Name: From Visibility to Autonomy: What’s Next for Your Supply Chain?
Uploaded: 2026-04-09T10:16:05.997Z
Duration: 58 min 48 s
Description: From Visibility to Autonomy: What’s Next for Your Supply Chain?

Transcript for "From Visibility to Autonomy: What’s Next for Your Supply Chain?": Alright. Hello, everyone, and thank you for attending today's webinar. We're going to talk about what's next in your supply chain, where we focus today on to go from visibility to autonomy. My name is Matthijs Slagan. I am the VP of sales and marketing for Flashport in Europe, and I have the pleasure to host this webinar today and moderate the webinar today with two other speakers that I will introduce to you soon. But before we dive in, few quick house housekeeping notes to help everyone get oriented. On your screen, you will see a sidebar to the right, of the main stage where you can submit questions. At the end of the webinar, we will host a q and a, if time permits, obviously, and answer a few of the, of the audience questions. Just to be sure, make sure you get your question in early. At that same bar, you'll find a tab which is labeled docs, and this is where you can download a copy of today's slides. There's no webinar within Flashpoint without a brief legal note. So the legal note would be please keep in mind that all information provided in this webinar is based on the situation, at this current time and may be customized to your specific business requirements. We always recommend you to reach out to a Flexport expert, to discuss the particular situation. Good. That's behind us. Now I'm very happy that I'm not alone here today talking about how to go from visibility to autonomy. I have two, seasoned, experts, with me here. On the one hand side, that's Eric Young, right, who knows everything from, as our director of product management, knows everything about the products that we're developing. And on the other hand, we have Marnix here, who's our commercial manager for the Benelux, and is in a daily basis talking to so many customers that he can very well articulate how our customers are benefiting and experiencing, our current product developments. So Marnix and Eric, I will give a little more introduction, to you to you shortly, but welcome, and, feel free to join me, here on stage as well. Okay. So what's in it for you? So today, we're going to do three things. Right? Firstly, we're going to show what's, new since our last release, and how it's helping everyone in their supply chain. The second part is we're going to show how these developments are laying the foundation of a self healing supply chain. And what we will show is that this is not this is not fiction. This is not future music. This is actually on the horizon. Right? And, ideally, we will help you understand what's possible today and what will be possible in the new future so you can decide what's relevant to you and where you need to take action right now to get your supply chain ready. Alright. Our business model is actually relatively straightforward. We hire the best people, both in logistics as well as in, technology, and then we combine, those with a tech first mindset. Now what does that mean? Whenever we see a problem, our first instinct is to solve it with technology. Right? And then we amplify that with great people. Right? And if you combine this with a great logistics infrastructure for execution, you have the perfect formula to build a supply chain of the future. And that is a supply chain that is better, faster, more efficient, and maybe above all, continuously improving. In other words, self healing. Okay? So let's start maybe a little bit with with the frameworks, the theoretical frameworks or the concepts that we at Flexport are are using, and we believe that everyone dealing with their supply chain should be adopting as well. We start with with how how autonomy actually works. Right? So we, we divide it into three areas. The first one is you have to make sure that you connect the entire data, the entire supply chain with unified and structured data. That's the first one. Every event is one data set, one source of truth. That seems very obvious and very normal thing to do, but is often forgotten. And especially in today's world, where we see a lot of new tech developments and a lot of new companies actually focusing on that, This particular first layer of where we have unified and structured data is extremely important. Then the second part is we actually automate that execution. Right? So we go zero touch wherever we can. And that is followed then by where we let the data actually take over. So we move from what happened to what will happen to the system fixing it. That is the underlying, let's say, principle of how, autonomy works. Not only for us, for every company out there, and for everyone who's trying to trying to bring their supply chain to the next level. But it only works if it's built on the right system underneath it. Right? And this is how, you know, the autonomous operating system actually looks like. Right? It's at the base, you need a foundation. You need to make sure that if if you can't execute reliably at global scale, nothing else actually matters. Right? So on top of that, you optimize. You're using the data to actually continuously improve cost and performance. If you don't do this right, if you don't have the best practices in place, it's very difficult to feed the system with the, the right amount of setups to make sure that you can actually do it in an autonomous way. Right? So, in the end, the the last stage is then the autonomy itself, and this is where the system doesn't just tell you what's wrong, but also fixes it. But having these three layers in place, the foundation, which is the infrastructure, the way of how you optimize your business, and then make it autonomous, that's, that's crucial to build that autonomous operating system. Now we've been doing this at Flexport for for quite a while already. We've been developing a lot of products, there are a lot of features, and a lot of developments. We've been doing that, in the past. We've been doing that silently as in there were product releases going on every every week, every every month, if you will. We've now changed that into a semiannual release, and those is what we call our our attack releases. So those are predictable cadences where we release, the new, products and features that we have. All of them are aligned in a in a similar fashion. They're always based on, a, what our customers are asking, actually, b, what is what we see changing in the market, so based on what is required based on the latest, let's say, necessities in the market, and see how we're working towards that autonomy. Right? And, again, that's not only us. That is for every supply chain you should apply those same principles. What a customer is asking for, what is changing in the market, And how does it help me to get a more autonomous supply chain? So we've done this now three times. And, importantly, each release is not a stand alone. It is actually, a step in a very deliberate progression as I'm as I'm explaining. Our first release was actually focused on building that foundation, making sure that we have that intelligent supply chain, connecting fragmented events and structuring the data, and improving that single source of truth. The second release was we build on to that foundation and and ask, now that we can see everything, where can we optimize? Right? This is where we focused on taking hard cost out, where we focused on driving efficiency and enabling for better decision making through data. And now in the third release, we're bringing this all together. We're moving from visibility and optimization to autonomy. And once the data is connected and your decisions are more data driven, the next logical step is, can the system start acting on its own? That's what we're building towards, the self healing supply chain. If you look at the products that we've been launching in our last tech release, you see, you you see you see quite a few there. We're not going to go over all of them today. We are going to discuss the ones that we believe help our customers getting closer to that self healing supply chain. So we want to address today Flexport Atlas. We want to address supply chain optimization and digital routing guides. And as I mentioned already, I'm not going to do this, alone. So the two other speakers that are joining me are on the one hand, Marnix, and Marnix will definitely give us a little bit more, insights about what customers are actually doing and hearing there. And, who better to talk about our products as one of the main characters in our organization actually working on these products, and that is Eric Yang. So again, Marnix and Eric, thank you very much for, joining me today, and, welcome to the stage, here. What we're going to do is I've I've shared now a little bit of framework and a strategy about how to do this. What's also very important to to actually show the proof. What this is all nice, all these, these strategic thoughts, but how are our customers thinking about that, and how does this product looks like? So I want to actually start, maybe, Marlys, with you. Right? You're dealing with, with a with a great amount of customers also in the in the Benelux. In in general, right, do you see a change in behavior on how our customers, are looking at their supply chain? And welcome again joining here. Yeah. Thanks thanks again, Matthijs, for hosting. Yeah. Abs absolutely. I I would say so. And also if you think about it, I I think it makes sense. I I talk to a lot of clients every single day, and I think the the common threat here is is that the the old way of doing things, simply doesn't, cut it anymore. Since the pandemic, we've seen a black swan event yearly, a few times a year. And I think that's where in general data moved from a nice to have into this foundational layer of something you should have in place. Mhmm. So yeah. And I I think Flexport Atlas is actually a a prime example of this, how how we adapt it. It's not just about making the logistics world, in in in a nice way, very visual. It's it's really a life scenario planning tool if you think of it, and and that's actually something that that I hear back a lot. If Flexport Atlas and the the platform in general handle the what's and the when, the conversation you're having with clients automatically becomes more of a strategic nature. It's it's less about the the daily escalations and where is my cargo. It's more on, hey, what should we do if? And that that's definitely a trend that I notice. Got it. So it actually answers also a little bit more, not what is currently happening with my cargo, but also, like, what are the different alternative scenarios or where do I need to look at what are the options out there. Yeah. Yeah. It allows people to to spend the time there. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So we mentioned the name Flexport Atlas already. Also appreciate that not all of you are familiar with, all of the different products that we have. So, Eric, I'm very happy that you're here, and that you're also willing to show and demo a little bit what we have built and, how, you know, like, it can be it can be used. I assume that you also while developing these products, you have interacted with quite a few customers. Right? So so what kind of feedback there stood out most for you? I I think the common thread that we heard when, talking to a lot of clients is that some of this data that we, that is out there is actually pretty hard to put together and compare, Sort of like Mardix mentioned. Right? When we're trying to make decisions, when clients are trying to make decisions, about their supply chain as a whole, they're trying to look across the board and understand what overall options we have, as well as, you know, how what the performance, what does that actually look like, and and some of the some of the overall characteristics of that service as a whole. But when we talked with clients, that having that centralized was actually there's no real place to go to see that all up. Right? And when we looked at that, we said, hey. That's an opportunity for us, to say to showcase some of our internal technology and our internal data. Right? And and that's really how we started to think about Atlas as a whole. Right. Okay. So but Atlas is a is a different product than what we used to have before. Right? This is available to everyone whether you're shipping with us or not or or how, what what's the exact difference? Exactly. So, like, as you mentioned, Matthias, like, the the traditional products that we've had for, a lot of our launches has been internal products for our products for our clients. Right? Direct products within their overall application as a whole. This one, we took a little bit of a different tact. We're we're thinking about it more of as, like, an education and a discovery tool, right, to say, hey. Anybody who really wants to understand what global trade looks like, what ocean, you know, ocean services look like, they can come in here and explore. Right? We're providing a single single location to look at this as a whole, look at this as a network of services rather than, hey, hiding this behind for only our clients. Right? Because to us, we feel like this is a great way for us to, help everybody as a whole learn about, global trade, right, as well as showcase sort of the technology that we have running behind the scenes as well. Great. Hey. While you're talking, I'm looking at a globe here in the middle of my screen. Right? So so while we're at it, can you can you show it to the audience as well? Yeah. So today, this is this is Atlas. Right? So today, if you go to alice.flexsport.com, right, you can already come in and play around with, different things. Right? Primarily, the focus right now, that we have for the product is ocean ocean, services and ocean ports and things like that. Right? And so, one of the examples that we'll probably talk about in a little bit is is ports, routes, and different things like that. And so what Atlas allows you to do is to look at these different ports. These are commonly shipping ports, across the board as well as services and routes as a whole. Right? And so here, we're able to see just ports, port information, roughly what services and going where, in which direction. Right? And so this again shows you, hey. If I'm trying to leave from Tokyo, where what services can I use and where can I actually go? Right? Got it. But we also have we also have sort of, like, a a deeper level search. Right? And so our search, for example, to to go from Tokyo to Hamburg, will allow you to see services as well as how exactly it gets there. Right? What does it actually look like? Where do these, services stop? Right? And how exactly do how exactly does this execution work as a whole. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so I think this here is sort of, like, the the fun part of Atlas, this discovery part of Atlas, to really understand, hey. What is going on? What kind of services, back this? Right? Whether this is a direct service, where it just stays on one boat, or does it transfer between different inter Asia, inter Asia strings, right, and services, in order to to to go from Tokyo all the way to Hamburg. Right? Yep. And so this sort of lists this entire set out and gives you a clear view of, hey, roughly what do you expect some of that transit time to be, what stops, will will occur in between these different, in in this execution as a whole, right, and provides that sort of discovery and education aspect to understand what is the likelihood, of getting on one of these these carriers, right, in order to achieve the the results that you want for your for your supply chain. That's very that's very detailed indeed. Okay. So let's let's stick to this let's stick to this example. I think, Marnix, you probably went over these products quite a few time, right, with with customers. We are are these the elements that, you know, like, that gets their eyes opening a little bit more? Can you can you tell a little bit more about this? Yeah. I I think so. Next next to like the that it that it's a cool feature to look at for the for the supply chain geeks, including myself. I think the the independence of this like, basically, data availability. People can just look it up for themselves, and and and Eric already touched upon it for a little bit. But a simple question like, hey, what kind of shipping, lines offer direct sailings from from Tokyo into Rotterdam? You just go to Atlas and then it's there. It's it's it's pretty powerful if you think of it. It used to be a phone call or an email to a forwarder, wait one or two days, and then start your internal planning, with, for example, your procurement team. So that's definitely something that that's powerful. The real moments, if if you will, that's basically when we go, one step, one layer deeper. And, for me, this is just an example of of last week, actually. I was walking a a client through our offering for their Japan to Europe trades. And while we were at the phone, I just opened up Atlas, showed him what kind of carrier services we were thinking about, what kind of transhipment ports his cargo would move through, and and and together we look live at at the performance of that port. Or as you see here on the left, the the performance of that that carrier string. And if you just think about it, that's like that's a total game changer. Yeah. Yeah. It makes it makes decisions that need to be made a little bit more data driven, and it helps you to have the analyst or the data expert always in the room with you. Right? You you you can you can you can actually do it live on screen together with customers, with with with other stakeholders, with colleagues, etcetera. Pretty, pretty powerful, I would say. I think the possibilities with with Atlas are are endless, I can imagine. Right? So so maybe, maybe, Eric, for you, how how do you see this further developing in the in the in the future? Or So so for us, right, like, the exciting part about this is we use this data to as sort of like the foundation, right, as Matthijs mentioned, to to drive a lot of the internal decision making and the automation that we have in our internal systems. Right? So today, we're pushing out this, for example, as carrier published transit time. But on the back end, we we know about individual performance. Right? We know about reliability. We know about potential roll rates and different things like that. And those are the pieces that we will start slowly bringing on to this overall Atlas platform. Right? And so sort of to my excitement about this product is really saying, hey. How do we start showcasing all the all the data that we track, right, the live data that we track, and how what does that mean to sort of democratize that and provide that as a a service where people can come in and look and explore and see what's going on. Right? And one of, like, the key features that we launched a little bit recently because of current times, right, is sort of this high level around analysis, dashboard, right, where we're saying, hey. These are the vessels that are still in the zone that may have may be running into issues. These are the ones that are being rerouted and different things like that. And all of this is powered by, again, the same data, the same analysis that we use internally, and we're displaying in Atlas as a whole. Right? And so. that's driving that and providing more and more of this, to to the world. Right? It is very exciting for us. Very interesting. So we only just, scratched the surface here, I would say. Hey, Martin. She gave already a little bit of an example of how you're discussing this with customers as well. Right? So looking into specific trade lanes or whatsoever from one point to the other. Can you take this in a in a a one level further also in your with your with your customer discussions? Yeah. Yeah. I think I think so. It's so it's it's great for the discovery phase as as we discussed, both origin markets or destination markets that are new to to someone, like, beyond the obvious next step of growing the network shown on on Atlas, I think from a client perspective, the next step is that this is a tool being used perhaps even without the FlexPorter in the room. So I I picture this as a as a live scenario planning tool where procurement and logistics, look at while planning their upcoming season. That that is something for me. Like, if it if it's, works out like that, I think Atlas is a is a success. So you can actually, what larger industrial manufacturing companies are doing already, right, with massive complex supply chains, they you look at, you know, like, what if I need to move a prediction facility from one place to the other? They have massive linear integral models around that. We can now actually bring that into every company in the world that's out there, whether it's an ecommerce company or slightly less complex supply chains as well. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And and that's so powerful. It's an easy question to ask, but a a tough one to answer because you need that context, industry knowledge, and and and and and Atlas makes it accessible. Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you very much for sharing that both. That is, that is super, super insightful. Let's shift gears to our next product, which is supply chain optimization. Right? And I think before we dive into this, I wanna share a little bit how, you know, like, we developed this product because it's actually an extremely good example of how we work towards this self healing supply chain. Right? So let me let me maybe walk you a little bit through it. We sell a lot of data. We have a lot of high granular high quality granular data that we offer, you know, like, and we offer to our customers in the past to analyze that data as well. Right? That means that our supply chain experts will look at the historical data and will find areas of improvement. So far nothing special about that. A lot of companies are doing that. It worked very well, was a fairly manual process. We then developed a tool that allowed us to do this faster. So the data upload and the analysis were then done automated, right? That allowed us to focus more on building those solutions together with the customer because a lot of the manual work, the zero touch principle again, was taken out. The next iteration was actually to make it even more easy for our customer. So that we didn't have to upload the data, but the data can be uploaded in app by our customer. So again, faster, less interference, etcetera, and increase of, of use. And now we're actually launching that there is no that there's absolutely no data upload required. Right? So, actually, what we're doing now is we're using the data that we have, and we're coming already with the recommendations there. So, I make it sound very simple, I think, but I'm certain that it wasn't the case. Right, Eric? Yeah. So so, you know, as called out, right, originally, we started this as historical data analysis. Give us your past years of shipments. Right? We'll run some manual analysis in order to execute that. Right? We've made that much, much easier. But, in order for us to get to where we are today, which is live shipment analysis, given somebody's shipments, given the clients who's shipping with Flexport shipments, right, we will provide recommendations live, right, immediately, every week, essentially, for consolidation opportunities. What we had to make sure is we had a good understanding of the demand data that is coming in, right, the vessels and sailings that we have available for this particular client, Right? As well as making sure that we can execute that both by confirming, potentially moving, the the origin destinations, destinations from from where it's going to go, as well as coordinating with the suppliers to making sure that, they can they can meet the new timelines. Right? And so, like, all of that work, we've gotten better and better at, right, and and faster and faster so that we can make this optimization run more frequently so that we can react to different changes in in CRDs, in cargo ready dates, right, or, vessel delays and different things like that. Right? But that that sort of journey took a a little bit of time, right, in order for us to learn what was necessary to optimize at sort of a static historical level to now being able to provide this optimization, at a shipment level, right, for live shipments that that are actually being executed. Yeah. Got it. So foundation was structured unified data that we looked at how can we optimize that, and then we look at how can we now come up with recommendations for our customer. Right? Exactly. Excellent. Okay. Martin, it's back to you. I'm I'm I'm very keen to hear how, you know, these insights and these analysis are actually what they can do for our customers. Do you have some examples? Yeah. Absolutely. And I'm also pretty excited about this one. Actually, something we we we currently are working on and, this this relates to the to the live recommendations. So what we're doing now is together with an outdoor fashion client of ours, we're basically providing them the ideal shipments consolidation plan for the upcoming season based on their forecast and within their parameters. And and and this is pretty cool to see because basically, SCO turns into, yeah, this determining engine of how the season, logistics wise will be executed. And then on the other hand, you have the historical review, the historic review. This is actually something we're doing, yeah, where we have been doing for quite some years, manually, and it's cool that it's now in in the platform. This is more of a reflective analysis, if you will, based on the client's actual shipment data. And often, the angle here is to to engage with suppliers to look at, together with them, look at what can we improve for next year or, even locally, here discussed with the procurement team again. Like, hey, the combination of PO placements, timing in the year, logistical challenge in a certain area, how should we learn from this, and what should we different do different next year? Got it. Got it. Eric, are you able to showcase what Marmaxx has told me? Give a little bit of a proof here of how this, how this all works. Yeah. So here on this page, you see supply chain optimization. Actually, a quick plug for Atlas is, like, this page that you saw a little bit in the beginning, this is actually driven by Atlas. So, like, as we've talked about foundation, we're using that foundation over and over again in our experience, right, to sort of display shipment progress and shipment shipment, overall. But this page in particular shows supply chain optimization as a whole. And so the call out here is we're saying, hey, there's eleven eleven recommendations that we have for this particular account. This one's a demo account. But, 11 recommendations, right, where, you can review and accept or reject, right, based on, you know, your your need and and the impact onto your overall supply chain. But this is sort of like the overall control dashboard where it shows you, hey, the opportunities that we have in the coming weeks, right, the dollar savings available, carbon emissions reductions available, as well as what's arriving. Right? What kind. of consolidations are arriving. Right? This is sort of like your action dashboard where we do require some review, at least in the short term. Right? This is sort of this particular cost savings review is sort of historical review. Hey. How much have we saved in the past couple months, based on based on overall, based on overall consolidations? Right? In the supply chain optimization, by clicking on this particular one, it takes you to the essentially curated set of tasks for review. Right? And the goal here is to say, hey. What exactly do we need to would you like to accept this recommendation or not? Right? And in this particular case, we're we're recommending that you move this LCL into an FCL, because, one, is because it'll arrive a lot earlier, and, actually, you'll be saving a little bit of money because of, the break points on the utilization. Right? And so for each one of these, what we actually do and have available is, the recommendations for that will display what the recommendation is. So we have a bunch of LCLs. We're recommending that you we convert this into a buyer's consolidation. And because, traditionally, if you're shipping LCL, you're you're paying a fee, and it's relatively slow compared to FCL, at at each LCL level. But by consolidating it into a single container, you actually get this faster, right, and it actually saves you money. Right? And the goal here is to say, this is for a client to review. Right? And once they accept, we will go and execute this. Right? We will reach out to the suppliers. We will make sure the SCL is booked. We will perform the consolidation. Right? And this is one way to realize some of those savings that we can do, based on the data that we have, the accurate data, that foundational data that we have on the shipments, as well as on the vessels and the sailings that that, you know, we we keep track of. Excellent. So, actually, the recommendation is not based anymore or dependent anymore on an individual doing the analysis or a customer providing the information. It's all automated. Right? So this is. it's probably the best example of of how supply chains are getting are getting more self healing, I would say. What Correct. what would the next iteration of this look like? What do you think? So, like, to to the, you know, the goal of automation. Right? Like, right now, we're still needing a lot of, approvals. Right? So approval reject. But as we get better, right, we're hoping that this just becomes an automated process. If we can save you money, just let us go and execute. But, in addition to that, though, we are expanding this. If you're an order management customer, right, we will have your PO data, right, purchase order data, as well as those expected arrival times, as well as, ready to ship times, essentially. Right? And so one of our goals is to start moving this not just to the shipment level, but also to the PO level. Right? And so so we'll start looking at POs and saying, hey. You have opportunity to consolidate here as well. Right? And let's start start that coordination earlier rather than right now, we depend on the shipments to actually come in to provide that that optimization. Right? And so using that foundation of data, now we're saying, hey. We can not only look at shipments, let's also start looking at POs. Right? And then a third piece that we're actually pushing towards is to say, how can we actually move faster? Right? Let's pretend there's a blank sailing or let's pretend that, one particular client or supplier in this case is gonna miss their miss their CRD dates. What other options do we have, and how quickly can we move and execute that? Right? So our goal is to both expand the scope of supply chain optimization, right, to to PO, right, Yep. as well as even faster at reacting and making this even more automated, right, to to further capture those opportunities that are on the that are available. Got it. Got it. So moving also more up the supply chain into PO management. Marnix, how does it sound to you for customers? Yeah. That sounds good. But that's an easy one because any tool that allows clients to to scale without adding people is is a huge win, and, those are always very much welcomed. And I think for for some some of our Benelux clients, especially the longer term clients, they will recognize, the the the following that this is actually already happening in in in the backgrounds. The the the thing is with SCO, it it runs live within the platform. So the longer you ship with us, the the more the bigger the data sets is. And and basically, your shipments pattern is already turning into this automated operations forecast of, hey, what should we do next? So yeah. Definitely definitely welcome and, and very much used. Great. That's good that's good to hear. It's also good to hear that the products are in line with what our customers are actually wanting. So that's, that's perfect. Alright. Hey. The last part that I wanna discuss today, and I think is also a super interesting one, is the digitization of routing guides. And, again, I'm going to try to explain this in layman terms. And then, Eric, you are, you know, like, you you have the keep me honest here from doing a good job there. Right? So how I would explain it is the following. Right? So so most of our customers have preferences, and a tactical game plan when it comes to booking their shipments. Right? So the game plan is what they would call a routing guide. And it would entail instructions like, hey. For all bookings that depart out of Ho Chi Minh, use carrier a first. And if the booking gets rejected, move to carrier b. Or if I have, you know, used up 50% of my allocation, then use to someone else or use that forwarder. So, essentially, very clear instructions on who to use when. Right? And these instructions are often shared in the onboarding process in some cases, but maybe, Max, you can tell me more about that later. But it's still a manual process. Right? So there's a lot of room for error, and there's a lot of room for misinterpretation. Right? What we have done now is we've automated this process. On our platform, you can insert all the requirements, the conditions, the thresholds, etcetera, that should take and be into account for for each booking. And in that way, saving time, create more clarity, and reducing errors. Eric, what do you think? How was my pitch? Great. Like, I think the the call out to your point is clients have preferences. Right? Especially when it comes to our booking management clients, that have that essentially ask us to help execute, against their contracts for them. Right? And so, the life cycle of this this product that we had has been, let's give you visibility. Let's at least in the beginning, let's provide you visibility that we're following the the manual instructions that you have, the the the individual instructions that you have. Right? And this was launched, I believe, last year, during one of the the callouts, which is allocation management, right, where we are able to see how many TUs we have signed for the year, right, as well as how it's being fulfilled and how much how much allocations are available. Right? And so this is, like, sort of that core visibility piece to understand what kind of allocation that you have as a whole. Right? With that also comes with, hey, how are these carriers performing? So, like, these are your contracts, so we're helping you track how is, MSC compare performing on from a tightrope route. Right? Or, overall, how many accepted or rejected bookings that we're having. And then we also have shipment execution that sort of highlights how we're actually executing. Right? And so, for example, if we are able to see that, one particular shipment, got canceled, right, the the carrier rejected it, we rebooked on something new following your, following your routing guide as a whole. Right? And, and so the part of the initial initial wave of these booking management features was, let's provide you visibility. Let's build that that core foundation that we have. Right? But as we moved into that higher level, right, that optimization piece, what we've found now is what we've built now is what we call the routing guide. Right? And this is where this is the new feature where we allow you to digitize, your own contract your your own, rule sets. Right? And this will flow immediately to execution, and we are working on automating that execution as well internally. Right? And so, one of the key callouts that we have here is for routing guides as a whole, we're able to set as an overall strategy. Hey. Do you want your your booking management shipments to not care about, the allocation and just care about earliest departure or earliest arrival. Right? Or we just have specific carrier priorities, right, to help you meet your MQC. And similarly, allocation ratio split is another another type strategy to help you meet your MQCs. You're trying to split volume across multiple, multiple carriers. Right? And so this is sort of like a configure your own routing guide. Right? But this isn't just, you know, you know, everybody has configured their own routing as at some level in the GSheets. Right? But that GSheets or Google or Excel or that set of instructions usually passed around to be read by operators to make sure it it needs to be done. But what happens here is any change here will automatically flow to our internal planning and execution systems to be executed automatically. Right? And so the change that, in many cases, in order to change and update your routing guide, what you need to do is communicate with an, account manager or something like that to to to update these sort of rules. Right? Here, once you update it, the next set of shipments that come through that that meet these rules will automatically have these new rules applied to them. Right? And so that's sort of, like, the exciting part where we're saying, not only do we have that foundation of data, now we're building on top of that and providing a new level of optimization, a new level of flexibility, right, that we didn't have before. And so management of your MQCs, management of your space, right, that is in your own hands now. Right? You don't you don't have to go through some kind of long communication process to update SOPs and different things like that. Right. MQCs, minimum follow minimum quantity commitment. Right? Correct. Correct. Sorry. No worries. No worries. Okay. So this is I love this. This is this is super good. So so, essentially, what you're saying is, first, you have to make sure that you know what your exact allocation is, not only on paper, not only in the contract, but in real life. That is the allocation management insights that you just showed. We had that already. Right? That was already there. Then you need to make sure that you know how execution looks like. Right? So what is what is happening there actually with with when you're, placing the bookings and what's happening there. That was also already there. And now we're adding that third layer, which is, like, tell us what the rules are based on the allocation and the execution, and we will digitize and automate it for you to give you the full control. Exactly. And I think exactly to your point, this sort of ties together, you know, what we showed in Atlas, right, what I just showed you in the allocation, Yeah. as a whole. Right? Because all that visibility, not just on, you know, how it's being executed, but even future sailings, right, when we talk about earliest departures, all of this comes together to provide the single experience that we're allowing more and more optimization and more and more and faster control, right, rather than, hey, offline SOPs and different things like that. And and it all comes together here. Excellent. Okay. Marnix, back to you. So I assume I'd like to hear the customer side of it. I assume that what do you think? Does do all customers have these clear routing guides already? What what what do you think? Yeah. I it's it's an interesting one because I I think they do. Often they do, perhaps not written out as as such or defined as a as a routing guide. But the, like, the the the the number of rooms supply chain rooms I've walked into where there was this historic blacklist of these carriers we cannot use, these ones we do wanna use on the opposite side, that that is always present. And whether it is for something relatively simple as I want to have a direct sailing out of this region or indeed that carrier preferences, yeah, that is up for discussion and and very dependent on the on the type of supply chain we're talking about. But often, a soft preference like that is is present. So, yeah, I I do see that. And there's obviously then also a huge upside of I mean, we will see a lot of things go wrong, right, in our business. And it's it's a matter of can you respond slightly faster than your competitor to it. Right? So do you know already what's happening, and can you actually, make sure that you're one of the first ones to to use alternatives exactly? And I assume that this will definitely help us to your point, Marnix, because we take the blacklisted carriers or whatever you have within your own system. We we we make it readily available for everyone who needs to have it. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's actually the the the the powerful element that we have here. I mean, Eric, the the tech is nice. Of course, it looks good. But the the the the simple fact that the agreements or preferences are written out, acknowledged by your logistics partner, being flex ports, and automatically being executed on, I mean, that's the that's the magic to me, Yep. in in in Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think this area. a a little bit to that point. Right? Like, today, you know, the dream that we have for this particular product, right, is the combination of all three. Right? We know what your minimum quantity commitments are. Right? We know what's happening with the schedule. Right? And, based on this and based on your the importance of departure dates or arrival dates or different things like that, we can actually already help you optimize, this ratio split, essentially. Right? We don't need you to to actually dictate some of this stuff. Right? We actually have advanced algorithms on our back end that, you know, we're slowly trying to to to morph, into these routing guides, essentially, because we have these advanced algorithms that balance, the the assumed cost of being late, right, or, not meeting the MQC, right, and to find the best option available for all your all your shipments, on on your own contracts. Right? And so, this right now, I think, is still step one for, at least, on our side, because the way we look at this is this is a relatively slow moving reaction time. Right? In order to change the MQC, you're you're gonna have to wait a couple weeks, right, before that that actually gets resolved while the system can actually optimize a lot of that a lot faster. Right? And we use that internally for our internal shipments, right, for our NBO shipments. Right? And that is something that we're looking to see how we can we can offer also to our our booking management clients as well. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good insight. So I think that's also that's worth sharing that I think almost all of the products that we are launching, that we are sharing with our customers, are the ones that we always use internally first, right, to see where and how we can make our own, system system better. And and. Exactly. And like like I mentioned, Atlas, right, was internal data that we have, and we have a lot more, and we're slowly starting to move that to be visible through Atlas. Right? SCO supply chain optimization, we actually run very, very similar algorithms and very similar optimizations, on our internal cons consolidation shipments. Right? And then these routing guides, we actually have an advanced, linear optimization programming algorithm, right, that is optimizing across everybody to make sure we fill fulfill our MQCs, right, and our relationships with our with our carriers as well. And now these tools are starting to become more and more available, right, directly to you. Yeah. Very, very interesting and exciting, going forward as well. Alright. Hey. So, Dizwa, thank you very much both for sharing those things. So what what we try to do is we try today to show you how we, as Flexport, are moving towards, autonomous or self healing supply chain. Right? So we gave you a little bit of framework, how we are approaching this. And it's our belief that, if you are running your your your own supply chain, you can adopt the principles that we have shown today to you in your in your own supply chain as well. Right? And then see how how autonomous do I want my supply chain to actually be. To do this, to achieve this, you have to need you have you need to have clear and structured steps, right, which are required. We share that today. If you do this, if you build those autonomous supply chains, then this is actually the answer in our view on how to cope with the challenges that that our industry is facing, right, today. Very high demanding, fast paced, tech driven, while being cost conscious. Right? And all of those elements can actually be, to a certain extent, solved by building those self healing or autonomous supply chains. We've also shown to you how these self healing supply chains are not just pies in the sky, but are actually we're we're getting very close. It's on the horizon. We have certain elements that are already there, and we will keep on I mean, if you hear from both from Marnix and from Eric, like, what the what the potential is and where we're working on, this is this is not this is not, you know, like, PowerPoint optics. This is this is real. This is this is happening right now. And, we've shown a little bit of the proof of that. Right? That the products that are building the foundation for it. We've shown three today. There's obviously more. And last but not least, our customers are liking it. They we see that their their their embracement of new development and a willingness to evolve is is, is definitely there. So with that, you know, like, we have we have, a little bit of time for, some, some some some some questions. Before we go there, we showed three products. I would like to know, Marnix, from your side, what what would be the first thing that you would do, you know, like, you have to what you would do right now, if you if you are a customer. Yeah. I I personally, I find the the tools that we showed today pretty intuitive, if you look at it in in the platform or or out on the web. And I would encourage everyone to just block ten minutes, fifteen minutes max, play around, and and think of use cases where this can already make life easier for your teams today because, there are many, and we're always open to to chat and and think along. But, I think this is actually a pretty straightforward exercise that everyone wants you to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. I think, I think that's good advice. That's good advice, Martin. So that's you are seeing quite a few customers doing this. Right? Yeah. Exactly. And and and and that's something I wanna reiterate on. Like, it's it's just block ten minutes. It's all it takes. And think about use cases. It's not it's not this extra thing you should, block time for and and and and spend hours. It's it's it's lower lift than people think. Thank you for sharing that. Eric, over to you. From a product development perspective. Right? You showed, or at least you gave a little bit more insights in how we develop these different products. What, what do you think is the most impactful? Yeah. I I really think, you know, the people on the call should should go out and play with Atlas. Right? Atlas, I think, is just the beginning for us. We're we're going to be enhancing it with a lot more data, as we move forward. And, like, you know, when we launched this in February, there were no filters, right, to be able to search the routes, right, to be able to see, hey. What transit time bound are you looking for? What carriers are you looking at? Right? But we're we're starting to iterate, and improve the overall Atlas experience, and a big piece of that is going to be adding new data in. Right? So we are going to be looking at, you know, internal, like, Chicago ports, for example, on how we get there through rail, as well as, start having a new experience for air. Right? So, like, we expect this to be we're we're looking at it to to Alice to be sort of this one stop exploration, of global trade. Right? And, get familiar with the initial set of features because, you know, it it will only continue. to get better from is. also actually a question that I was just passing by re regarding the future capabilities. Right? Plans to include multimodal routing, you know, like and but also how the product might support on responding rapidly to constraints and complex supply chain situations, like in conflict zones or in, you know, like landlocked countries, embargoed countries, you know, like those those kind of things. Yeah. So we are actively working on multimodal routing. Right? So, like, our initial next step actually that we're actively working on right now is just to try and get barges, rail. Right? We have some transshipments in there. Right? Usually, ones that we have strings for are services, carrier services for. But rail, barges, truck, right, are a little bit less less, less digitized, right, or or or less structured, compared to the the carrier services themselves. So we're working on getting all of those in. Right? And to answer the second part of the question, we actually use similar data, right, for internal I I wouldn't say conflict resolution, but internal, like, alternative analysis, right, and alternative shipping methods. Right? I would say conflict zones, embargoed countries are a little bit out of scope, right, for Alice right now, just because I think there's a lot of issues that need to be addressed with there. But, for example, if LA is really, really congested, what are some alternative routes, right, in order for us to get to Chicago or get to to an LA warehouse? Right? Those types of optimizations, those type of analysis, we actually already perform internally. Right? And we're hoping to be able to provide that as part of sort of that multimodal search, that that will be launching in. the coming months. it. Hey. Could you do you also see I mean, there's also a lot of external factors like I mean, I don't know. There's a there's a hurricane season coming up. Right? So the impact of that on on on, let's say, service levels is is definitely going going to be there. Right? Is there do you do you foresee a future where we where we integrate those kind that kind of data as well? Oh, yeah. For for sure. Like, I think that was our initial foray with the the the rand analysis, the conflict analysis. Right? Was to see, hey. What does that affect? What does that actually mean? Right? Gotta go around the cape in this particular case. Right? But our goal right now is, one, to start grabbing a lot more data of news and local local impacts. Right? Poor congestion, strikes, different things like that. And then also for forecasting that onto arrival dates and departure dates and how how these services will be affected. Right? So, again, internally, we actually do have, do forecasts, right, based on what we track and what we analyze. Right? And so part of that discussion is how do we start presenting that, into Atlas. as well. Right? And so that's something that we're still trying to figure out, but, really, that's why I sort of showed that, that conflict analysis page is because we are leveraging that to fold into sort of the the analysis that we have overall. The opportunities are endless, so it's it's going to be a matter of prioritization prioritize prioritizing what what is most important, most impactful, and get that launched. Right? Exactly. Okay. Hey. On the on the routing guide, is it possible to place preferences allocation to a freight forwarder instead of a carrier itself? Yeah. Actually, today, we actually have that capability already. So, at least from the internal standpoint, we treat moving it to a third party freight forwarder. Right? So, you know, not preferred, but we'll do it, is as a essentially, another carrier for us. Right? And so, if you think of that that particular page, the third party freight forwarder would show up as another carrier. Right? And then you could also say, hey. This is final priority if, you know, see it or if the first your first couple of carrier priorities, run out of space, or different things like that. Right? And so so that is automatically supported, right, as part of the existing, existing feature set that we have for our booking you. then also go a little bit further? Like, if there's a if there's a three p l who's using different carriers. Right? So they have a a a a different different carriers in their portfolio. Could you then also have you need to use this three p l, and within the three p l, you need to use this carrier. Can you go that far? Today, we haven't had that use case pop up yet. Right? Usually, the three p l has been fully. independent, on using which carriers they have. Right? But, those types of instructions, I'd have to think about it a little bit, but I don't think it would be too far of a stretch to be able to support. Right? You could think about it as a three p l o n e. Right? Three p l MSE. Right? As a as a segmentation, to be able to support. Yeah. that. Okay. That's cool. That's, super interesting. Hey, Marnix. I guess that a question that you will also get quite a lot lot is like, hey. I don't have all this data. I don't have all this information. So how, you know, like, how how can I start with code today? Right? I mean, I get it. I get it. If I if I have a massive amount of of granular data, and you will have it if you if you use Flexport, but I don't have it today. Can you still can you still run a SCO analysis? How do you how do you. discuss? Yeah. I I think it's it's spot on, and I would definitely say just get started. I mean, forecasting is per definition, not 100% accurate. I I I talked to one or two clients who come close. I think they're they're slightly above, like, 92% or something, season after season. So so they're doing a good job. But it's it's like, in the end, it's, getting the had the majority right and the base volumes or base weekly, volumes right. So, no, I would definitely start even like a relatively simple metric as cubic meters, cargo ready week, has expected volume per port. That is enough to get started. And and all the other logistical milestones that we need, we can either chip in or or pull from the the the shipment data that we have already. So, yeah, I wouldn't overcomplify, complexify that. Okay. So so to your point, we sit on a lot of data as well. So we can we can use that we can use that data as well based on on on a few data points that we would get from customers who don't have an awful lot of information there. Yeah. Yeah. No doubts. Okay. Well, that's a that's a that's a promising message, I I would say. Hey. We're we're at the end of our, of our webinar today. Thank you very much also for asking these questions and your interest in our products. We will keep on sharing with you how we are developing, how our customers are using it, and how, you know, like, you should take this into account when you're developing and strategizing on your future supply chain. Marnix, Eric, thank you very much for joining me today. It was very insightful. Thank you all the attendees for for joining, and, the recording or the docs can be obviously found in the places where you can always find them. Thank you very much for this, and have a great rest of the day. Bye bye. Bye bye.