Key Technologies and Their Impact on Supply Chain Operations – Digital CxO Podcast EP104

Hello, and welcome to the digital CXO podcast. I'm Amanda Ani, and I'm excited to be here today with Rahm Naga Swami. He's the executive Vice president of Four Kites.

How are you doing today? I'm good. How are you?

Doing well. Can you share a little bit about Forkites and what services do you provide? Sure.

Yeah. So Forkites was started, uh, almost 10 years ago with, uh, the primary purpose of answering the question, where is my shipment and when will it get to its destination? And, um, I mean this is what now, in today's world, we called, uh, we call real time transportation visibility.

And, um, uh, you know, focus, uh, created this, uh, entire, um, uh, genre, uh, of realtime transportation visibility. Um, so we started off with answering those questions, and then we've obviously moved on into orders and, uh, now obviously AI and so on and so forth. So, um, uh, you know, so we, we are more trying to, um, uh, go broader into the entire supply chain and provide visibility in all the processes of supply chain end to end.

Wonderful. So can you share some use cases for your technology in the supply chain and, and what impact is it having? Sure.

So in fact, um, as recently as yesterday, right, we had a very, very good call with the customer. So one of the primary use cases, uh, that more and more people are, uh, uh, definitely seeing a lot of use from forkites is our disruptions dashboard. So supply chain, you know, one of the constant things about supply chain is that there is some disruption going on somewhere or the other.

And, um, you know, we have, uh, a disruptions dashboard that clearly captures all the disruptions, right? Like, for example, it could be the Baltimore Bridge collapse or the Red Sea event that's kind of ongoing, where vessels have to route around the cape of good hope to, uh, not pass through the Red Sea, um, uh, Suez Canal. And, um, so these events add uncertainty to, you know, a shipper's supply chain because they don't know when the container is going to reach its destination, and they need to take mitigative actions that will ensure that in spite of some of these events happening, you know, how can they make sure their inventory is, you know, on target to fulfill all the sales orders that they have.

So these disruptions we provide, you know, um, uh, as early as possible all the impact areas that can potentially get affected. And, you know, we call out all the vulnerability zones and their, and their containers or their tra their shipments, which can potentially get affected by a particular disruption. Now, for example, on everybody's mind as the ILA port strike, which could potentially happen in Jan on January 15th.

So we've already started, you know, um, surfacing that on the platform on all the ports that ILA currently manages, and, uh, where if shippers have certain containers that are estimated to arrive beyond Jan 15th, they could be potentially affected. So these are some of the use cases. And then, like I said, you know, our predictive capabilities, which is our ets, uh, which route to take certain recommendations, um, basically our ML and AI features these, these have been proving very, very helpful for our customers.

From your experience, do business leaders need to be more concerned about disruptions this time of year during the holiday season? Are there more of those, uh, during holiday time? Um, I think there are definitely disruptions, I think throughout the year nowadays, I think that's more of the norm.

Um, the specific reason the holiday seasons, uh, it's, it's way more critical because the impact is a lot, um, larger, right? Like during a quieter season, you know, one container or two containers coming in, coming over, it's not gonna cause as much of an impact as the holiday season because definitely, you know, during the holiday season, everybody is looking, uh, to make sure their inventory is up to, uh, the levels that they want it to be. And, um, any kind of disruption there causes, uh, you know, like a huge impact to, uh, the organization.

And that is the reason, you know, uh, during the holiday season, people are a lot more concerned about disruptions, uh, because that does definitely, uh, play a huge, huge impact as, uh, you know, the demand is the highest during this season. Absolutely. So one of the biggest technology topics of this year, the past couple years is of course ai.

So how does forkites, uh, use ai and can you describe the impact AI is making? Sure, absolutely. Um, I mean, just in one word, uh, AI is revolutionary, no question about it.

Uh, specifically gen ai, um, uh, we have been on this, uh, journey of incorporating gene AI into our platform for, uh, more than a year now. Almost, uh, one and a half years is what I would say. Um, in fact, uh, I think it was August, 2023 when we released our, uh, fin ai.

Um, so it can answer questions, um, you know, that customers have about a particular shipment, uh, a particular port, a particular facility, uh, particular, any particular asset. Uh, so it can gather, you know, data from within their network and present it in simple, understandable English. And that has been a huge hit amongst our customers.

And we see the usage of, you know, AI on our platform increasing on a, on an everyday basis. And similarly, whether it is internal use cases or external customer facing use cases, we are seeing AI grow on an everyday basis, uh, very, very clearly. There's a high demand and both internally and externally.

And that is something that, um, uh, you know, we are, uh, uh, from a customer perspective and from, you know, just from a pure development perspective in engineering, we are seeing that, um, you know, more and more people, um, on a daily basis are adopting, uh, AI for their day-to-day work. And it does make, um, uh, you know, uh, it has absolutely made a productivity go through the roof. There's no question about it at all.

And similarly, like what, uh, impact it has had on our productivity, I'm pretty sure our, uh, shippers are also seeing a similar impact on productivity on their side using some of our AI offerings. 'cause that's, that's exactly the way we see. And the biggest thing is once you deploy AI to a particular task, it's practically 24 by seven, three hundred and sixty five days.

So, uh, that, that efficiency is just unmatched at this point of time. So looking into the coming year, 2025, as as this AI advances so rapidly, do you have suggestions as to what IT leaders should be looking forward to in regard to AI and the supply chain? Sure.

Yeah. So I think one of the biggest advantages of AI is going to be that the traditional integrations are going to go away pretty soon. Um, you know, integrations with external systems are going to get a lot easier and IT leaders have to, so previously, you know, integrating to an external system, which would be a three month or a six month project, those can completely vanish now, and it can, you know, any external system of interest, potentially one day to one week, depending on the readiness.

So I think the more and more IT leaders and supply chain, uh, firms embrace ai, I think they will see that some of the traditional tasks that they, you know, always feared, right? Just because of the complexities involved, those are going to become things of the past. And, uh, you know, so that is going to help through inter flowing of data, which would essentially lead to more and more innovation and more and more efficiency.

And, um, I would, I would, uh, say that that would be the biggest advantage. And of course, like I said, you know, there are certain workflows that, uh, uh, you know, today that just repeatable tasks, right? Those can completely go away with ai, and AI can take over those tasks and, uh, and pretty soon it will.

And, uh, you know, this is going to definitely again, revolutionize some of the supply chain, uh, uh, that some of our shippers are seeing today. Yes. And I'm hearing and reading more about AI being integrated into robotics too, within the manufacturing and supply chain, Right?

No, absolutely. The, that's, that's the, uh, point that I stated, right? Like anything that has a repeatable task with a one-off where, you know, AI has to make a decision on the fly with context and then just continue that previously what it was just called as robotic process automation, right?

Whereas now we are truly moving towards intelligence process automation where depending on the context, even the decision can be made and the right folk can be picked up. And that is causing the biggest change where, you know, we are very clearly seeing that some of these decisions can very easily be made by ai and we don't need a human in the loop. I mean, the human in the loop is just to verify the action till the trust and the AI grows.

That is definitely going to be 2025. Well, if there was one key takeaway you could leave our audience with today, what would that be? Um, I mean, my biggest, uh, thing would be that, um, uh, if, if there is any resistance to AI in any of the organizations, I would say absolutely, uh, please embrace AI as much as possible because this is the future.

And, uh, you know, having spent about one and a half years with it, it is going to make a lot of things efficient, but it's not just going to take away systems end to end, and there are going to be human interventions. And, um, I think overall at the end of 2025, we will clearly see that the people who embrace this revolution will be more successful. And that would be my one takeaway where whether as an internal project or external, uh, assistance, uh, that people definitely start embracing AI more in.

All right. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing your insights with our audience today.

Cool. Awesome. Thanks.

Great. And thank you to our audience. Stay tuned.

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