This fireside chat recap is from Day 2 of FreightWaves’ F3 Virtual Experience.
TOPIC: The evolution of the supply chain.
DETAILS: A look at the disruption in the supply chain industry, the importance of data, investments in supply chain technology and the next killer app.
SPEAKERS: Scott Lang is the CEO of Turvo, and Craig Fuller is the founder and CEO of FreightWaves.
BIO: Lang brings more than 30 years of leadership and management experience in the services and technology industries to this role as Turvo’s CEO. He was the president and CEO of Silver Springs Network from 2004 to 2013. Prior to that, he worked with Ross Perot at Electronic Data Systems and joined Perot Systems in 1988, shortly after the company’s founding.
WATCH: FIRESIDE CHAT
KEY QUOTES FROM LANG:
“The more I learned about it [the supply chain business], the more I realized how large it was, how fragmented it was and how customized the technology was that people had put in place around their supply chain and logistics — their own individual silos. But supply chain is not really a chain. It’s a team sport, where multiple companies need to work better on the same playing field to drive efficiency across the supply chain and transparency across the supply chain.”
“There used to be a mindset in almost any industry that if I can build technology that is really good and just keep it secret to my customers, I’m going to lock in my customers. In my opinion, that’s old thinking. I am now starting to see this industry welcoming standardized software that allows their market to get bigger and allows them to compete on customer service and customer experience. Amazon is a great example. Everyone can see their technology. There’s no secret code. They’re using standards. But because they made their pond much, much bigger and competed based on customer experience, they’ve set a new bar for how every company in supply chain needs to be.”
“I believe that technology can be an enabler to give companies the agility to respond to market demands. Look at 2020, the year of COVID. In-store sales versus online delivery flipped overnight. The winners were the companies that had the agility with their technology to respond. We have some customers that were doing 70% of their business in-store at the beginning of 2020 to 70% online by the end of 2020. That’s a real-world example that’s not too far behind us and it created some deep infrastructural changes. The word ‘agility’ has become top of mind for companies that are really trying to put the right kind of foundation in place with the right kind of technology.”