Blythe Brumleve:
0:37
Blythe, welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers and afraid. I'm your host, Blythe Milligan, and we were proudly presented by SPI logistics. We're back with another live episode recording at the manifest the future of supply chain and logistics, and we've got another fantastic interview for y'all today, we are speaking with Renee of Kaleris, Senior Director of Product Management, discussing the visibility perception gap between chippers and terminal operators, which visibility, I think, is a problem that shippers are always trying to solve. So happy to revisit this visibility conversation. We had a visibility conversation at last year's benefits. So give us the, give us a little bit of overview of who Renee is and how you got into logistics in general.
Rene Alvarenga:
1:25
Yeah. So visibility is a very hot topic right now, topic for, I don't know how many years now, maybe four or five right after COVID, supply chain bottlenecks, and it's been interesting. I got into supply chain right out of college. So I was a kid 2010 someone said that I could make a difference, and 15 years later, I'm still trying to make still here. I don't know why sometimes, and I've been in ocean transportation for most of my time. So I've been working with port authorities, marine terminals, shipping lines for almost 15 years now. And then I took a little break, and I moved into this field of railroads so it was adjacent. So I just, you know, needed a break for about four years. And I work with some of the big railroads here in the US, class one railroads, intermodal transportation, moving containers around. And then I came back to Kaleris, 2022 I want to say. And I've been working with collars ever since. And then Kaleris, we do a lot of things. We mainly build software, execution software for shipping lines, marine terminals, port authorities and shippers. And then we have terminal operating systems, shipping lines, transportation management systems, yard management systems. So pretty much, if you have a container, you have it in the ocean and you move it inland, we pretty much have a software solution for it. Oh, wow,
Blythe Brumleve:
3:00
interesting. So even because, for from what I understand a year ago, discussing the visibility issue, a lot of problems revolve around sort of the last mile, like the drivers not having access to that specific information. And so it kind of sounds like with your platform, with having a TMS that that kind of solves that end to end supply chain. Yeah,
Unknown:
3:22
good question. I'll tell you a story. When I was so I took a break for four years, and I went to GE transportation. And I went to one of the GE headquarters, so, General Electric Transportation, very old company, and in one of the headquarters, I went down to some basement, I think I got lost, and I found a bunch of documents from a supply chain conference from the year 2001 we didn't have computers. PowerPoint didn't exist, and it was a little book someone had printed that out, and I was looking through it, and I saw a slide there from 2001 that's 24 years ago, and what you just said is written on that slide. That same problem has been around for at least 24 years, and probably before, because people were talking about it in 2001 visibility. Where's my cargo? Why can't I get more visibility? 2001 so I wish I could say, Yeah, we have a platform solves all the problems in the world. It's probably more complicated than that,
Blythe Brumleve:
4:24
yeah, and I imagine a lot of drivers, and just in particular, just from the drivers that I speak to, it's probably going to be a problem for the foreseeable future as well. Now I want to get a little bit into this report that you did in a thought leadership report conducted by maritime research firm the dias, it uncovers a startling disconnect, that 87% of terminal operators believe that they offer adequate to excellent visibility, but only 25% of shippers feel that they actually receive it. Talk to me about this perception. Yeah,
Unknown:
4:57
interesting. Those are those a good paper we published with Theseus, I think, two or three weeks ago. And these is just a great firm. We gathered a lot of very interesting data. And it all started with me and Susie swindle, our marketing communications director. We were having a meeting with theses. We were just having a conversation, and we were just talking about supply chain, and in that meeting, I couldn't tell them, in how many executive meetings I've been talking about visibility, I couldn't tell them. I couldn't count how many times I've talked to shipper executives shipping lines. CEOs. They make billions of dollars marine terminal CEOs and Port Authority directors. I couldn't tell them how many times I've been in a meeting with them talking about, where's my container? When can I pick up my container? When can I send my driver to the terminal? When's the vessel? ETA, like, when is the vessel going to show up? It's been countless of meetings that I've had over the years about this visibility gap that you just mentioned. So one of the conclusions of the research is that, yeah, there is a gap, there is a communication disconnect, and everyone talks about it, and everyone has a lot of anecdotes. But through this research, we looked at a lot of data that was very interesting. So for example, I'll just give you data point. So it depends on where you go. So we have products all over the world, so it depends on where you go, who you're working with, but there's a specific area in the world where we measured how many vessel ETAs a terminal receives. So if you're a truck driver, yeah, breathe. Here we go. If you're a truck driver and you're working for a shipper, and the shipper tells you, go pick up my container, because I have an import and it's important stuff, and I have a just in time factory or whatever, go pick up my container. If you're a truck driver, you ask your marine terminal, hey, marine terminal, when is my vessel going to show up? And where's my container going to be available? In the marine terminal, they ask the shipping line depending. It depends on where you go. But in this particular region in the world, the shipping line would change the vessel, eta, 15 times, 15 times. Just imagine you you go to an airport and you're waiting for your flight, and your airline changes your vessel, eta, your ship, or your gate, OR gate, or your airplane, eta, 15 times, that'd be great. And they have no control. They have no idea. So then we have this piece of data 15 times, and then from there, it just, you know, trickles down, and it just a disaster. So this number that you gave us 8080 something percent, 87 it's a very real, it's a very real disconnect. And sadly, it's such a big problem that it's not, you know, I wish we you know, there was a product out there. Click a button on the right, and then your problems are solved. This is way bigger than that.
Blythe Brumleve:
7:56
So how do you attack it? Another
Unknown:
7:59
very good question, good questions today here at the end, the conclusions of the report are, I think, are pretty powerful. They're based on data that at least I haven't seen anywhere else, because it, you know, we gather data from marine terminals and shipping lines, and then we gather data from shippers. So it's both sides of the fence. In a lot of cases, you feel like you have two teams pulling in different directions. The one of the conclusions of the report is you probably shouldn't focus on visibility. Yeah, for the past maybe five years after COVID or the supply chain bottlenecks, everyone's like, you know, I need a visibility product. And, you know, visibility, product here and there. One of the conclusions is that you should probably, shouldn't focus on visibility. You should probably focus on your own execution. Yeah, so if you are a node in this supply chain, the better you execute on your operation. More likely than not, you're going to be helping the visibility problem. And then we have some, again, scary numbers. We measure these with our customers and their customers, and it's more of like an industry problem. People call it digital friction, so that's the technical term in supply chain. We've measured that in a lot of cases, marine terminals, shipping lines, Dray providers and sometimes even warehouse management system users, they use around 30% of their capabilities in the software. So imagine you're a yard somewhere inland, and you buy a warehouse management system, you're paying for it every year, and you only use 30% of your capabilities. Yeah. So one of the conclusions of the report, or to answer your question, How do you tackle this, our suggestion is you should probably focus on your execution first. Well,
Blythe Brumleve:
9:45
it's interesting you brought that up, because a previous interview that we were just talking about is they kind of said the same thing that you were saying within warehousing, is that even with their own processes and their own sort of robotic solutions and things like that, that they only get to about 30% of that usage, and then they never really see the full picture of the solutions that they already have in house. And so it's interesting that that is just permeating throughout, or maybe it's scary, or, you know, just little concerning, or maybe this is something that you want to address
Unknown:
10:19
digital friction is the actual term. Yeah, 30% is very low.
Blythe Brumleve:
10:23
It makes sense. If you think about all how software kind of rules our life now, and you really only have so much bandwidth for each of these different tools. And so I guess you don't know what you don't know, but you also don't know what you don't want to learn, either. And that's probably the latter. Probably more of what's going on in this situation. And so how are, how are these? How are you guys bridging this gap? How are you guys attempting to solve this problem? Like, if you release a report like this, and it's like, just, you know, work better, yeah, like, how do you? How do you talk to your customers and tell them to work better and use their tools more well?
Unknown:
10:58
People process products, yeah, like, at the end of the day, I think that now more than ever, everyone, everyone in supply chain, we all understand that supply chain is about people more than it is about software. And maybe software is more about people than we want to believe right now. So people process products. Yes, we when we talk to our customers, we try to encourage them to use more of their tools, and that leads to a lot of process changes. So they need to invest in training, they need to invest in knowledge transfer. They need to invest in their people using their products. Another very scary number that we have is that, you know, a lot of people don't want to be in supply chain, especially the users of these products, truck drivers, marine terminal operators, ship captains, railroad engineers. You know, 20 years ago, working for a railroad was very appealing. Now not so much. Yeah, drivers as well, yeah. So one of the things we encourage our customers is like, you guys need we can help you. Someone else can help you, but you guys need to invest more in your people using our tools, because if you can drive that number 30% to 35% you're going to add a lot of value. You don't have to solve a problem 100% to create value. So that's one thing that we do. So people process product, and another thing that we do so focusing more on software interoperability is another technical term that you're going to hear more and more. We probably already do. So the interoperability is just a fancy way of saying you need software that can talk to each other, that can work together exactly and depending on where you go, in a lot of places, it's worse than others, but you still find TMS applications that don't take EDI. And EDI was built 1980 you still find applications that run in Access. I saw a few years ago, already, two or three years ago, a truck TMS that was based on access Windows XP. So they had kept a desktop. Not heard
Blythe Brumleve:
13:24
that in a while Windows XP,
Unknown:
13:27
they had kept a desktop with a CD driver for Windows XP, and that was the only desktop that would run Windows XP, and that was the GMs. They would print stuff, give that to drivers. Drivers would give them stuff, type of stuff, then it was a Microsoft Access application. So one thing that we try to do is our applications need to be built to talk to each other. It doesn't matter how it can be EDI API, data streaming, smoke signals for whatever anyone
Blythe Brumleve:
13:55
cares. I integrate that. Yeah,
Unknown:
13:58
but more and more we hope that as technology progresses and people adopt new technology, you know, give it 10 years, and applications are going to be built to talk to each other, that'll put us in a better place.
Blythe Brumleve:
14:11
I just had an interview earlier today that was talking about different AI agents within logistics that are talking to each other. And very soon, you're going to have a carrier that's going to have their own AI agent that is going to do all the grunt work that the driver doesn't want to call and check in with, the shipper doesn't want to call and check in with the broker. So he's going to have his own agent that's going to call a broker's AI agent, and they're just going to the agents are just going to talk to each other. And so, yeah, I mean, software is really, you know, kind of taking away a lot of, like, the grunt work. But I think if I kind of, like, read between the lines of, like, what you're saying, like, it really starts with sort of the bare bones of you, you guys, almost like, work as consultants, it sounds like to really help a lot of maybe these legacy companies adapt in a more meaningful way into technology adoption, is that maybe a safe assumption,
Unknown:
15:02
we have a services arm. Yeah, we have a product is our main thing, but we have a services arm. And, yeah, that's just our experience. Like, you know, people can have all the product in the world you want. At the end, you still need people to stay close to your customers.
Blythe Brumleve:
15:18
Well, it sounds too like you don't even really want to sell a product to a customer unless they're there. They're capable enough that you don't maybe want them to be one of those you know, people that only use 30% of
Unknown:
15:28
it, optimization services. That's what the sales people say. Resell optimization services. All right,
Blythe Brumleve:
15:36
so a couple more questions. Questions here, is there anything important that you feel like we should mention that we haven't already talked about
Unknown:
15:43
AI, talked about AI, Oh, please,
Blythe Brumleve:
15:46
yeah, tell us what you guys are doing at AI. Well, not
Unknown:
15:49
us, but so I'll give you another number. This is a big number, 315,000,000,003 One, 5 billion is the amount of money in 2025 that the four big technology companies in the US are going to spend in. Ai, so that is Amazon, Facebook or meta, Google alphabet. And so it's Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Oh, I was not
Blythe Brumleve:
16:19
open. Ai, so, yeah, $315
Unknown:
16:22
billion a lot of that is in data centers and compute power. A lot of that is in the way that they use chips and, you know, they come up with, you know, the agent has to say something. A lot of that is in the way that happens. But, AI, yeah, it's coming. It's a big number. I
Blythe Brumleve:
16:42
mean, the way that that interview went earlier, it was one of those things where I was like, I would love to clone myself, and if I could clone myself as a business owner, and be able to, you know, have somebody sit down on sales meetings with me, and I think from his, from their lens, what they were saying. As long as you're upfront and honest with how you're using AI, then most people do not have a problem with it. Yeah,
Unknown:
17:05
yeah. It's a big number. And there's a lot that's happening now. There's more that's coming in the future. The World Economic Forum, they publish reports about everything. I'm a big fan. Every year they published a global risk report, the one for 2025 came out in December 24 the biggest risk, global risk that they found was misinformation and the misuse of information. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So as long as you're up front and you tell people like, Hey, you're not talking to Lindsey here. This is a robot. I think there has to be a lot of control around that legislation. Probably a lot of standards need to come into place. We're working on a lot of interoperability standards the way systems communicate with each other. Because to your point, you have to be upfront about it, because if not, you get into a very gray area of, how are you using my information? Who am I talking to? Who am I revealing my information to? Sometimes you're talking to a human, and it's in confidence, but if you're talking to a robot that's connected to the cloud, you don't always, you know, click on the button of accepting user terms when I'm talking to someone who I think it's a human so you're right up front. Being upfront is going to matter in the future. So,
Blythe Brumleve:
18:28
you know, last couple questions here, you know, where can Is there anything else from this report? I guess I should probably ask from the tedious report that you want to mention
Unknown:
18:38
for eight hours so you can take me wherever you want to go. Well, any more cool stats? I should say I also have a lot of them. Well, no, it's just a very dynamic world, yeah, changing world, evolving, especially on technology, especially now, yeah, in the future, I think we're going to see a lot of AI, Big Data big data scientist is the fastest growing job position, if you will. Big Data Scientist Fintech is number two and number three. You guessed it. AI, the jobs that we're closing in supply chain, the fastest telemarketers, people that input data. So you're going to see a lot of electronic bill of lading, things going around these days, especially in shipping. My background is in ocean transportation. So in ocean transportation, everyone's talking about the electronic bill of lading. In railroads, we all talk about the electronic bill of lading, the people that input that information, those jobs are less and less frequent now. Those are the two at the bottom, telemarketers, data input people, and at the top, you have, yeah, big data scientist, FinTech, sure, and AI, so yeah, the world's gonna change,
Blythe Brumleve:
19:53
yeah, evolution, I think, in a very short amount of time. But it's interesting to hear how that evolution is happening in technology, AI, but then also how it affects the global supply chain jobs. So this is fantastic. So thank you, Renee. Where can folks follow you? Follow more of your work. You know, maybe get set up with Kaleris. Kaleris.com
Unknown:
20:11
is our website. We have our links there. I think it's it's better if people go there. I'll put them in the show notes, and you'll see what we are working on. Yeah. Oh, perfect. Thank you so much. This is fantastic. Cool. Appreciate you. Thank you.
Blythe Brumleve:
20:26
I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe. Subscribe to the show, sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everything is logistics.com and in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let you all know about another company I operate, and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a better website. Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a co workers, child, a neighbor down the street or stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry than it takes to actually build the dang website. Well, that doesn't happen at Digital dispatch. We've been building online since 2009 but we're also early adopters of AI automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place, to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Our new website builds start as low as$1,500 along with ongoing website management, maintenance and updates starting at $90 a month, plus some bonus freight, marketing and sales content similar to what you hear on the podcast. You can watch a quick explainer video over on digital dispatch.io, just check out the pricing page once you arrive, and you can see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you all real soon and go jags. You.
