"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything" - George Bernard Shaw
I work with clients who see significant opportunities to create better supply chains and, in the process, build more certainty and resiliency into those supply chains.
As the global economy and trade are shaped by the effects of the pandemic and we respond to the rise of inflation and ripple effect of the war in Ukraine, I only see an even greater need for myself and the people I work with to continue to apply fresh ideas to help teams and companies be more successful.
By “fresh ideas”, I don’t mean just technical innovation but also complementary social and organizational innovation, because, in my experience, all three are required to gain the acceptance and implementation of new ways of working and new processes to meet customer preferences.
In the supply chain and logistics industry my clients have invested heavily in the purchase, development, and customization of core IT systems. They have core systems for finance, customer relationship management, order management, and supply chain management. But as much as these systems are foundational and considered the backbone of a company’s technology, this IT infrastructure is slow to adapt to the pace of change and evolve in a way that supports managing the fluidity and complexity of front-line delivery operations.
In my field of Truck delivery performance, I see a huge number of ideas and impetus to improve the way people are managing drayage of exports and imports, or haulage for airfreight, final mile delivery, or dealing with transloading or asset return. Human innovation can help companies move beyond what is thought possible today, finding solutions for using automation to reduce the daily manual workloads of local logistic teams and giving people the flexibility to deal with the exceptions and disruptions to deliveries. All add up to a greater level of customer touch and experience.
This is what my clients are working on. Clockwork originally started with using sensor technology for supply chain visibility. We have evolved into a delivery performance platform to enhance existing IT systems, integrating into downstream and upstream applications from contracting, rates, delivery, tracking and invoicing, closing the gap between visibility and operations to provide superior delivery performance. Typically, the large core systems are too rigid and expensive to adapt to the operation team's real-time needs, resulting in local teams using spreadsheets, emails, and calls to manage critical customer deliveries. Clockwork fills the gap, so there’s no need to embark on any unnatural exercise of customizing an existing system intended for another purpose but stretched to perform a task that it was never designed to do.
If you are dealing with truck delivery challenges, consider yourself a “change master”. I’d love to hear from you and discuss ideas and ways I have seen my clients respond to those challenges.
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