar if you will of our growth strategy around domain experience technology and the go-to market operation.
Daniel Litwin:
Yeah. I guess, to follow up on that time that you’ve spent with massive companies like Cisco, how do you feel that that experience specifically and dealing with that technology applies to mapping this kind of globally capable logistic solution at e2log?
John Donnelly III:
Sure. I think obviously when you’re in a small company that’s growing, if you scale larger businesses on a global scale, you kind of know where we’re headed from a journey perspective so in terms of, I know what we need to do to really help to scale the business from a small company to a big company. And I think that really helps to look at kind of what types of talent we need in the business. It’s certainly a mix of talent, what types of people we need at this stage of the company versus down the road and really enables you to kind of see again, where we’re headed from an overall kind of roadmap perspective and how to build the team around us to help grow the business efficiently and effectively which is critical. And ultimately when people join a company the size of e2log, it’s going to be so important to have the right energy and attitude to help us grow.
Daniel Litwin:
Definitely, so let’s get a little bit more perspective on you all’s experience and time with similar technologies like the one that e2log is putting forward for the market today. So Adolph, we’ll start with you again. Can you walk us through your experience with similar logistics technology or just with even just the larger ecosystem of solutions that support the logistics industry and how your work with that technology helped birth the idea for e2log?
Adolph Colaco:
Yeah, the whole concept of e2log was actually conceptualized because of the lack of technology in this space and if you look back at the last several decades, and you see what kind of technology has been at the disposal of logisticians, it’s shocking because most of the largest companies in the world even today use the Microsoft Suite products to run their logistics. When you consider what kind of technology has been out there in the market, even though supply chain as a function has had ERP systems in use for a long time, these EERP systems have been primarily focused on the procurement aspect of the supply chain. Now that is only a subset of activity. Supply chain as the name suggests is meant to be a chain of events that take place in the course of supply of goods.
But what has happened is the technology came into one pocket which was procurement but the rest of the technology just did not exist so it is actually that challenge that we identified and said, we need to bring technology into the hands of logisticians. And that’s how the whole e2log concept was born. Now, when we look at the technologies that have existed up to this point in time, relative to your question, ERP systems, I say this with due respect are clunky and they’re not user friendly. It’s not the kind of technology that you and me experience in our day to day lives. Today, what kind of technology is the average consumer exposed to?
Daniel Litwin:
eCommerce, apps with a great UI and UX, yeah, totally.
Adolph Colaco:
Absolutely, right. So that’s the technology that you and me and all users are exposed to in their day to day lives. However, when they come to the workplace and they’re trying to run their supply chain, they’re exposed to a clunky system. So consumers are now looking for that kind of an experience. So what we’ve tried to do is bring that B2C experience which consumers are used to into the B2B world. And strategically, we want to simplify the usage of technology for logistics. I’ll tell you this, at one stage in my career, I was a buyer. And in the process of buying, you need to cut a purchase order as they call it in an ERP system and it was normal to spend hours and hours trying to train yourself to use system. And I remember that I had a user guide which was this thick to tell me how to kind of purchase order.
And despite doing that same task for months, I still had to flip back and say, oh, how do I do this? How do I do that? So we have specifically focused on overcoming that problem and build technology in such a way that you do not need a user guide. You want to build technology so that it’s intuitive enough for the user who is relatively familiar with the process to be able to come in and intuitively know, this is the button that I need to click and this is the natural progression to the next step. So that’s the void that the industry has had and that’s the void we’ve tried to fill using this approach to technology.
Daniel Litwin:
So then why that approach that holds both the UX and UI as well as the weight behind the solution as equal players in delivering an actual needed solution for the industry? I guess, dig a little bit more into that impact and why you see both of those needing to coexist and share a similar level of priority.
Adolph Colaco:
Great question. So one of the interesting things which a lot of folks may not be aware of is that supply chain as a function and logistics as a function have not even had a formal education until very recently. It’s unlike if you are a mechanical engineer or you’re an electrical engineer or you’re a doctor or some kind of trade, you get trained on how to do that and there are well established best practices which are highly recommended to be able to execute your tasks. If you’re building a machine, you’re setting up an electronic circuit board, whatever the case may be. But when you look at supply chain, the industry has just not had a formal education. There is no well defined structure around how supply chains need to be run. It is something which a lot of people actually learn on the go and their learnings and their knowledge are very oftentimes limited to what they’re exposed to in a particular company.
So if I work for a particular company for 25 years and that’s how they ran their supply chain, that is my understanding of how supply chains need to be run. So what we’ve done is the team that we put together has got two fundamental skill sets when it comes to the product and the technology itself. One is those who are deep supply chain expertise from various industry segments working with some of the largest companies in the world. And then we have a technology team who’s just built the product based on the inputs from those supply chain experts. So at the end of the day, when you put technology out there, not only do you need to have a great UI and a UX at the end of the day, but you also need to make sure that you’re solving problems and you need to standardize the processes so that you get the best supply chain impact. So when we’ve built e2log whilst the focus has been to deliver that B2C experience, we make sure that we’ve actually simplified and standardized those supply chain steps and processes so that it has a common way of doing things. So when we go to our customers and we introduce e2log, not only do we bring technology to them but we actually bring better processes, we simplify things, we eliminate waste both through technology as well as our approach to processes.
John Donnelly III:
The other thing I was going to add to that is I think when you look at the industry, as Adolph said, so few people have technology that actually works and so that’s really been a problem. And so because in people’s everyday lives, they’re used to using these apps that are very simple as we’ve discussed, the UIs easy, it requires no training to use a lot of things like Uber or food delivery apps, whatever it might be. And so those types of things are really, really important to build the technology platform that’s usable right out of the gate. And so when you talk about training and onboarding customers, we’ll talk about later, it’s a very simplistic process we’ve gone through here. And so people can get to immediate customer impact rapidly. And because we’re selling a software as a service, they basically are subscribing to the product on an annual basis. And so we need to make sure that when they buy the software, they actually have an impact very quickly. It can’t take six months. It can’t take nine months like a traditional large ERP system. Again, nothing wrong with those, they’re just a different approach and different kind of solution. So we’ve just built something that again, gets to that impact fast which for our industry is really imperative for growth and retention of customers.
Daniel Litwin:
I mean, your answer to basically what technologies has the logistics industry been using before this being well, barely any, that seems like a glaring gap in the industry. We see a lot of other heavy industry, I’ll draw analogs to utilities to industrial manufacturing. I’ve been in this space of industrial digital transformation taking on industry 4.0 over I’ll be generous, the last decade let’s say. Why have we not seen that kind of pressure on the supply chain and on all of those little touch points, but we have in other heavy industry?
Adolph Colaco:
Great question. And this is a question I’ve been asked many times, and I’ll start out by saying that I cannot explain the actions of others.
Daniel Litwin:
Sure. You’re not omnipotent?
Adolph Colaco:
So let me start by giving you a perspective of where have supply chains historically sat in the hierarchy of an organization vis-à-vis now? So when I go back in my career, I’ll tell you this, that we were at the lowest rung in the packing order within an organization. Typically you will have the core business of the company, engineering, operations, sales, and all of those functions, the core functions. Then you have the support functions, you have HR, tax, legal, et cetera. And then supply chain sat at the bottom of that support function list so automatically the needs of that function never got the attention of the C-suite. So I’ll give you my own example. In 2007, I had moved from Singapore into the US, and I was injected into a global role with one of the world’s largest offshore drilling companies at the time. And we were going through an ERP implementation.
And there was a lot of focus obviously on the procurement piece. And I was the guy who was running that 30 little logistics operation on the side for the company. So I went to the leadership of the company and said, “Gentlemen, we need to have technology for our logistics, can we make sure that as we are implementing the solution, that we have sufficient focus on that?” I was beating on people’s doors trying to get that done, never got done, but the two reasons why it never got done, the first, was that they did not see it as an important enough function. And the second thing is there was no good technology available. So it ended up in that situation. However, when you look at the world today in 2022, more people know about supply chain and what it means than people have ever known probably in history.
And it’s because of the fact that there has been a massive disruption which has caused people to become aware of the importance of supply chain. Today, those very same C-suite leaders who are not paying attention to their supply chain functions and logistics functions because they just thought they were so low and tactical, are actually now going to their supply chain leaders and saying, hey, this is impacting our bottom line. This is impacting our ability to deliver product to our customers. What are we doing to make our supply chains more efficient? Today when these CFOs have to pay $25,000 for a single container to move from China to the US as an example, when they were used to paying a 10th of that not too long ago, it’s caused them to sit up and pay attention to this.
Daniel Litwin:
So a fire is lit, yeah.
Adolph Colaco:
Yes, absolutely.
John Donnelly III:
That’s right. Well, the reality too is the role of chief supply chain officers grown tremendously in the last few years. And so obviously the state of the world lately, the last three, four years that everybody knows about as Adolph said, has driven that kind of visibility into what’s going on. And I think it’s also driven enterprise customers like the folks that we work with to think more about how to automate and be more efficient and just look for ways to save money and be able to really help to boost their brand because ultimately if you’re not be able to deliver products on time or have visibility and kind of ability to kind of price things effectively, you do affect your brand. So really you think about the C-suite, the marketing folks are upset with the supply chain folks because the brand is affected by that. So I think it’s driven just again, the overall need for solutions like this, like we have in terms of ease of use and be able to do something fast. They can’t wait for another year to go by with ships sitting in the harbor with things not being delivered.
Adolph Colaco:
Just to add to that, what’s very interesting Daniel is that, we talk to customers on a day to day basis, different industry segments, different parts of the world. It is shocking to see how many large global corporations who are not short of funds in any way, not short of their ability to reach out and find technology solutions, run their global logistics on the Microsoft Suite of products and nothing against Microsoft and thank God for Microsoft because I don’t know what they would’ve done without it, but it is shocking. People are using in 2022 emails, Excel spreadsheets, and phone calls to run logistics operations, which firstly are carrying billions of dollars of product but in terms of the spend, I mean we talk to companies who spend $50, 75, $100, $125, $150 million of logistics spend a year, but all of that is managed without technology.
Daniel Litwin:
Manually, yeah.
Adolph Colaco:
Manually, and then when you look at the challenges in the world of supply chain today, it’s not necessarily because there are lesser ships on the planet. The ocean industry has been contributing towards the fleet constantly. The airlines have been constantly providing the equipment that is needed. The trucking fleets have been reinforced over the years, but why is it that there is such a big imbalance today? And a lot of this is stemming from the fact there is lack of data flowing through, there’s lack of technology and the huge inefficiencies that come about as a consequence of that so the moment you have a little bit of tipping of the scale because of an event like we’ve been through with the pandemic, the whole infrastructure is not able to cope with it because the data is not flowing, information is not flowing, technology is not there.
Daniel Litwin:
And it sounds like what is, placing the market where it’s at today or speaking more largely the entire logistics industry is suddenly companies realized we need to pay more attention to the supply chain. And then they realized we don’t have the right solution to do this. But because like you were describing, it was at the bottom of the priority list for years, it wasn’t necessarily a profitable market to develop giant solutions for the supply chain. So then you said, well, we need to find the right solution and you look, and there aren’t a ton of solutions available anyways. So that places e2log in a really unique and exciting position because as everyone is looking for the right solution, as they’re weighing ERP systems, as they’re weighing the Microsoft Suite of products, they’re looking for something to ease those pain points across the entire supply chain and e2log seems like it is stepping in to fill that critical role. So I ask then why e2log and why now? Why should our audience out there and customers out there consider e2log in the growing suite of products that are now realizing this is a market with opportunity, let’s break into it, let’s plant our flag. So why you all?
Adolph Colaco:
Sure. So, as I mentioned earlier, supply chain is essentially a chain of events which need to occur seamlessly for the supply chain to run efficiently. It’s as simple as that. When you look at technologies which are out there, a lot of these technologies, Daniel, tend to be technologies which solve one or more of those activities. So then what happens is if you are looking to orchestrate your end to end supply chain, you end up having to use disparate systems. And sometimes you have a situation where there are actually gaps because of the fact that you don’t have a system to do something. So if your supply chain, for example, has got 25 steps and you end up using four different systems to cobble that all together, you have to deal with that flow of information across different systems, which is not efficient to start with.
And then you have gaps because the systems don’t do everything. Now, what we have done at e2log, and this is extremely powerful, and this is one of the most important reasons why we are different is that we take that entire supply chain process end to end, we weave in it together in one single place to be able to have the ability to help companies orchestrate that end to end logistics process on a single platform. And it allows that order life cycle visibility. So this is game changing wherein you don’t need to have multiple systems, you don’t have to have fragmented processes. You can actually take the process from start to finish and manage it in one place. But the other aspect of it is that we work off a platform concept, very aware of the fact that there are already preexisting systems which may be in play at a company.
So if a company is using an ERP for procurement, as an example, or a warehouse management system to manage their multiple warehouses across the planet, we have the ability to interface with those. So the platform concept allows you to pull in data and push out data from systems where you need to receive it from and where you need to send it to. But we are that engine which allows for that end to end process to be managed at one single place and this is game changing. And it’s also very important that when buyers of logistics technology are going out there and trying to see what’s available, my recommendation would be, do not look for a bandaid solution. Oh, I need this, how do I plug this gap over here? Take a step back, look at your entire end to end logistics needs and see how you can find one platform to be able to orchestrate this rather than ending up with some kind of a patchwork solution.
John Donnelly III:
The other thing I going to add to that as a thing we talked about earlier is the fact that as a new customer of each, you don’t need that much training as we said earlier. And so I think as we’ve developed the platform, the reality is that people, the UI and the usability of a system is so important. We spend a lot of time on the engineering side to really do that and so when we have sprint releases every month to kind of bring products back to market and continue to innovate, but ultimately it’s again, do the customers have that immediate impact, do they have impact within 90 days, we provide that with a platform it’s extremely extensive. And I think that’s, you asked why e2log and why now, you have to have that platform capability to have the depth of knowledge that we have in there with the domain experience we have coupled with the UI. And I think that’s a real difference maker in terms of other vendors in the space that, again, take a lot more time and effort to get things to market.
Daniel Litwin:
So let’s ground the unique qualities of e2log around some customer examples so if you had to give us one example of e2log at work or how you see e2log filling all of those gaps and serving a holistic purpose, what would that be? And how do you see each of those touch points validating why e2log is such a unique solution for the market today?
Adolph Colaco:
Sure. I’d like to give you two examples because they solve the different use cases but highlight very well what value we bring to the customer. So one of our customers is the world’s largest electrical equipment manufacturer, and they have product which comes out of supplier facilities as well as their own manufacturing facilities. And not surprisingly, as I mentioned earlier, they were running their international logistics, just using the Microsoft Suite of products. Now this was leading to a lot of inefficiencies and as we went into the customer, we discussed with some of their inventory planning personnel, we discussed with some of their sales personnel as to what their problems were. And they said the constant challenge that they were grappling with is they didn’t know where their product was. They didn’t know how to plan their replenishment and stocking levels because they just did not have control over their supply chain.
When we spoke to the logisticians that were running their business, they said, we just don’t have any tools to be able to execute the logistics. When we spoke to their logistics service providers, they said that the whole process is so fraught with inefficiencies, that invoices were not getting paid, there were disputes in the invoicing process between them and the customer. So e2log comes in and we actually digitalize the end to end process for them. They move freight between about 35 countries and that region of the world where our technology was deployed. And within a period of about 30 days, we were able to drive down their logistics costs by more than 20%, we were able to improve their process efficiency on certain activities that they had sort of measured pre e2log and post e2log. And the process efficiency that was achieved was in excess of 70%.
Daniel Litwin:
I mean, those are transformational numbers.
Adolph Colaco:
Absolutely. And in fact, when Mark Scott, our CTO and myself had a conversation with the CFO and the CEO of that company in our quarterly business review, he said something really interesting to us. He said, “Guys, you’ve given me visibility and oversight of my own company and its business, which I did not have.” Just did not have the data because part of what we did for them is through our analytics platform, which is a super exciting layer that sits above our operating platform, it provides a single pane of glass and a visual representation of what the supply chain looks like for that company. So it allows the executives, the planners, different people in different roles to see what’s happening within their supply chain. So that was a huge impact that we made at one customer. Another customer that we work with is one of the world’s largest offshore drilling companies.
They headquartered here in the US and they had a logistics program which because of the downturn that the oil and gas business had been up to until of course gas is now 1.25 bucks a panel but prior to that, they had to make some deep cuts within their organization and the consequence of that is that they had to almost relinquish control of some of their supply chain, just to keep it going because of the lack of resources. And this was being done by third parties and they ended up with a suboptimal process. So when we came in, what they presented as a challenge to us, as I said, we want this entire process automated from step one to step seven. It’s say a 10 step process, we want these seven steps automated because we don’t have the resources. We know we’ve lost control of these stages of the process.
What is it that e2log can bring in? So through our apply platform concept that I mentioned, we integrated with their ERP system for their order information. We integrated with the warehouse management system of their forwarders. We were able to build rules based on their business needs to say every once a week, for example, you move an air freight from this location to this location. Every two weeks, you consolidate your cargos from these origins to these destinations and we automated that process. So for this customer, what was, it was, they had actually done a kaizen event and they had mapped that their supply chain process end to end was about 88 steps and the automation that we brought in for the seven stages of their activity took away almost 45% of those steps that they had. And we actually automated that and even the limited resources that they had supporting the business needs, even those are not needed because of the automation that we delivered.
Daniel Litwin:
Thoughts on your end on that example?
John Donnelly III:
No, I just think ultimately it’s again, we about talk why e2log and why now and ultimately it’s about delivering rapid impact, rapid savings and the ability for the supply chain teams to be able to kind of push that up to the C level to show them as Adolph said in our dashboard and kind of analytics capabilities is something that the combination of our mobile platform, our overall platform itself, and the analytics provides that visibility into the savings we’re able to get. So again, execs can see how the automation is working, how they’re becoming more efficient and therefore saving time and money through their processes so-
Daniel Litwin:
You all have mentioned this, both of you all have in some of your answers, but why is it so important for there to be an early, almost immediate impact for customers as you pitch them and validate them on e2log or really just even more generally on any solution being implemented into the logistics industry?
John Donnelly III:
Yeah. I mean, I think the reality is that when you’re selling a platform like ours, like I said earlier, in terms of a subscription model, when you sell to a customer in this environment, you have to have immediate impact. You have to be able to make them happy, delight them and retain them over time. So how do you do that? It’s through innovating with the platform, it’s showing immediate impact, it’s showing long term savings, and it’s obviously growing within your organization getting more users in their workflow using e2log. And so the idea behind our entire customer success program is to ensure that happens so that we stay very close to customers. They have an assigned account manager to them. So they get that kind of very much handholding along the way to make sure that they’re having success.
And we help to kind of promote that within the organization internally to help make the existing project successful and find new ones as well. So again, it’s this constant kind of wave of back and forth with us and customers to ensure that they’re using the platform, seeing value, and seeing again, additional opportunity to find more savings across other projects. And I think when you’re coming to Mark with a SaaS platform, it’s imperative that part of the process is really great, you can’t just sell a platform and expect it to work. It has to be a continuous relationship you build with a customer. So in many cases, we will not go after customers that don’t have a good fit for us. We’ve developed a very strong ideal customer profile, key use cases where we’re going to be good at things and not good at things. And so we try to find projects where we know we can have good success and try to avoid ones that we won’t. We know that good news travels fast and bad news travels faster. We’d like to ensure that we find customers that are happy with us and they stay with us so-
Adolph Colaco:
What I would add to that is in most instances when we are going into a company, we are not necessarily replacing another technology because the odds are nothing has existed over there to start with. So there is a degree of expectation from those who’ve made the investment that they need to see the returns and who doesn’t like to see the returns quickly. If you go and buy a stock tomorrow, you wish that it skyrockets the next day, right?
Daniel Litwin:
I mean, yeah.
Adolph Colaco:
It’s the same concept. So people are looking for an ROI but the important thing is that what we do is that we, through our analytics platform help those decision makers who have made the sale internally to adopt a technology like e2log to demonstrate the value that has been delivered. So we give them the ability to say, this particular process I gave you as an example, has improved by 70% or we have been able to reduce our costs by 20% or we were able to bring supply chain cycle time visibility in which now helps the inventory planners make better inventory decisions or we now have analytics which helps us to manage the performance of our logistics providers as an example or we now have analytics to help the buying decisions that we are making. So there is a need for speed associated with this but that’s the beauty about technology like ours is that it doesn’t have a long life cycle to be able to start being implemented or delivering value. It literally kicks in within a few weeks time.
Daniel Litwin:
And what I think is so valuable about there being that pressure for speed, speed in success of the solution, also comes from what you just said that typically these platforms aren’t replacing something else in the market, for a lot of companies, this is their first time ever experiencing this. So if anything, other companies in the space should be giving the rally cry behind e2log because if anything, by you validating the role and success and efficacy of a platform like e2log, the whole industry benefits too. And other players in the industry, anyone providing any kind of technology solution in the larger ecosystem for logistics, now gets a win because e2log has done their job right. Do you see that kind of, I don’t know, ecosystem perspective as you approach the success of your technologies?
Adolph Colaco:
Absolutely, yes, and it’s really important because of the fact that this is an elephant in the room when it comes to digitalization is the fact that a digital transformation is a cultural transformation and the folks who are running logistics in a lot of companies, very oftentimes tend to have a thought process that technology can not help over here or we cannot digitalize this entire process. And I’ve done this this way for decades and it is far too complex to be digitalized. So that’s a barrier of resistance that I would say most companies who are trying to bring technology into this space are struggling with. So there is no better way to overcome those barriers of resistance than to have those who have experienced the benefit firsthand to evangelize that.
So that’s why having those success stories out there and being spread for the broader community within supply chain and logistics is very, very important. And I think once we can get those testimonials out, those use cases out, those business cases out, I think it will drive an overall change within the industry. One of the other aspects about how supply chains have been run globally for the longest time is to think of it like horse with blinders, that’s what it’s been. Each supply chain leader or team runs their supply chain just focused on their business. And the industry has not had the concept of ecosystems and this is where e2log is bringing this concept in where we are a digital ecosystem wherein you have the ability to share data, which is anonymized and aggregated. Nobody is able to see confidential data, one of the other, but the ability to make your decisions around how you move your freight, which lanes, what transit times to expect, what pricing to expect, as an example is coming from the concept of ecosystem.
So the future of supply chains is going to be ecosystems. The future supply chain is not going to be a supply chain leader sitting in isolation on the top of a mountain trying to figure out how he or she runs their supply chain. It is going to be based on the sharing of data. The future of supply chains are going to be building composable supply chains wherein you have the ability to react very easily to the pushes and pulls of the markets, the demand and supply capabilities. So that piece is only going to come from those [inaudible 00:38:21] were the pioneers in adopting technology actually sharing their successes with the broader audience.
Daniel Litwin:
Any thoughts on that?
John Donnelly III:
Well, like I said earlier, I think as we look at our kind of overall go to market approach, we’re trying to, and if people come to our website, e2log.com, they can certainly see we built a buyer’s journey kind of perspective so that people can understand kind of a little bit more of the history of the supply chain space as Adolph has kind of touched on here as well as kind of how e2log’s taken a different approach to it. And ultimately it’s about making the industry a better spot for everybody. Certainly, we want to have e2log be a successful business of course, but ultimately it’s about the overall industry kind of improving and being more efficient and more positive for everybody because we all participate in the supply chain at some level so we’re trying to do good things for the industry as well as the e2log business itself.
But ultimately again, when you come to the site, you’ll be able to see kind of what that journey looks like. Be able to kind of educate yourself on why we think we’re different, why we’re unique and kind of, as Adolph said, we’ll have over time, lots of good, great customer success stories up there to show people, good use cases for the product, the platform and other people’s success. Ultimately, success breeds success. So we’re hoping that as people continue to talk more about their success with our platform, others will come and take a look and see if it’s a good fit for them.
Daniel Litwin:
Exciting stuff you all. We’re just about done here. Thank you again, Adolph and John for you all’s perspective so far, it’s really been enlightening and hopefully our audience has a better picture into your brains, how you’re viewing the current situation and environment and where e2log plays a role. What I want to do now is look ahead before we wrap up so what do both of you see as future changes to the supply chain? Based on how we’re seeing it evolve now in respond to the last two years of pandemic stressors, what’s in store and how do you see that impacting e2log solution and some of your, maybe future updates.
Adolph Colaco:
So three areas I would say are going to come in play for future supply chains. Number one is technology. It’s going to play a huge, huge part. It’s going to be the differentiating factor between success or lack thereof for supply chain leaders. That’s not going away. So technology is here to stay, it’s only going to get better. And what we believe is that the future of logistics is autonomous logistics and AI and ML is going to play a big part in that wherein the decisions which are today taken by humans based on their experience are now going to be data driven decisions wherein you will be able to program the technology to make certain decisions based on certain events happening or not happening as an example. So autonomous logistics is here to stay, it’s coming. It’s just getting started, it’s part of what we have already started delivering to our customers.
That’s the one big piece. The second piece is ecosystems as I mentioned earlier. The world is going to change how it approaches supply chain. These decisions are not going to be made in isolation. It’s going to be more and more sharing of data, maintaining security, but being able to make decisions with a broader spectrum of vision relative to what’s happening across the world and with other shippers and logistics providers. A lot of the experience that I believe is going to come into supply chain is what you have for example, in the travel industry today. Today it doesn’t take much for you to know whether if you’re staying at a particular hotel, what consumers think about that experience or if you want to go to a restaurant, people have sufficient reviews and ratings about how the food is and what the recommendations are. Today, when it comes to logistics as an example, where do you find a reviewer rating about a logistics provider? You can’t.
Daniel Litwin:
There’s no Yelp for logistics.
Adolph Colaco:
So that is going to happen. That is going to be the future. And the opaqueness that the industry has had for the longest time is going to go away. It’s going to go away because of technology. And it’s going to bring in a higher degree of transparency into the buying decision of supply chain leaders and the performance of logistics providers and the data around transactions, et cetera. The third piece, which we believe is going to be the future is going to be the composable supply chains, which have the ability to react and respond. What a lot of people don’t realize when businesses are growing as an example, one of the big challenges they have to overcome is how are we going to support the supply chain in a new country or a new region or a new market. And oftentimes companies are handicapped because of how their supply chains may be, if they’re rigid or don’t have the ability to scale based on what those business needs are. So that composability of supply chains is going to be a big piece that we seek coming into the future.
John Donnelly III:
Yeah, the other thing I would say, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but is the fact that the way we’ve innovated the software from the very beginning has been very, very customer driven. So when you think about a lot of companies and vendors in the marketplace across Silicon Valley, when they build platforms, a lot of times they get a bunch of technology people together and build something they think is going to work for the industry and hope they get product market fit. e2log already has product market fit. And why is that? Because we built it with a lot of supply chain experience with Adolph and the team that was built originally and having existing customers help drive some of the functionality that’s in the system today.
So the product’s actually usable and people recognize that so I think that’s something we’re going to continue to do in the future in terms of constant, continuous product marketing and product market feedback for the platform to continue to grow and innovate so that we make sure we’re building things and building additional functionality that’s actually usable as our customers grow and we want to grow with our customers. So the whole customer success program we talked about earlier, we take very seriously, it’s all about delighting our customers and making sure that their impact and their advice and their counsel in terms of our growth and the future is always there. It’ll be a constant wave of feedback for us that really helps to drive the innovation that we’re looking for.
Daniel Litwin:
What I hear from both of you is that technology is going to empower community which is going to empower feedback, which is going to empower this great positive feedback loop of change that pushes the whole industry forward. And that’s incredibly exciting and I know of that e2log is doing a lot of work to stay at the front of that positive feedback loop. So this is just the beginning of conversations not only unpacking those big level trends, but also getting some other folks in here to chat with you all and other e2log leaders to get a sense for how they see some of these issues mapping out and how e2log’s working for them. So I’m super excited to chat with you all in the future, but until then, we’ll go ahead and wrap up today’s video. So thank you again to the two of you. Again, folks we’ve been chatting with Adolph Colaco, he’s founder and CEO of e2log. We’ve also been chatting with John Donnelly III, co-founder and CRO of e2log. If folks listening and watching want to tap into what e2log’s doing, they want to learn a little bit more, maybe pick you all’s brain on the future of the industry, how can they do all day above?
John Donnelly III:
Sure. Obviously go to our website e2log.com. You can hit me up at jd3@e2log.com or goinfo@e2log.com. So those are three avenues to get to us and we’ll hope to hear from you soon.
Daniel Litwin:
All right, John, Adolph, thanks you all for your time today, it’s really been a pleasure.
Adolph Colaco:
Thank you Dan, appreciate it.
John Donnelly III:
Thank you Dan, appreciate it.
Daniel Litwin:
And thank you everyone for tuning in to this simply shipped video. If you want more information on the e2log team, or you want other episodes of our simply shipped podcast or just other important supplemental resources to understand movement in the industry, make sure you’re heading to our website e2log.com. Again, that’s E, the number two, log.com and make sure that you’re subscribing to our podcast on Apple podcast and Spotify. I’m your host, Daniel Litwin, the Voice of B2B and we’ll catch you on some future e2log content.
