The Ambition to be Tolerated

Welcome to the 108th edition of The LogTech Letter. TLL is a weekly look at the impact technology is having on the world of global and domestic logistics. Two weeks ago, Brendan Tompkins made the case for “Street Turn First,” where port ecosystems prioritize finding matchbacks, they don’t only see them as opportunistic occurrences. This week, I’m back from a vacation and ready to rumble about the secret desire of every early stage technology provider.

As a reminder, this is the place to turn on Fridays for quick reflection on a dynamic, software category, or specific company that’s on my mind. You’ll also find a collection of links to stories, videos and podcasts from me, my colleagues at the Journal of Commerce, and other analysis I find interesting.

For those that don’t know me, I’m Eric Johnson, senior technology editor at the Journal of Commerce and JOC.com. I can be reached at eric.johnson@spglobal.com or on Twitter at @LogTechEric.

Photo credit: fizkes/Shutterstock.com.

I’m typing this on a Mac, one of the few products in the world of technology - hardware or software - that is ubiquitous but also generally well-liked. That combination of universally used but also highly-regarded is ultra-rare. Most of the products that are everywhere are generally disliked, or merely tolerated. Think of Outlook, or SAP, or Salesforce.

I’m not suggesting any of those products are bad - to the contrary, they are so pervasive because they are actually quite good. But none of them inspire excitement for the user. No one is geeked to book a flight in Concur. No one is high-fiving a colleague because they get to put together a PowerPoint.

There is a lot of technological infrastructure that just exists and we barely acknowledge it, other than to point out that it’s not the greatest. I’m not suggesting we should have a greater appreciation of these tools, to stop taking them for granted, to learn to love an email application. What I am suggesting is that these tools have become so critiqued because they are everywhere. And frankly, that’s the place every software vendor wants to be…to be so universally depended on that everyone complains about you.

The closest thing we have to this in logistics would be widely-used TMSs, whether forwarding ones like CargoWise, or domestic ones like OTM. These are far from perfect solutions, but they are so entrenched in their various markets, and have been for so long, that people can only get annoyed by them, not excited by them. The novelty has long ago worn off.

And yet, it’s hard to do without them. Sure you can use Slack instead of Outlook, turn to a workflow and collaboration platform, or a point trade compliance tool. All of these are cool. But most people don’t like change for change’s sake. And SAP and Outlook and Salesforce are generally good enough for people to not want to change.

Here’s the thing: every software provider out there saying “we’re better than those old, clunky dinosaurs with UIs from the 90s” is secretly hoping they will one day be so ubiquitous that they themselves will be called the everywhere dinosaurs. You’re either on the top of the hill, you’re climbing up to try to make it to the top of the hill, or you’re falling down the hill that you once sat atop (unless you never even made it). They’ll never say it out loud, but every aspirational software company wants to be the one every complains about…because that means everybody is using it.

TPMDevcon

This week’s main post is a bit short because I wanted to spend some time explaining a new element of TPMTech next year in Long Beach Feb. 23-24. One of the key areas I think this conference can serve is bringing some of the smartest people in our industry together to solve the challenges that we all know exist. So much solution development happens independently. A software provider in the US is banging away at solving the problems of its customers at precisely the same time providers in Ireland and Germany and Singapore and India are all doing the same. It’s not about redundancy so much as a lack of cooperative connectivity. Having sessions that address common challenges is one way to bridge that gap. Creating networking opportunities is another. But it dawned on me after last year’s inaugural TPMTech that there was little chance for people in developer or engineering roles to do the same. Were they even able to attend? What opportunities were we missing to help the industry to solve problems. In any case, after talking with a software vendor after this past year’s conference, I immediately decided TPMTech needed a place for that to happen. And thus TPMTech DevCon was born. The format is not too structured - we’re hoping to spend 2-3 hours diving into maybe four to five topics that unify the development world in logistics. The point of DevCon is not for companies to divulge their secret sauces - it’s to jointly figure out common challenges so everyone wins. I’m going to post on LinkedIn about this in the days ahead, and part of that post will be to solicit topic areas to discuss. I encourage you to reach out with any suggestions!

New registrants can use these codes to get a 25% discount on TPM23, TPMTech or a bundle of the two conferences.

Neal Peart Lyrics of the Week:

I strip away the old debris, that hides a shining car
A brilliant red Barchetta, from a better, vanished time
Fire up the willing engine, responding with a roar!
Tires spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime

Here’s a roundup of recent pieces on JOC.com from my colleagues and myself (note: there is a paywall):

• I’ve written a fair amount about Shipamax, and even more about automation in logistics, so it’s interesting to see the first M&A shoe to drop this year was the aforementioned WiseTech acquiring the London-based company.

• AP Moller and CMA CGM were among the investors in project44’s latest round of funding. There has been some question about whether this is vanity project of sorts for the two shipping lines, or whether them backing a third-party visibility provider legitimately signals a new era. Tomorrow I get to ask Maersk Growth Managing Partner Shereen Zarkani for her thoughts during LogTech Live (more on this below).

• ERD changes are a scourge for exporters, and visibility provider Portcast put some statistics behind the pain this week.

• Raft (formerly Vector.ai) tied up a partnership with logistics payment vendor PayCargo this week, yet another instance of complementary vendors working together to fit puzzle pieces together for forwarders.

• Greenscreens.ai has landed its second funding round of 2022 to build predictive spot pricing capability for brokers.

• I wrote about how freight audit and payment vendors have finally had to morph into analytics providers and not just outsourced tools to make payment more efficient.

• Another funding round this month went into Newtrul, a marketplace that’s trying to make load boards more easily to manage.

And here are some recent discussions, reports, and analysis I found interesting:

• In earlier newsletters, I recommended Jonah McIntire’s series on platforms in logistics and he completed it with this fourth installment while I was out.

• Deloitte with a very interesting look at the future of transportation.

• This Logistics Tribe podcast with Hermann Ude, the former CEO of DHL Freight and DHL Global Forwarding, is well worth a listen.

Some upcoming events I’ll be involved in:

• My guest on LogTech Live at 10 am ET this morning is Shereen Zarkani, managing partner at Maersk Growth. Talking to her about the differences in CVC and traditional VC, whether the Maersk brand is help or hindrance, and her thoughts on the current state of venture investing in logistics.

  

• Disclaimer: This newsletter is in no way affiliated with The Journal of Commerce or S&P Global, and any opinions are mine only.