This fireside chat recap is from Day 1 of FreightWaves’ Future of Supply Chain live event in Rogers, Arkansas. For more information and content from the event, click here.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: End-to-end visibility in the supply chain.
DETAILS: Visibility is one of the hottest topics in logistics. Consumers can track their Amazon packages, but shippers struggle to know where their freight is at any given time. Chris Cassidy, head of global sales at Trax Technologies, discusses the leading causes of blind spots in the supply chain and what customers can do to ensure they have the best data on which to build a reliable transportation network.
SPEAKER: Chris Cassidy, EVP of global Sales and strategic partnerships, Trax
BIO: Before joining Trax, Cassidy served as a partner with Gartner, advising management in the health care and life sciences industry on supply chain strategies. He led the global health care logistics strategy for UPS, leading to the launch of a new dedicated UPS premier product. He also previously served as head of global logistics at GlaxoSmithKline, managing $1 billion transportation and warehouse spend among other various operations, IT and supply chain management and manufacturing strategy roles during his 12-year tenure.
KEY QUOTES FROM CHRIS CASSIDY
“The toughest thing that shippers deal with today is the multiple, complex technology systems that are at their fingertips — how do you evaluate that, how do you centralize it to get a single picture.”
“At Trax, when we think about transportation spend management, or TSM — which is close to TMS [transportation management system] — we feel like we’re an unbiased TSM platform that integrates into the TMS platforms of the world. We’re not there to disrupt that, we’re there to integrate.”
“Our goal is to get a handle on a customer’s freight spend and start to look how to forecast. Looking forward is going to help us with the next disruption. It’s not ‘if’ we’re going to have further supply chain disruption, it’s where.”