What will separate transportation leaders from the rest over the next three to five years?
That was the central question behind a research study Adelante SCM conducted with Alpega earlier this year. We surveyed 56 supply chain and logistics executives from manufacturing, retail, and distribution companies, along with 239 carriers and logistics service providers across Europe.
As I highlighted in a Talking Logistics post back in July, the research revealed strong alignment on where the industry is headed. Both shippers and carriers/LSPs envision a future defined by greater connectivity, visibility, automation, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making. More importantly, the findings pointed to a broader shift underway: from managing transportation activities to orchestrating transportation networks.
But what does that shift mean in practice? What has changed in the transportation operating environment to make network orchestration more important? And what roles will connectivity, trust, and AI play?
Those are some of the questions I explored in a recent webinar with Michael Böckle, Senior VP of Sales Strategy, Alliances, and Pre-Sales at Alpega, and Olivier Gonon, Chief Revenue Officer for Carriers at Alpega.
From Internal Optimization to Network Orchestration
Michael started by highlighting how much the transportation management challenge has changed in just the past few years. While the focus five years ago was more on optimizing internal operations, companies today are dealing with disruptions almost every day — from tariffs and geopolitical conflicts to capacity shifts and changing customer requirements. As Michael put it, “The complexity has moved from optimizing your in-house operations to network optimization. You have to control and optimize a network you don’t necessarily own.”
This gets to something I’ve talked about many times over the years: transportation management is inherently an extra-enterprise process. Every company is just one node in a much broader network. You can optimize everything within your four walls, but if you’re disconnected from what’s happening with your carriers, suppliers, customers, and other trading partners, you’re not really optimized.
Michael used an orchestra analogy during our conversation. You can have a world-class violinist, but if that musician isn’t playing in sync with the rest of the orchestra, the result isn’t going to sound very good. The same is true in transportation. It’s not enough for individual players to perform well; they have to perform well together.
Of course, orchestration looks somewhat different from the carrier side of the equation. Olivier pointed to several structural changes taking place in the carrier market, including consolidation, changing capacity dynamics, greater volatility between contracted and spot business, and the growing use of technology and automation. At the same time, carriers are serving many shippers, each with their own systems, processes, and requirements.
“Carriers have to connect to many different platforms because shippers often require them to use specific systems,” Olivier said. “But carriers need to collect all of that data so their dispatchers can plan effectively.”
This highlights an important point about shipper-carrier relationships: their priorities might look different, but they are highly interdependent. A carrier’s ability to maximize asset and driver productivity depends partly on whether a shipper’s facility is ready when the truck arrives. Likewise, its ability to plan capacity effectively depends on receiving timely and accurate information from shippers.
Shippers need reliable capacity at a cost that works for their business, while carriers need rates that allow them to operate profitably and deliver on their commitments. This is why, when it comes to collaboration, shippers and carriers have to “walk the talk.” There are real operational and financial consequences when trading partners don’t communicate, share information, and work together effectively.
AI: More Co-Pilot Than Autopilot
Interestingly, despite all the attention AI is receiving today, relatively few respondents in our research identified AI itself as one of the most important differentiators of transportation leadership. AI is ultimately an enabler; what matters are the outcomes it helps companies achieve.
Michael described its current role in transportation as “more co-pilot than autopilot.” AI can help companies generate better predictive ETAs, detect disruptions earlier, optimize loads and routes, automate document processing, and eliminate repetitive back-office tasks. Olivier sees a similar opportunity for carriers, especially across the many repetitive steps between receiving a transportation order and issuing the final invoice.
As I commented during the webinar, a surprising amount of manual work still happens in transportation despite decades of digitization. Whenever I visit an operation and see people manually entering data or working through stacks of paper, I see an opportunity to ask: Why are we still doing this? Is this really value-added work? Can we automate it?
This is where AI can play an increasingly important role. In fact, I suspect that five years from now, or perhaps sooner, we’ll stop talking about “AI” as something separate. Much like we eventually dropped the “e” from e-commerce and e-business after the dotcom hype faded, AI will simply become part of how business gets done.
Of course, realizing the potential of AI depends on having the right data. “AI is only as good as its fuel,” Michael said. And much of the most valuable fuel — actual shipment performance, appointment compliance, carrier performance, exception data, and other execution signals — comes from across the transportation network. You can’t orchestrate what you can’t see, and you can’t make better decisions, with AI or otherwise, without timely, accurate, and connected data.
Closing the Execution Gap
We covered much more during the webinar, including what companies should do if their data isn’t perfect, how trust is built across transportation networks, how to make the business case for connectivity and collaboration, and what shippers and carriers should prioritize today to close the gap between where they are and where they need to be.
Ultimately, transportation leadership is no longer simply about moving freight from Point A to Point B as efficiently as possible. It’s increasingly about how effectively you can connect, collaborate, and orchestrate across the network.
For more insights and advice, watch the recorded webinar for my full conversation with Michael and Olivier. And if you haven’t already, download the research report for additional data, analysis, and recommendations.
