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.
All tech does fall somewhere on the adoption curve, but not sure if reducing it to “we want to be boring,” is the desired or even necessary outcome. Some companies are well equipped and instrumented to innovate and develop in pace with the market (plg) and most others are not. Google suite is still the best, mailchimp is still phenomenal, atlassian/jira are still revered…tons of these companies have high nps scores whereas if you were to rank modern tech to legacy companies, I don’t think they would come close. There’s a difference between someone upset and using their cargo os cause they have to and someone using slack (before salesforce too). And the nps scores you’ll get will all come back different. Most established and legacy orgs have completely different internal cultures as well as external, with heavier emphasis on customer success over sales and revenue that the dinosaurs are tied to and always scared about cannabalizing which also slows them down. The older companies will be disrupted not only by tech but market transformation and that’s happening now. Customer expectation is changing and the best startups know how to dance with the market until it’s fully ready. But I think at a high level, most startups do want to be successful and “boring” but in a much more modern, innovative, and customer friendly way that compounds over time.
Excellent "letter" as always. Love the content and appreciate the summary of JOC articles/topics, particularly when I've missed some of them the first time around!
Eric, GREAT POST THIS WEEK. I think the MAIN issue with older systems is they suffer from bloat over time. They just get added to again and again and the screens get more and more complex and convoluted. As they each offer more and more features to more and more "types" of user, the screens become a nightmare and headache inducing.
Thus, things break, the excitement wheres off, and it looks ulgier than Mrs. Doubtfire's grandma!
Also, 99% of software users are NOT techies (and MANY studies show that the typical user of common software get's easily overwhelmed). The people that run software companies need to remember this fact - but most don't.
McDonald's spends years perfecting just one single new menu item, doing taste tests, packaging texts, customer focus groups, and more. WHY DON'T SOFTWARE COMPANIES DO THIS BEFORE THEY PUSH OUT MORE BLOAT?
All tech does fall somewhere on the adoption curve, but not sure if reducing it to “we want to be boring,” is the desired or even necessary outcome. Some companies are well equipped and instrumented to innovate and develop in pace with the market (plg) and most others are not. Google suite is still the best, mailchimp is still phenomenal, atlassian/jira are still revered…tons of these companies have high nps scores whereas if you were to rank modern tech to legacy companies, I don’t think they would come close. There’s a difference between someone upset and using their cargo os cause they have to and someone using slack (before salesforce too). And the nps scores you’ll get will all come back different. Most established and legacy orgs have completely different internal cultures as well as external, with heavier emphasis on customer success over sales and revenue that the dinosaurs are tied to and always scared about cannabalizing which also slows them down. The older companies will be disrupted not only by tech but market transformation and that’s happening now. Customer expectation is changing and the best startups know how to dance with the market until it’s fully ready. But I think at a high level, most startups do want to be successful and “boring” but in a much more modern, innovative, and customer friendly way that compounds over time.
Excellent "letter" as always. Love the content and appreciate the summary of JOC articles/topics, particularly when I've missed some of them the first time around!
Eric, GREAT POST THIS WEEK. I think the MAIN issue with older systems is they suffer from bloat over time. They just get added to again and again and the screens get more and more complex and convoluted. As they each offer more and more features to more and more "types" of user, the screens become a nightmare and headache inducing.
Thus, things break, the excitement wheres off, and it looks ulgier than Mrs. Doubtfire's grandma!
Also, 99% of software users are NOT techies (and MANY studies show that the typical user of common software get's easily overwhelmed). The people that run software companies need to remember this fact - but most don't.
McDonald's spends years perfecting just one single new menu item, doing taste tests, packaging texts, customer focus groups, and more. WHY DON'T SOFTWARE COMPANIES DO THIS BEFORE THEY PUSH OUT MORE BLOAT?
Tim
AscendTMS