Using Flexible Technology to Improve User Experience

Previously, only office staff would have access to large pools of information. Now, it's drivers making deliveries and people in warehouse operations loading and unloading. Some truck cabs nowadays have more technology in them than companies have in their corporate offices.

This is a great opportunity for logistics companies to be more efficient. It's also a challenge to ensure they're providing different users with diverse experiences. It must be simple for users while also meeting the complex needs of their customers. Lately, at XPO Logistics,we've been focusing hard on integrating this data to web apps, which are aimed at functioning like apps that users already have experience with.

By extracting data from legacy systems using modern, flexible technology and merging it with intuitive graphical interfaces, especially in an app format,we're able to make great leaps in capability.

The systems used before the Covid-19-related supply chain challenges still have value – the challenge for logistics providers was to figure out how to repurpose them to keep operations running while executing the new deployment of more efficient systems (while also keeping user experience considerations in mind, too).

The old stack was able to handle data and churn and crunch it. The legacy systems, however, don't always lend themselves to integrations. So, at XPO, we invested heavily in tools that help us combine older systems with flexible interfacing systems that can act as a foundation for more advanced tools.

While advanced technology allows us the capability to integrate our systems with a variety of plug-and-play solutions, we approach it very delicately.For example, when we perform a system-wide analysis, we focus on the key decision and information points. This succinct way of operating provides users with the information they need, instead of giving them an information overload.

"Among the biggest changes in the global supply chain recently is the number of IT users logistics companies that are responsible for providing a crisp, scalable user experience"

For example: if we look at a delivery made at a site, we can tell you when the driver arrives, when they tipped, when they reloaded and when they left. While those four areas of information matter, we would focus on our customers' main point of interest, which is when the delivery was made. We focus on that data and publish it in a meaningful, accessible way.

I'm excited about the innovations starting to emerge in the transportation industry. Right now, we're exploring using automation and artificial intelligence together. For example, we're testing the use of image recognition to gauge the sizes of incoming inventory in warehouses. By empowering a forklift with this technology, it's able to assess the size of the product and if it's oversized, which customer it belongs to and how we should handle the product.

These are exciting developments, and I know that we (and other companies in the industry) are

committed to ensuring the data that powers these advances is usable and scalable for our customers, which will drastically help improve their supply chains.