If you’ve seen the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, you know the line: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Nowhere is that truer than in the supply chain and logistics realm, especially when it comes to technology. With so much change and innovation happening, along with the usual dose of hype, it’s hard for companies to know where to focus. To help us understand some of the big logistics technology trends and provide us with insights and advice on how companies can achieve success with their technology implementations in 2025, I interviewed Brad Forester, CEO and Founder, and Mike Mulqueen, Partner and Strategy Practice Lead, at JBF Consulting, on a recent episode of Talking Logistics.
Technology Trends
We began with Mike relating some of the key trends companies should be aware of for 2025. He first notes that the days of any one transportation management system (TMS) being all things to all people are over. “Instead of shippers buying one TMS, they’re assembling best-in-class TMS ecosystems,” he says. “They may ‘Lego block in’ visibility or parcel shipment or freight settlement solutions.” He notes the major system providers now have the underlying architecture to support this componentization approach.
A second trend is the use of AI and machine learning for things like virtual assistants and chatbots. He says regardless of the hype, these are areas where it is providing real value by enabling companies to use natural language processing to get intelligent insights from the mountain of data within a TMS.
Mike also highlighted the ability for a TMS to better leverage external data to drive more informed decisions, as he explains in this short clip:
Brad adds that a big part of what they help customers with today is doing the integrations to the best-in-class ecosystems. Whereas in the past, companies may have had two to four integrations, now they’re seeing as many as 140 integrations for end-to-end supply chain orchestration.
Brad also points out that with this ecosystem of applications, often provided through cloud-based subscription, companies are now subjected to almost continuous upgrades from the many vendors each at their own cadence, as he explains in this short clip:
Navigating the Trends
So how do companies navigate these trends to gain value? Mike suggests they start by defining their desired future state – where do they want their business to be in five years. Will there be mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, geographic expansion, new channels, etc.? Then define what capabilities are needed to support those changes and what benefits do they want to achieve. Those become the objectives of their initiative. Then map out the functional and technical requirements to support those objectives in order to evaluate the myriad of vendor solutions in the market. This includes conducting due diligence on the financial stability of vendors, especially smaller startups reliant on venture capital funding.
Mike also notes that using evaluations like the Gartner Magic Quadrants should only be your starting point, as he discusses in this clip:
Understanding the Hype
With the plethora of new solutions coming out constantly, how do you evaluate what’s hype and what’s real? Mike mentions Artificial Intelligence. He says its potential is real, but right now it is over-hyped as the solution for everything. You have to evaluate its capabilities against your objectives. Brad adds that the ability for AI’s natural language capabilities to turn users’ questions into SQL searches is a huge step forward in mining the data for valuable information.
[We published a guest commentary by Mike earlier this year (“Skeptics Guide To AI In Logistics Technology”) where he shares examples of how AI can be used to enhance existing processes and increase employee productivity.]
On the flip side, Mike thinks the value-added services some tech companies are providing after implementation may be undervalued. In many cases they can provide valuable insights for improvement.
Brad notes real-time visibility solutions are an area where hype overstated the value that could be achieved, causing some disillusionment among users. He explains further in the clip below:
“Companies are becoming more pragmatic about looking at their desired outcomes and then questioning whether the investment in real-time visibility solutions is worth it to achieve those outcomes or if there is a different approach they can take,” Brad adds.
Preparing for 2025
How can companies best prepare to implement new technologies and what are the biggest mistakes they can make? Brad and Mike share some great insights and advice on this topic and more, so I recommend you watch the full episode for all the details. Then keep the conversation going with your questions and comments.
