This fireside chat recap is from Day 6 of FreightWaves’ Global Supply Chain Week. Day 6 focuses on global maritime.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Picking up the pieces: How to overhaul global shipping
DETAILS: Following a year in which the oceangoing freight market first collapsed and then was followed by backups in the key Los Angeles/Long Beach port that can only be described as historic, Sanne Manders, a key executive at digital freight forwarder Flexport, sees an industry that already was changing and now needs to change some more.
SPEAKER and INTERVIEWER: Manders is the chief operating officer at Flexport, where he leads operations, procurement and carrier relations. Before Flexport, he was at BCG, leading customer relations in its logistics and supply chain practice. Manders is interviewed by Steve Ferreira, the founder and CEO of Ocean Audit, a company that focuses on auditing the ocean freight supply chain to discover invoice errors.
KEY QUOTES FROM MANDERS:
“You can’t run this world with performance-based contracts on handshake agreements. You need technology to measure performance and hold each other accountable.”
“Not every product is born equal. Some products don’t need to go very fast. Every client has different requirements and there are a lot of different tools. The true value of a supply chain provider lies in our ability to use different tools to drive on-time performance.”
“Now we have a shortage of containers. In three months from now, we will have enough containers. It’s not that the world lacks containers. They’re in the wrong places. At some point the problem fixes itself.”
KEY QUOTE FROM FERREIRA:
“As we look over the next few months, there will definitely be winners and there will be losers. The winners will have the ability to look at clients and use technology and use performance-based contracting and really get the client to the right center of gravity. Some clients will hate it and some clients will love it.”