If a planner looks at a load in our TMS and doesn’t trust what the screen says…who wins, the planner or the system?
My answer? Let’s do a root cause analysis, because it’s situational every time.
We ask why they disagree, then ask why again, and continue that trend until we reach the root cause. The planner might be interpreting the system in a way that makes them doubt it. We might be feeding in the data wrong. There might be a technical blip behind the scenes, or a carrier that isn’t sending us good data.
I want my team asking questions with an unbiased view until we truly understand the cause.
I’ve spent more than 22 years in third-party logistics, starting right out of college with non-asset transportation management and working across transportation and warehousing at several 3PLs. Whatever the role, I kept coming back to process, technology, and data, and where they intersect with the people doing the actual work.
One of my bosses used to tell me I have one foot in the nerd world and one foot in the operations world, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
I joined KBX Logistics™ almost three years ago and spent a little over two of them running Capacity Solutions. In late January, I moved into Operations Engineering and Digital Portfolio.
When a shipper asks what that means, I tell them: We listen to our customers, our carriers, and our operations team, find the gaps, and close them with people, process, technology, or data.
Sometimes that means building in the TMS. Sometimes it means aligning people to a process, mapping a new one, or giving someone visibility to data they couldn’t see.
Our current systems can be a challenging area for us. It’s decentralized enough that the same thing can show up completely differently from one data measurement to the next. Touch one thing in that system and you’re at risk of impacting everything. Candidly, it’s a dinosaur.
We’re building our new Gen 2 system with a data-first mindset; we need the ability to drive better business decisions, and we need the ability to leverage the power of AI. It will still do the foundational things that every TMS has to do. There’s not much magic in tendering a load to a carrier electronically, and that part won’t change much.
The architecture is what changes: stronger integrations and connective tissue, built so we can swap a piece out when technology markets evolve without disrupting everything else. I’ve worked on several commercial TMS platforms and a few homegrown ones as well. It always comes back to a strong and strategic integration strategy that will outlast any single feature.
Logistics technology changes rapidly. Years ago, the urgent question was whether you were connected to the big visibility platforms and if you were automating work processes. Now that’s table stakes, and today’s flavor of the day is AI.
What’s coming next?
Nobody truly knows, but our ability to take advantage of the newest tech will be in direct correlation with the strength of our integration strategy. A 3PL has to be everything to everybody, so flexibility and integrations are the name of the game.
While technology is a critical part of our 3PL toolbox, it doesn’t truly come to life without the amazing people using that tech each and every day. The people on my digital team that are closest to our user communities and help drive adoption are called User Engagement Leads (UELs). They sit nearest to our users, learn what the technology does, and then build whatever best connects it to someone’s day…SOPs with screenshots, videos, process flow diagrams, whatever helps a person see how the tool adds value to their work.
Our approach is individualized, not every person learns in the same way. But one thing that remains consistent is that we are always targeting to connect people to WHY this technology, or this data insight, or this process change is important. How does this make your job easier? How does it make things better for your customer or carrier? Leave that open-ended and people will make up their own stories to fill in the blanks, and those stories are usually not very positive.
At the end of the day, if a tool doesn’t make someone’s job easier, and they don’t understand why it matters, they won’t use it.
At Koch, feedback loops are a critical part of how we collaborate and improve. After we release new functionality, we “inspect what we expect” and make sure to come back around to our users and gather feedback. That’s when we hear, “This is great, but this is what I’m struggling with,” or “I don’t like the way this part works.” Those feedback loops go straight into our backlog to continually improve and enhance what we are delivering to our users.
We keep challenging ourselves to do things better, faster and more efficiently, so we can offer good, cost-effective solutions whether the fix turns out to be people, process, technology or data.
What I’ve been telling my team lately is that there is no finish line, there is only better than yesterday.
Jamie Hess
VP, Operations Engineering & Digital Portfolio
KBX Logistics