The driving purpose of most software engineers is to disrupt archaic, stagnant, and outdated industries with modern technology solutions. Towards this end, we join startups with grand ambitions of reimaging and reinventing multibillion dollar industries. TechCrunch (the website for all things startup) even named its conference Disrupt, with that goal in mind. The problem that arises is, in industries like supply chain, disruption looks like 8.2% inflation.
In 1976, a 20 year old Steve Jobs disrupted personal computing by founding Apple in his garage. I doubt at the time he knew very much about personal computing, but he didn’t have to because in 1976 no one knew very much about personal computing. Similarly in 1998 a 25 year old Larry Page and Sergey Brin disrupted web search by founding Google. And 19 year old Mark Zuckerberg disrupted social media with Facebook in 2004. But much like personal computing in 1976, in 1998 no one was an authority on web based search, and in 2004, a 19 year old was as good an authority on social media as any.
It’s okay to be a disruptor when there are no consequences to disruption.
This logic of young founders equipped with half a degree disrupting their respective industries begins to fall apart when the industry in question is as old as civilization. But in supply chain, the last thing you want to do is disrupt. The term “supply chain disruption” is now a part of our common vernacular and is synonymous with inflation.
The Value of Supply Chain Expertise
Here at Chain.io, we are not a ragtag team of 20 somethings with a big dream, an office with ping pong tables, and a “break things fast” ethos. We are a highly specialized team of industry experts with deep resumes in logistics, technology, or both.
Our founder, Brian Glick, already had 20 years of experience fixing supply chain technology departments from the inside. He knows precisely what is wrong with the industry and precisely how to fix it. And every single one of our employees follows him in that vein.
The team he assembled is comprised of experts from companies like Expeditors, Maersk, Kuehne + Nagel, and ZIM, and has worked to develop an integration platform that enables shippers, logistics providers, and software vendors to be aligned in the successful movement of freight and all of the core business processes associated with it. Whether it was supply chains for pharmaceuticals, apparel, lumber, or car parts, we identified the same problems across verticals: there is no standard for data sharing or integrations between partners and vendors.
We built a universal standard adapter that plugs into any system, giving shippers, freight forwarders, and software vendors an efficient way to connect to any partner or vendor’s software.
The Link Between Supply Chain Systems
At Chain.io we are disrupting the Supply Chain Industry by un-disrupting the supply chain.
Connecting freight forwarders, software providers, and carrier data is what we do best, and because we focus on supply chain specific integrations, we can help companies have more efficient supply chain operations and save them time and money in the process. In fact, when implementing one of our standard solutions, teams save an average of 20 weeks compared to the time it would take their internal team or a generic data integrator.
All that being said, we don’t expect to be thanked when the cost of rice at your local grocery store falls from 50 cents a pound to 43 or when your new car was delivered on-time because a subcontractor managed to source the correct microchip.
Instead, we’re helping companies across the global supply chain focus on their core business functions. We save them hours, days, and weeks on duplicate data entry so they can spend time onboarding new customers. We enable data to flow between their systems so they can have better visibility across their business and keep their customers informed better, too.
These examples may seem commonplace, but that is exactly how you want your supply chain; a series of magical pulleys and levers that you never need to think about. You want to walk into the grocery store and not have to worry about barren shelves or think about the herculane effort to get a ripe apple ready to be plucked from a table.
All this is only possible with a team of experts that are old enough to be industry leaders but young enough to still believe they can fix the world.
Want to speak to one of our experts about your supply chain challenges? Set up a meeting today.
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