Shipsy: Revolutionizing the Logistics Landscape with AI, Automation, and Data-Driven Insights Across Industries

CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Soham Chokshi, CEO & Co-founder, Shipsy.

With logistics costs accounting for a significant portion of India’s GDP, how has Shipsy leveraged advanced technologies to help reduce freight costs and enhance the customer experience for businesses in the logistics and supply chain industry?

Shipsy’s AI, ML, and automation-powered freight procurement module allows shippers to request quotes with multiple FFs or vendors with a single click. Completely automated freight negotiations backed with competitive bidding processes, and dynamic deadlines enable businesses to get the best port pair-wise rates. Historical data and market intelligence over rate deviations/references ensure transparency over the process. Automated updates over shipments with predictive insights through ETAs and real-time tracking enable customers to be on top of delivery/shipment progress. Customers can also request personalized delivery slots and payment methods at their convenience. Overall, these help boost customer satisfaction by 64% to carve exceptional customer experiences.

Logistics trends are constantly evolving. What are some key logistics trends and predictions for 2023, and how is Shipsy positioned to capitalize on them?

#1 Generative AI will take us one step closer to a fully autonomous supply chain AI is increasingly utilized in logistics to detect issues within the complex supply chain efficiently. With Generative AI, these systems will identify optimization opportunities and faults, guide users toward appropriate actions, and make autonomous decisions. Gradually we’ll see Generative AI accurately predict demand in specific areas and determine the optimal mix of in-house and freelance resources to fulfill delivery requirements seamlessly.

#2 Mission-critical logistics workflows will move from web portals to interactive chat interfaces like WhatsApp The logistics sector’s digitization has led to many tasks and decisions being handled through chat. Rather than developing new platforms for a fragmented supply chain, optimizing existing and widely-accepted chat portals is ideal. Major issues are now being raised and resolved via chat. Integrating an indent vendor portal with a preferred online chat application can drive unprecedented efficiencies for logistics stakeholders.

#3 Companies that manage the internal workforce, including field forces like end customers with truly digital experiences, will become competitive differentiators Retailers and logistics companies will see themselves completely digitizing rider onboarding and background check processes. Dynamic incentivization using real-time performance data will drive instant gratification for delivery executives. Shipsy also allows gamification of incentivization strategies for delivery executives and to see their position on leaderboards through the rider app.

#4 With the cost of capital changing drastically, technology leaders will be compelled to demonstrate clear cost savings that can also be passed to end customers As competition in online delivery intensifies and logistics resource demand grows, capital costs are no longer low. Retailers and eCommerce businesses should consider outsourcing deliveries and leveraging technology for cost optimization. Here, Shipsy’s automated carrier selection based on customer, time, and cost SLAs, along with intelligent route planning, significantly improves margins and customer experience.

#5 Business intelligence will move towards predictive and prescriptive analytics for proactive incident management and superior customer experience Real-time logistics visibility remains crucial, but businesses will use it to forecast shipment outcomes and quickly reorganize supply chains. For example, if a delay is predicted, the system can reassign tasks to minimize customer impact. Shipsy’s latest AI co-pilot, LIA, helps in proactive incident management with predictive and prescriptive analytics. Such systems will increasingly become critical in mitigating risks in cross-border logistics operations.

Technology plays a crucial role in improving visibility in multimodal logistics. Can you elaborate on how Shipsy utilizes technology to enhance multimodal logistics visibility and streamline supply chain operations?

Shipsy’s AI and automation-powered smart logistics management platform automates the documentation process. Digital documentation, smart invoicing, and billing instill trust, transparency, and accountability among relevant stakeholders. This also ensures compliance while reducing errors and delays. Further real-time visibility over shipments across modes, with regular, automated updates, lowers the risk susceptibility across multiple touchpoints keeping participants informed on shipment statuses. The communication is shared in a standardized format, across carriers/modes, even during handoffs. Shippers can have a consolidated view of goods movement across carriers and modes via a single dashboard.

As a leader in the Indian logistics and supply chain ecosystem, can you provide some Indian use cases where Shipsy has successfully implemented its solutions to drive efficiencies and optimize logistics processes for businesses?

Here are a few compelling use cases demonstrating Shipsy’s impact: A Fortune 100 conglomerate: The customer needed to address manual freight negotiations, rising freight spends, poor system interoperability and data accuracy, and poor stakeholder collaboration, among other challenges. We transformed their logistics operation, shrinking freight procurement costs by 5%, leveraging digitization to achieve 65% person-hours savings, reducing incidental costs by 80%, accelerating plan-to-ship time, and reducing TATs. A leading omnichannel pharmacy store: They faced challenges in on-demand delivery operations, such as high first-attempt delivery failures, difficulty meeting SLAs, inefficient resource management, and a lack of intelligent driver payout processes. Our platform revolutionized their delivery processes, cutting average delivery time by 20 minutes, equitable distribution of fleet strength, data-driven decision-making, KPI-validation-driven driver payouts, and improved reporting. A renowned courier, express, and parcel delivery provider: Increasing manual and PC-based operations, lack of customer visibility into package handling, rising customer query calls per order, inability to scale growing delivery volumes, etc., were challenging their logistics operations. Our highly customizable solution helped them auto-scale delivery operations with elastic load balancing, deploy Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policy, increase digital transactions by 99%, shrink customer query calls per order by 35-40%, enhance customer communication speed by 25-30%, and achieve more.

How is Shipsy adapting its strategies to cope with the effects of digitalization on networking ecosystems?

Our technology helps businesses embrace multimodal transportation by improving end-to-end visibility over goods movement. It enables managing and tracking multiple logistics service providers across different modes through a single dashboard, which helps businesses realize significant cost savings. Our deep knowledge and expertise, seamless integration capabilities, cloud infrastructure, and a vast adopted shipper network help our customers create robust logistics ecosystems. We have integrations with 60+ major shipping lines, 300+ freight forwarders, 100+ 3rd Party logistics companies, a network of 20,000+ shippers globally, and 50+ customs agents. Such integrations facilitate easy and faster collaboration for business needs. For instance, if an on-demand retailer wants to collaborate with a 3PL for delivery scalability or a manufacturer with freight forwarders to get the best deals on international shipping. Our platform processes over 650,000 containers and over 70 Mn parcels per month and tech-empower 100,000+ customer fleets for our 220+ customers worldwide.