34% of Logistics Companies Rely Too Much on Manual Integration, Potentially Losing $250k Annually

If you listen to Frank Kenney, director of market strategy for Cleo, you might start to believe there’s nothing but upsides for logistics companies in 2021, as they finally take steps to resolve their supply chain integration challenges through an “ecosystem integration” approach.

And you’d be right to believe him. Mr. Kenney is among the speakers at tomorrow’s FreightWaves North American Supply Chain Summit, a virtual conference event for decision-makers at transportation and logistics companies. Kenney will participate in the “What the Truck?” panel discussion on Tuesday, December 15 at 1:40pm EST alongside Michael Vincent of Freightwaves, Shannon Currier of St. Christopher Truckers Relief Fund, and Drew McElroy of Transfix.

For years now, Mr. Kenney and his peers at Cleo have been educating the world’s logistics companies (Cleo has over 500 of them as customers, all types and sizes, running their business on the Cleo Integration Cloud software (CIC) platform) on how to reframe the supply chain integration challenge and get ahead of customer expectations.

“All along we’ve told our customers and prospects, ‘You’ll need real-time end-to-end visibility. You’ll need a way to connect on-prem to cloud. API isn’t replacing EDI, they’re complementary and you’ll need a single platform that can do both. You need the agility to turn on a dime. And you’ll want the choice to either do it yourself, get it as a managed service, or figure out some combination of the two,’” Kenney explained. “It’s all about you being in control of the customer experience. It’s all about optimizing your business ecosystem and creating value through integration.”

Enter a pesky global pandemic in 2020, with its residual disruptions to virtually every supply chain on earth, and suddenly now more companies are tuning in to Cleo’s ecosystem integration story. Today’s logistics companies know what their integration problems are, and they know they need to do something about it, Mr. Kenney says. But it really wasn’t until the pandemic hit that they began to accept that the traditional approaches they’ve long relied on just won’t work anymore.

Preliminary Logistics Survey Findings Released
Results just in from a soon-to-be-published survey1, developed in partnership with Dimensional Research, of 200 logistics industry experts reveal that 97% of logistics businesses are actively trying to mitigate supply chain disruptions negatively impacting their business. And the topsy-turvy socio-economic climate of 2020 has only underscored this urgency, as eCommerce irreversibly accelerates. The cultural shift of employees Working from Home topped the list of conundrums survey-takers identified, with 51% of respondents citing this as the #1 supply chain disruption impacting their business in 2020, followed by manufacturing slowdowns (45%) and restrictions in international trade (33%).

Many logistics companies felt the pain in their pocketbooks. More than one-third (34%) of logistics companies say they are losing over $250,000 annually due to poor integration. Nine percent say they are losing $1,000,000 or more because of integration technology problems. Over half (51%) have increased their technology budgets to address supply chain shortcomings surfaced by COVID-19. What problems are the biggest? According to the study, 34% say they rely too much on manual integration processes, and also suffer from slow decision making.

Cleo Integration Cloud for Logistics
To get ready for 2021 and beyond, logistics businesses should invest more in cloud integration technology and move aggressively to automate key end-to-end business processes driving revenue through their digital ecosystems. Traditional B2B integration technology is broken, siloed, and outdated for today's logistics market environment. So, what’s the fix? Cleo Integration Cloud for Logistics combines API, EDI, and file-based integration on a single, cloud platform enabling end-to-end integration and real-time visibility for any B2B transaction. With CIC, organizations can expect to improve agility, operational efficiency, and customer experiences.