It's become clear that every industry around us, has and will, continue to be disrupted by innovative solutions, underpinned by technology. Some industries have been quicker to adopt to technology and have become “disruptors” in their own right, continuously innovating against the status quo, providing customers with superior experiences. Other more traditional industries have been slower to jump on this bandwagon.
For many years the logistics industry has been a part of the latter, considered somewhat of a laggard. But with the emergence of tech giants Amazon, Uber and Tesla tackling global logistics problems and winning, consumer’s expectations have never been higher. Software companies have sensed this opportunity and are diving right in to help businesses digitise and enhance their consumer facing logistics functions and ultimately own the customer experience. One business leading this paradigm shift globally is Bringg (http://bringg.com/). Founded in 2013, Bringg has developed a world leading platform for managing on-demand and last-mile logistics deliveries. Their platform currently gives enterprise grade and third party logistics businesses in over 80 countries the tools needed to achieve on-demand efficiency, and their customers the “Uber-like” delivery experience now expected in the digital age. I was fortunate enough to catch up with co-founder and CTO Lior Sion, to find out what it’s like leading a company at the forefront of logistics technology solutions.
As an experienced tech entrepreneur, Lior has seen his fair share of start-upsuccess stories but has seen plenty of failures too. He points to having the right people at the right time as the greatest challenge to successfully scaling in the midst of running a rapid growth start up. “We’ve created an enterprise scale, high performance technology from day 1 using a lot of [prior] experience the team had. As we go along, building a team from the top local Israeli and global talent is not an easy task. You have to show each employee how the dynamic environment, in terms of product, technology but also spirit — works for them.”
Being a platform to manage consumer facing logistics, Bringg is also under pressure to continually improve its offering to satisfy the ever increasing demands of the modern customer and consumer. “As a platform, we add features that can be easily customised by our enterprise customers. We make sure the current deployments, which are in more than 80 countries today, are heard and seen — and we see other customers coming to use our unique solution.”
When asked what’s most important to the customer experience, Lior pointed to the “first mile” of the delivery sequence. “First mile is more important, because the most painful part of waiting [for a delivery] is [not knowing] when the item will arrive — and this ultimately has to be solved by the last mile. That said, a good last mile delivery [is dependent] on the first mile.”
Lior also sees technology including the well-publicised Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain further disrupting the logistics marketplace, providing businesses and entrepreneurs with new opportunities to innovate.
Opportunities for logistics innovation are abundant
Image Source
"[Bringg] are looking into various technologies. IoT is already deployed in several cases with our customers, especially around automation of drivers and sophisticated warehouse management. Blockchain has some interesting possibilities but we are still not seeing it deployed. We have a new implementation using AI and bots as well. There are multiple bots coming along that handle last mile: ordering food, scheduling pickup and delivery. Those connect to our logistics in real time and so the loop is closed. It’s all very exciting; we will see what technology offers positive ROI to our customers and how the world is shaped but those innovations.”
With logistics platforms and technology solutions being all the rage at the moment, I asked Lior what advice he would give businesses and entrepreneurs looking into developing new, innovative logistics solutions the best chance of success?
"The best chance of success is by understanding there’s a change happening in logistics these days. Bringg is not an evolution of old solutions, which are very good today, but is a part of a revolution that is shaking the market. We live in symbiosis with the old solutions, but allow our customers to take their operations and experience to the next level.”
Put simply, it is disruptive thinking like this with a relentless customer-centric focus that is changing the game, not just in logistics, but industries all over the globe.
For more information on Lior Sion and Bringg check out their website at http://bringg.com
Written By Jesse Wilson