Getting Nerdy About LogTech
At some hard-to-determine time during the pandemic — maybe around when the Ever Given container ship lodged itself between two continents — international logistics became kind of cool. And the only way to make a subject cooler is to add technology into the mix. Decentralization through work-from-home initiatives changed the way logistics is handled, forcing processes that were paper and in-person to move to electronic and distributed. Technology companies underpinning supply chains, logistics providers, and even other software providers, thrived during the period, snagging venture capital, growing customer counts, and becoming heavily relied-on business partners. With that as prologue, the next phase of logistics technology looks somewhat less clear. We’ve seen layoffs, pivots, and acquisitions. A focus on cost management and a path to profitability have replaced growth at all costs as the guiding principle for logistics software vendors. In this session, executives at two of the more prominent technology providers to have emerged over the past decade spar with one another over what just happened and what comes next for logistics technology.
