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Michelle Feole
Alright. Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining today's webinar. So we're on Flexport supply chain optimization analysis and how to cut freight costs with data driven insights. So my name is Michelle Fioli, and I'm the head of supply chain optimization and analytics of our control tower product here at Flexport. And so we have a great webinar for you today. But before we begin, I do have a couple of housekeeping items. So on your screen so you'll see a sidebar. It's on the right of the main stage, and that's where you can submit questions. So at the end of the presentation, we'll host a q and a, answer a few of your your audience questions. So be sure to get them in there early so then we can take a look at them. And then in the same sidebar, you're also gonna see a tab. It's called docs. And that's where you can download a copy of today's slides as well. And then, and then there's also a above the stage, there is a button that is labeled request go analysis. And so you could click there to notify the Flexport team that, hey, you would like to discuss a supply chain optimization analysis, from one of our experts. Okay. Alright. And now I'm gonna go into a brief legal note. So please keep in mind that all the information provided in this session is based on the situation, at this current time. It's not customized really to your specific business requirements. So we always recommend, you know, reaching out to experts to discuss your particular situation. Alright? Now without further ado, joining me today, we have CK. So he's the VP and head of control tower and ocean consolidation here at NexSport. Welcome, CK.
Chandrakant Kanoria
you, Michelle. I'm very excited to be here today.
Michelle Feole
Awesome. Alright. We're gonna jump right into it. So for, here's today's agenda. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna start off by reviewing, you know, what is supply chain optimization? What does that even mean? Then we'll go into benchmarking, you know, live data, measuring success, and then we'll close it out with, you know, what's coming up and some key takeaways and then, you know, go into q and a to answer some of your questions. But before we jump into the presentation, we actually wanna start with a poll. So if you could please just navigate to the poll that's on the right hand side of your of your the panel and submit your vote there. What is the question? So we usually right. You see freight rates all the time. They're on your invoices. Right? They're very tangible. But planning is often something that you could consider, like, a hidden tax potentially on your operations. So before we really dive into this webinar, what we wanted to get a pulse of the room or the virtual room, actually. What's the biggest burden on your supply chain right now? So is it the market rates, or is it the cost of planning? So do you feel that maybe inefficient planning is costing you more than maybe what the freight rates are at the end of the day?
Chandrakant Kanoria
And while you guys are filling out this poll, Michelle, when we talk about supply chain optimization, people often think it's a buzzword. Right? What does it actually mean in practice?
Michelle Feole
Oh, totally. So this is a great segue conveniently for the next topic in this poll. So while you guys are filling that, we'll kinda move on to, you know, exactly what CK is mentioning. What is supply chain optimization? I definitely feel that there's this buzzword vibe. You know, supply chain can really mean a dozen things, and it really depends on, you know, where do you draw those system boundaries. So when we look at optimization and when we look at a supply chain, we're really looking at kind of three main nodes. So you think about it as first, you have, like, your manufacturing node. So it's like, hey. This is where you have to figure out how much, and what you're actually making. This is where you have, like, your demand forecasting and your supplier relationships. And then we have, you know, the transportation part. So now that I've made whatever the product is or it's an intermediate product, how do I get that from point a to point b? Am I gonna move it air, ocean, trucking? How am I gonna do that? And then you finally have, like, your receiving node. Right? This is where, hey, where am I going to store it? How much am I going to store? Am I going to a another manufacturing process? Am I going to a warehouse? Am I going direct to a store? And then there's almost this little shadow node in the supply chain. And you could think of it kind of as an objective node, which is, hey. You know, I have all these different nodes. They potentially have competing goals. How do I make sure that, you know, one one node doesn't surpass the other? And that goes back to that concept of, hey, we have this hidden tax. You know, when the nodes aren't really talking to each other, optimization is just really one of this the ways to say, hey, how do we make sure one node doesn't win by causing another node to have really this, like, massive loss? Right? And so today, because supply chain optimization, again, depending or supply chain in general, depending on where you draw those boundaries and how you look at it, it could be multiple layers deep. We're not gonna talk about all the nodes today. What we're really gonna focus on is, you know, how do we how do we handle the transportation part? So how. do we decide, which mode to ship and then how the shipment should be allocated?
Chandrakant Kanoria
Michelle. I think this is a very high stakes game because in now in a world where two day delivery is absolutely standard, you know, stock outs can lead to either lost customer or even lying down at a factory. Right? So how do you actually balance this pressure without overpaying for air freight costs?
Michelle Feole
That and and and that's where this gets really interesting at the end of the day because the supply chain itself is this continuous battle of, like, competing trade offs. I'm sure you guys all feel that every day. It's like, hey. I have to balance cost. I have to balance transit time. I have to balance, you know, what CK is mentioning, potential stock out situation, potential lying down situations. And lying down situations are terrible. Right? You might have to restart your entire equipment, and then all the money that you potentially saved by optimizing your transportation is just a moot point at the end. And then. to top it all off, you also have CO two emissions. So you change one variable, and then the other three start to move all over the place.
Chandrakant Kanoria
It's a lot of juggle. Right? Like, if I'm a logistics manager in this battle of trade offs, I need to know what my weapons are. Right? Then what are the actual levers that, you you know, I can put to align the volume with the sense of urgency that is there in the supply chain?
Michelle Feole
Totally. And and that's where we start looking at. You know, we go from this continuous battle of competing trade offs, and then we start to look at, okay. In the space of transportation, what can we actually do here? And and and how do we align to what CK was what you're mentioning is, like, the volume and the urgency. How do we pick the right mode for every shipment? And so it isn't really just again, from a transportation standpoint, isn't just ocean and air. So we act there's a spectrum of solutions that you can use to align on what your needs are. Right? So you can have something like FCL on the ocean side. Right? Full container loads, really the bedrock. It's best for high volumes where you have, like, you know, cost per unit is priority. Transit time's also potentially a a lot quicker, not compared to air, but, in the ocean space. Buyers consolidation, that's a nice middle ground. So, you know, you have a bunch of smaller shipments from multiple vendors, and you build your own container just for you from those multiple multiple vendors. And that gives you that FCL reliability without really needing, you know, this massive volume from a single supplier or a single source. Then you have LCL. LCL is fantastic. When you don't have really enough volume to fill a full box, you don't have, you know, the consolidation opportunities necessarily available for buyers consolidation. Maybe your manufacturers are a bit more spread out. You can't really, do a BC. LCL is a great option. It's a little bit slower than air, but still still a great option if you don't really need the the speed. And then, of course, you also have air. So that could be, hey. I have a bunch of smaller shipments. I need to get that two day delivery, that CK that you were mentioning. How can I how can I get that? Air is a great opportunity. And then it's not necessarily binary. Right? It's not necessarily just ocean or just air. You can also have, like, a hybrid situation. You could look at, you know, a sea air option. Just sharing, you know, like, hey. If I wanna get to Europe from Asia, maybe I could do a sea sea option to get to, North America. Then from North America, take a plane going to Europe. Or I can even do a hybrid approach where some of my manufacturers are using a sea approach and some are using an air approach depending on, you know, what does my demand distribution look like. So you have a bunch of options, and this is not an exhaustive list, but just kinda gives you a flavor of what you could be looking at in your your supply chain. Right? And so it's really, you know, how do you match that mode to the need rather than, you know, just having a default shipment where everything's always moving air, everything's always moving FCL. K? Cool. So now you're probably wondering, that's great. But how do we actually look at all this? And, like, how do we know, you know, hey. Are we moving our goods the best way? And so the answer usually is in two two two places. Right? So it's where have you been? And then where are you going? So maybe you're, like, a high growth company. You just launched. Right? You're using air freight. You had to capture that market. And then, during that, like, ramp up period. Right? But now you're scaling and, you know, speed at all costs really is no longer sustainable. It's no longer, really a full option for you. So you start reevaluating, hey, maybe I should add another mode into the mix or maybe I should add some variety in the mix. Maybe you're shifting your manufacturing footprint. Maybe you had, you know, a bunch of suppliers in in a couple of different countries. You're moving them all to the same country. And so now all of a sudden, you created a consolidation opportunity that you didn't exist that didn't exist, like, six months ago. And so the these shifts could create consolidation opportunities. And there you find that the best way isn't a static choice. Right? So it's really this evolution in your supply chain, and you have to look at historical data to find maybe the opportunities and then also look at, you know, where are you going, your future forecast to build that new strategy. Right? Okay. And so with that being said, we have another pulse check for you guys. How many of you all have done, like, a historical analysis or a retrospective analysis on your supply chain?
Chandrakant Kanoria
Michelle, I know the answer to this, but have clients been surprised by historical analysis?
Michelle Feole
Totally. So when when we look at some historical analysis from clients, it's it's I usually see two categories of of kind of analyses. One is where you have I I think you can might be able to call it, like, a hesitant strategist in the sense that these are people that they know their supply chain. They've been looking at it. They know maybe, like, a consolidation opportunity exists. So, for example, maybe they're shipping a lot of LCL. They haven't done something like buyers consolidation. They they're hesitant a little bit to pull the trigger just operationally. And so then where they're like, hey. You know, let's actually see the data. Let's see what history is is showing for us to see, you know, what's the potential ROI. And so then when they see the data and they see the results, they're like, okay. Actually, this is giving me enough information that let's let's trial it. Let's pull the green light. That way they can move from, you know, moving from theory to actual execution. It has to actually work at the end of the day. And then I would say there's also a second group. So the second group is like, oh, hey. I I really know my supply chain. I really know what's going on. They have a handle on their operations, but maybe the supply chain is so large that there's actually what you can almost think of as a creep potentially. Or say, for example, you notice you don't think you're shipping as many 40 fives. And then you look at the data and you're like, oh, wait. That was way more than what I anticipated. Or the way that you're cutting POs is actually in inadvertently causing you to move to the next container size because, hey, instead of have instead of having, you know, like, 65 CBM, you're cutting POs to be 71 or 72. So then you're inadvertently moving from, a 40 high cube to a 45. And it all comes back to, you know, what what are we actually doing in our supply chain and how do we identify those opportunities in real life? And another one just to kind of round this out is, you know, maybe you're actually send spending or sending, like, half filled containers every other week. And then you start to look at the data and you start to look at the trends, you're like, wait a minute. Actually, maybe I could plan a little bit differently so I'm just sending sending one full container every every month.
Chandrakant Kanoria
Yeah. I mean, I think in both cases, the data is essentially acting like a bridge between what we think is happening and then where the money is actually going. Right? Like, what's actually costing us money?
Michelle Feole
Yep. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And and that's where the historical analysis really comes into play because it it really gives that visibility into into what you're saying. Invisibility is probably just another buzzword. But how do we kind of look at this and how do we, look at this, you know, historical versus future? So just to give you a little bit of insight. So the way that Flexport tackles this is we have two lenses. So first, we have this historical analysis. So that's like our you can consider that, like, a diagnostic tool. So, hey. How how can we look at either a bespoke analysis? So that means, hey, this is something very different. I'm changing my supply chain around. I wanna look at different networks designs. How can we, you know, use a deep dive to really uncover kind of a strategic shift? And then we have this other option, which is current existing client, we have this existing app. This is only for ocean, so little asterisk there, where we can tie kinda take a look at, you know, the shipments that have been moved in the past and and use it as a way of a almost a continuous audit you can think of. So it's a way for you to hold us accountable and say, hey. Are you actually, you know, capturing the opportunities that that were identified or even probing into the supply chain? Right? So then you could see if you have 85, 90% utilization, you high utilization, what does that mean for for your particular supply chain? It could mean that actually you're holding a lot more inventory. Maybe you can actually go and move instead of having high utilized FCL containers, maybe move to a buyer's consolidation so you order what you need. So you can kinda take a look at at all those different options. And then, again, like, theory is one thing, but then execution is another. So then, you know, diagnosing what's happening is really only half the battle. The second is how do you execute this in in in real life. Right? The past tells us opportunities, but then we need to be able to implement that in the future. And so we'll dive into that forward looking section in just a few slides. K? And so how can you do this in your your own supply chain? Like, to go back and and we we're really promoting the point about, you know, historical analysis. And, really, there's kind of, like, a three step framework that you can use. So first, you should define your north star. So identify what your goals are for your supply chain in the coming year. Like, are you optimizing for cost, for speed, for carbon footprint? If you don't have a target, you really don't have anything that that, you you can kind of set the standard for. Then you have to map out your constraints. So every supply chain has, like, a quote, unquote physics that you have to follow. Right? Sometimes you have shipments that are stackable, not stackable. Do you have sizing constraints based off of, you know, how your your cartons are or boxes are created? What are your lead times at the manufacturers? What levers essentially do you have in your data? So, CK, what you're mentioning before about, hey. What levers can you use? This is where you really get to identify,
Chandrakant Kanoria
Right.
Michelle Feole
what levers you can use to find specific areas of change. And and those those levers could be really just how foundational stuff. So it doesn't have to be something, crazy. Like, when I say that, I mean, for example, on PO sizes, how are you cutting your POs? And it could just be something like, oh, hey. Let me go talk to my procurement team and maybe change a little bit about how I'm ordering so that way I can have more benefits downstream. Could be things like consolidation. Again, going back to that example before, maybe you had a lot of LCL shipments. You haven't done virus consolidation. You wanna explore what that would look like. And it could also look at, you know, mode change or or, like, mode and network design changes. So we talked about, hey, maybe shifting from air or ocean. And then also just being able to dynamically choose between FCL and LCL as well. So once you really,
Chandrakant Kanoria
Vishal, I wanna add one thing. What's happening now, especially given all the trade tariffs over the last few last few years, right, or last couple of years, the supplier mix is changing heavily. Right? And you have this as a point. So a lot of people are shifting their supply chains, let's say, from China to Vietnam. And at that point in time, they they when they move, they're not always optimized. So that's another thing to start thinking about because as your supplier mix keeps changing, you start thinking about how to bring all of this together.
Michelle Feole
100%. And then and then just to give, like, an example of, like, you know, what could this potentially mean for you all, these are some things that you could start to look at within your supply chain. You know, air consolidations. If you're managing shipments for multiple vendors, you have a bit more flexibility maybe on service level. You know? Can you group those those shipment can you group kind of those multiple shipments into a single air movement? You're gonna reduce the cost per kilo. You're gonna reduce your your dock fees. Can you look at mode conversion? This is a big one. So, you know, you you're shipping a lot of stuff from air. Can you use kind of like a hybrid solution? Can you shift some of that volume to air? You're gonna save a lot in not just, cost, but also CO two emissions. Can you look at buyers consolidation? You know, instead of paying for either multiple LCL shipments or paying for, you know, really full, FCL containers, try to find a way that you can buy what you need and then and then ship what you need. And then also, again, like, see here what you're mentioning, like, the network reevaluation. If you start shifting things things around, what opportunities can you can you find there? So history, TLDR history, it's great to identify opportunities, but, you know, how do we actualize this stuff in in real time?
Chandrakant Kanoria
You know, and also looking at historical analysis, that's great. But what happens and what we've observed a lot of times is customers have a you know, do all their planning in Excel sheets. Right? And they have 10 different tabs open across Excel sheets to figure out which shipments they're moving, how to consolidate them, and all of that. And a lot of times we realize, especially when you have large volumes, it's very hard to optimize. When you're working through Excel sheets and, you know, you don't have all that data coming together in the right way. So, you know, the goal isn't just to look at finding recommendations. It's almost automatically these recommendations to should surface to you, and it needs to become seamless. And that's the goal that we, you know, kept in mind or we we keep in mind when we are trying to help customers.
Michelle Feole
Absolutely. And and that brings us really into the the this other poll. So this automated savings detection, you know, are you using these spreadsheets for your planning today? Like, do you have what the like, what CJ, what you're just mentioning, these, like, 10 tabs open that you're trying to monitor the upcoming shipments, the changes, which one's priority, which one's not priority, and and using that kind of for your your planning today. And and we get the planning and we get the the spreadsheets, so we get why they exist. And, you know, maybe today you feel like, you know, it's this at least sometimes I feel like the supply supply chain is magic. How stuff gets from point a to point b sometimes. You might have all these rules or heuristics that you're using or, you know, even gut feelings about, you know, hey, I should probably prioritize this vendor or or this lane. But the problem is that if it it might be a little bit hard to scale. So if you have one person that's really managing these sheets today and then all of a sudden they they haven't cross trained someone or or the the orchestration could potentially fall apart. So how do you kind of manage manage that? And this is where we have kind of the forward looking tools that we were mentioning a little bit before. So we've built this technology that looks at, you know, all the incoming shipments that are coming in and looks at your constraints. And we'll take a look at it in a in a second, but it suggests the mode and consolidation path before the shipment ever leaves the factory. And the most interesting part of this is, like, if you look at this example here, so you maybe you have three containers that you're using between these two suppliers. Well, hey. There might be when you were initially planning it, that actually the PO number two was actually a higher number. It was a full container, but then something happened. There was a quality concern. It couldn't produce as much, and then the volume reduced. Well, how do you capture that in real time to make sure, oh, hey. Actually, I have a different, I have a different scenario where potentially I can combine, the two suppliers together and make a buyer's consolidation. And now instead of having three containers, I have two containers, and then I could save some cost that way. And so this this forward looking flow is trying to do exactly, CK, what you were mentioning, which is just surface these opportunities to you. Whether you accept them or not is a is a different question. Right? Because it depends on, you know, what your needs are from a transit time perspective. So what we'll do is we'll go through actually a quick demo of what this looks like. And I'm gonna go through and show a couple slides. I have them set out, so, I'm just gonna click through them. And so when you go into the app so I'm gonna share my screen. I think everyone should see it. Okay. Great. So when you go into the app, one of the first things that you see, there's a supply chain optimization section. You come in here and it tells you, like, hey. These are some visually, there's a graph saying, hey. There's some upcoming opportunities. Maybe you could take a look at them. Right? So you have 12 recommendations to review, and what you could do is you could click on that and then you get a tab that has task. And these tasks are all here, so you can look through them. I've picked out some so we can, kinda take a look at them together. But before I go there, you're probably wondering where do these recommendations come from? Like, how do I do this? We just talked about how, like, you know, different suppliers in my supply chain have different needs. So there there's actually a settings page that you can go in and say, hey. I want to approve every single one. I want an automated approval. You can go through each lane and and have, different settings depending on your specific supply chain. All of you guys have unique fingerprints for your supply chain, so probably no two will be alike. And then what you could do here is you could actually see based off all that, you kinda go in and then you see, hey. This is my actual recommendation. Hey. I had actually an FCL shipment that was maybe, you know, not a full container. And then I had a couple of LCL shipments that just came up. Maybe I could stuff those LCL shipments in my FCL container, create a buyer's consolidation, and then look at that. I could save some some cost there instead of having, you know, four separate shipments. Now I've combined it all into one. You can also have something where it's like, hey. I have, this is kind of a vanilla one. I have a bunch of LCL shipments that are coming out within this a similar time period, can be a buyer's consolidation candidate. You can also have something that's like, hey. I have a couple actually, FCL shipments coming from the same vendor within a couple days of each other. Maybe I could just combine them together to create a a full container load. And then you also have things like mode shifts. Right? So, you have something like, hey. I had an LCL that was maybe 20 or 25 CBM. It was labeled initially as an LCL shipment. Maybe that can actually go to a 20 foot FCL and it's actually cheaper. All of these things, the end of the day, have an element of of trade off that we were talking about before. Right? So if you combine a couple of different shipments together that were initially LCL, the transit time might be lower. If you combine an FCL with LCL, the transit time for the FCL shipment might take a little bit longer to get to where it needs to go. And so, really, it's this point of navigating, hey. What what can I handle downstream? And then making the decision of accept or reject. And so when you're in these actual tabs over here, the the coolest part too is that you don't whether you accept or reject is totally just to reiterate up to your supply chain of what your needs are. But as you accept or reject, we can kind of understand more about your supply chain. So we talk about feedback loops a lot. That's where we get that feedback loop also in terms of of, your suppliers, what they're doing, and and also your supply chain. One thing here that I just wanna point out is one thing, that could be interesting is you might also find cases where you had a supplier that you thought everything was stacked. And then the supplier comes back and they say, oh, I don't want to stack anything. You find this stuff out as you start to dive deeper into, hey, what's going on in this particular case? So it also gives you a nice feedback loop as well to kind of go back and interact with, you know, what's going on on the supplier side. This is a really cool
Chandrakant Kanoria
the,
Michelle Feole
go ahead.
Chandrakant Kanoria
one thing,
Michelle Feole
Yeah.
Chandrakant Kanoria
Michael, I would love to mention here is that, you know, the the good part about this is this entire thing is seamless. So when you make a booking with FlexPoint or book a shipment on our platform, we will start looking at turn on supply chain optimization. We can keep looking at all your data and automatically make these recommendations. The cost savings are based on the rates that you get, and this is absolutely seamless. So you don't have to go into any other sheets, look to look at your shipments. It's all in one place. That is one very important thing we thought about as we build this.
Michelle Feole
Yep. To totally. And and what you could do afterwards is just to keep track of, you know, how what's going on, how are the decisions that you're making in real time. Again, at the end of the day, it's really just trying to surface these recommendations and then make the decision making process easier. I know some some might, for the LCL versus FCL one, right, you might be getting different quotes, right, to try to figure it out and then maybe putting it into a spreadsheet and say, okay. This for this particular month, it's this way and that next month, it's that way. Well, this is trying to do this in real time. So you don't have to, you know, try to aggregate all these different sources together. And then, of course, you have some some metrics and charts that you can look in as well. So, yeah, anything else to add on here?
Or
Chandrakant Kanoria
No. I think I. think you've you've covered all of this. I think, like you said, one thing which is very important is there is a bunch of configuration that we built that Michelle was showing, and that you can configure it based on your supply chain, make it much more easy. And over time, like, we keep learning, instead of just having it accept consolidation button, we can make it automated so that you don't even have to, you know, go to every shipment and accept. We can just show you your savings at some point in time over a quarter or over a month, however you'd like.
Michelle Feole
Yep. Alright. So what does this mean at the end of the day? You know, how do we measure success? Like, what's the ROI? And what we've seen just from, you know, kinda going through these studies and then there there are a couple of challenges. And I don't know. Maybe some of these challenges might resonate with you in the audience. You know, like, hey. I have manual planning. I have these spreadsheets that we keep referencing. I have to kind of replan. Maybe my my volumes are changing. My cargo ready days are changing. And then I have to, you know, try to find these opportunities. I may not be finding them all, but that's okay because I need to get the stuff moving. You could have silo departmental goals. So, you know, when you're a smaller sized company, maybe it's easier to talk to each other. But then as you grow, it's kind of the nature of the system. Stuff starts becoming more siloed. Maybe the procurement team is not talking with the logistics team, is not talking with the warehouse team. And so you you start to have a disjointed communication, and that's where we start seeing those things like the PO sizing, elements that we were talking about before. And then just operational complexity. So maybe depending on again, it kinda goes back to, like, how the organization is is set up. How how can we make sure that, you know, the process is seamless? Again, theory is great for identifying stuff, but if if it doesn't work in in real life, it's it's it's kind of a moot point. So when we mean that what we mean by that is, like, hey. If the receiving center or location isn't set up to, you know, handle the number of shipments that are coming in or handle the shipments in a different way, then it might not work. But what we have seen is in spite of all these challenges that you may have, we have seen some really, interesting examples in the field. So so for clients that and and these just a little star here. Every your supply chains are all different. So what you might see for, one, supply chain is going to be different from another. So it these are just some examples. Up to 15% savings for virus consolidation. So imagine you're a client. You've never used virus consolidation before. You start using buyers consolidation. It's it's almost immediate impact. The number of twenties and the number of 40 fives. So this goes back to the example of, hey. How are you cutting your POs? How are you, setting up your your shipment schedules? If you send multiple p multiple twenties over the course of a month, you know, actually, maybe you have some underutilized twenties. You can use buyers consolidation or you can change the way that you're shipping so that way you actually have a, you know, a 40 instead. This is really important for TPEV just based off, like, you know, the relative cost of a 20 versus forties. And then also air. So those two examples were on ocean, but on the air side, you know, you could save with consolidations up to 30% of your air shipments. That's great. Right? Because you can start taking advantage of reduced dock fees and higher utilized weight breaks and get, the cost savings there. Yep. And so we're not stopping there. So we're we're continuously trying to improve and find new ways to find, you know, opportunities. What we were just talking about was really on the shipment level. Right? So we were looking at, hey. The stuff's already been booked. All the POs have been aggregated into the shipment. Well, what happens when you move further upstream? And that's where it gets very interesting. Right? Because, you know, plans are not as, I guess, you could say frozen maybe at that time. Right? They're more liquid. They're more fungible or changeable. And so but we can go up to the purchase order level to identify, you know, where opportunities where you could potentially push vendors to book on time so that way you could take advantage of of some of the opportunities there. And then also, again, looking at, more air opportunities. So whether that's, you know, finding more air consolidations or, doing more air to ocean and hybrid studies and and things like that. So always in the the realm of continuous improvement over here. And so last thing, no. We're right almost at time to get into q and a. What are the takeaways? So the hope of what things you should take could take away from this webinar. We covered a lot of ground. We talked about the magic of spreadsheets and how, you know, supply chains move. We talked about, you know, just really how to plan, how to surface recommendations. But if there's only three things to take away from this session, I hope it will be these three. So one is being able to establish, like, this continuous improvement rhythm. So, you know, instead of having you might not have anything right now, and that's okay because it's better to start now than than than never at all. But maybe you just review once or you don't review, or you review, every couple of years. Well, maybe shifting that pattern or rhythm to be a little more frequent so you can identify, hey, the market's always everything's changing. This is very fluid, environment. And so how do you keep keep the pulse check on what's going on? And then also just, you know, continuously updating, you know, what is your baseline scenario? So if you find opportunities in the previous year, well, that's your new standard for this year. And then just keep kind of chipping away, from there. Second is really anticipating, you know, strategic network shifts. So if you know, for example, a year from now, a contract is going to end, start planning like, hey. What would my network design study be? So that way you're not, like, pressured into, oh, I need to make a decision right away. You can actually kind of have the model ready so you can start evaluating, hey. What's a good a good strategy that I should be using? And then it also helps in, like, your negotiation as well because then you can start to look at, oh, well, if I do this, I can do that. And then if you give me this, you could do that. So, having that kind of prepared ahead of time also gives some relaxation, I guess you could say. Everything's stressful, but maybe just to add a little bit of, distress. And then the third one is really integrating procurement with logistics. This goes back to that challenge of, you know, sometimes departments are siloed. They're not necessarily speaking to each other. Being able to just talk to each other and not just talk to each other, but being able to showcase, hey. The decisions that we're making at this point have this impact downstream. Can we work together to figure out, hey. Maybe we change the way our POs are cut into a different, you know, ordering pattern or a different volume. And then there's also this double win. Right? I just wanna reemphasize this as well. We talked a lot about cost. We talked about transit time. Mentioned a few times, but as you start to shift these different modes, you could have a nice benefit, which is reducing your c o two footprint as well. So you get the benefit of both worlds where you, you know, reduce your expensive and then as a complement, also your your carbon footprint. Alright? So I think that's all we have for takeaways.
Chandrakant Kanoria
Thank you, Michelle. This was very insightful. At this time, we'll open it up for some questions. And a reminder, please add your questions on the q and a function on the right. Alright. I we have a few questions already, Michelle. So we can we can start with. with a few. And so the first one is, do you offer consolidation analysis and technology if the goods are moving by different pay forwarders? Really, I think this is something that we because we have a end to end control tower solution where it does not matter which straightforward that you book your shipments with. But if you are using our control tower products, which is a combination of order management or booking management, we will be able to book the shipments. So you will have to book the shipments on our system. You can still go ahead and move it with another forwarder, but you can use this system then to understand how you can consolidate. We will use our available, you know, data on transit times and available data on cost to help you optimize. So it will not be the the data that you have with the forwarders that you've booked with in terms of transit time, but you will get the same optimization benefit. And and, you know, the savings between LCL buyers consolidation and FCL will will still be directionally very correct. So, yes, you can. That's the answer. And but you have to use one of the products that we we have. You don't need to necessarily move freight with us. The same question came around for customs only as well. If you're only doing customs clearance, I think this is also possible. We just have to work with you guys on this, but there is a possibility for only shipments as well. As long as we get the right data, we can help help consolidate and use this tool.
Michelle Feole
Yeah. TK, just to add on those two points, everything is a function of the the data that's provided. Right? So the the more complete it is and the the more that you provide or share, and then we go through that kind of the three three nodes that we were talking about before, the the more concrete the analysis will be.
Chandrakant Kanoria
Yes. Alright. Michelle, right. The next one is is there a cost saving summary that you can pull at the end of the quarter or the year end? We we spoke about this. The the cost saving summary can be pulled at a shipment level, at a monthly level, at a quarterly level. You can do it at all sorts of, you know, breakdowns that you want. We have something called the insights builder that allows you to pull data just by asking for the right, you know, the right breakdown. So very easy. And, yes, you can get that data. Michelle, you wanna take the next question?
Michelle Feole
Yeah. Yeah. I think okay. So there was a question about transit time variance of standard LCL to door versus a buyer's console. So I think what you're looking for here is, like, hey. If I were to move as a standard LCL versus combine my LCL shipments into a buyer's consolidation, what would the delta be? That's what I'm interpreting for this one. So, usually, when you have the LCL shipments, right, you have kind of three main nodes in your leg. You have the origin consolidation, then you have the the main freight, like the port to port, and then you have a third leg. Right? You have the deconsolidation node. Usually, that could take, I don't know, seven days, fourteen days, depends on, like, what you're actually, where you're actually going. When you do the buyer's consolidation, that third that third the third leg, that deconsolidation leg actually disappears because then it starts moving as an FCL. So you can see that whole kind of last leg disappears, so you actually get stuff faster. And we can look at when we do the analysis, we do look at, you know, not just origin, consolidation, transit time, but also the end to end. And usually what we see going from a LCL to a BC is is actually faster. So the. question at the end of day for you would be, can I receive my goods faster? Do I need them in my warehouse faster? Do I have space to to get them faster?
Chandrakant Kanoria
Absolutely. And, Michelle, the one thing that I wanted to point out to this point is in our system, you can actually see the trans I think Michelle showed this as part of the demo,
Michelle Feole
Yep.
Chandrakant Kanoria
but you can see the transit time variance. And so when you see the shipments or you get a recommendation of which shipments to consolidate, on the right hand side, it shows the amount of or number of days you have extra or less when you consolidate these shipments to you.
Michelle Feole
Yep. And then I could just show this real quick. So here, you'll have, like, your estimated arrival. You have your FCL. So, typically, what we'll see is this is later, and this is earlier. And some of like, you might say, oh, man. Twenty seven days. Some of this is also depending on whether you're using pro form a or whether you're using actual data. So your your transit time could fluctuate depending on how you're actually setting the the standard. But we'll we'll put the estimated arrival. And then maybe I could take the next one. It looks like, hey. There was a question about, you know, avoiding underutilized twenties. What data or thresholds do you recommend to decide when to consolidate into a 40 or delay the shipments, for better utilization? So this is this one, I think we could probably I would definitely say hit that button to take a look at your supply chain, because it's gonna depend on what you're actually shipping. So for here, if you have underutilized twenties, the question would be, like, what's causing that? So is it that your cargo isn't stackable? So sometimes what's considered quote, unquote underutilized is actually a result of, hey. I can't stack my cargo, and so I can only fit so many pallets. If it is stackable, then it's a question of when do you actually need the material that you have, that you're shipping at whatever downstream location you're doing. So, typically, just in terms of, like, waiting time, usually, we don't recommend more than two weeks. Part of that to part of that, it depends on the negotiation you have with your, either your warehouse or there's also vendor consolidation, by the way, which we could talk about. If you you do have origin, like, inventory fees or waiting fees. So, like, if you hold stuff past a certain time, you could incur some some storage costs at origin. So it really will depend on what your scenario is set up. But, usually, we try to not keep stuff more than fourteen days. And then, you know, based off that, consolidate as much as we can together. But we could definitely talk about more. I would totally recommend hitting that button so we can take a look deeper into your splicing. And then we have another question. K. What data points do you look at when doing the historic analysis for a client? We have a whole spreadsheet for this, and this would also recommend you could totally hit that button. We could we can share that with you. Or maybe, Carol, we can actually share that as well, at the end of the the call. It's it's not here right now, but, we have a whole spreadsheet with, you know, the different shipment IDs, the vendor locations. Again, vendors can be anonymized. We don't actually need to know who the vendors are. We just need to know, like, a unique identifier. Look at volume, weights, cargo ready dates, if you have it. And then also if you have transit times, we'll look at that just to see kind of, like, you know, what's going on in your supply chain and then what mode you used and then the container sizes that you used. And that helps us identify the base case. And then from there, we can look at, you know, what are the opportunities. And maybe. CK, you're doing your thing?
Chandrakant Kanoria
I can take the next one. Is there an added cost for the for utilizing the supply chain optimization module? So no. The answer is no. There is no added cost for using the supply chain optimization module right now as long as you book freight with us, right, or you use a control tower services or customs only. Our goal is Flexport is to make sure you become part of the ecosystem and work with with us on one product or the other. But this the tech that we are building is part of this ecosystem. Right? As long as you book services with us, we will provide this kind of text seamlessly and free and a lot of other products that we're gonna launch in the coming coming few months. So, absolutely, if you if you are trying to test it out, you already booked shipments with us, we can switch it on for you. The next question is how does this go to integrate with straightforward partners? Will it send proposed consolidations to our forwarding forwarder via EDI? Now that that's an interesting question. At this point in time, the way the system would work is we will provide a recommendation. And if, let's say, you are a booking management customer where we are making bookings on your behalf with the forwarder, then once we once you accept or reject the consolidation, then we will make a booking with the carrier. If we are with with another forwarder. If we are integrated with the forwarder, we can send it via integration. But, yeah, otherwise, we'll make a place a manual booking with the forwarder. That's how that's how the booking process will work. Next one. Can we do the opposite of buyers consolidation, which is deconsolidating at destination country to multiple delivery locations? Can those delivery locations be both Canada and US? Do so the answer to this is in if in app right now, we don't have the ability to do deconsolidation. We well, then very interesting outlook because a lot of customers have issues where, you know, they have transloads that they wanna break down and deliver across North America or in Canada or in Mexico. And so for those customers, we do studies offline, right, but we haven't built this into the system right now. The system is origin specific. And as we learn more and see more need, we'll start working on destination related issues as well. Michelle, you wanna add something to that?
Michelle Feole
Oh, yeah. No. We're we're working on adding that in here. We see more just like, CK, to your point, like, we see more on the origin side than on the destination side. But, yeah, we could look at that off offline as well just to kinda see. So some sometimes what we've seen is, hey. People are doing, like, these destination deconsolidations. They're doing kind of, like, these transloads, and then it might actually be better to just go direct to the destination. Again, it's gonna depend on, like, your transit time requirements and your overall needs. But we could do that offline, but that is something that we'll add in in the the tool. But it's just not in there now just to reiterate what CK has said. Okay. I think that's the last question, yeah, that we'll go through today.
Chandrakant Kanoria
Yes.
Michelle Feole
Alright. Well, that then concludes our webinar for today. So thank you all for the great questions and interaction. So if we didn't get to a chance to answer your question, we'll follow-up with a email. And we'll email everyone with the link to the recording and the slides tomorrow. So thank you again and have a great day.
