Exclusive Interview: Soham Chokshi, Founder and CEO, Shipsy

Shipsy is a logistics software solutions provider in India and the middle east that helps businesses to reduce overall supply chain costs with collaboration and visibility. In an exclusive interview with DQ Channels, Soham Chokshi, Founder and CEO, Shipsy talks about how low-code SaaS is revolutionizing supply chain management and the growing demand for AI-enabled platforms in the logistics industry. 

How an end-to-end trade and logistics management platform helps businesses churn 2X returns for the brands?

Smart Trade and Logistics Management Platform brings efficiency to the entire supply chain process, helping businesses with agility and scalability in today’s dynamic business landscape and changing customer expectations. The platform knows how to plan the order allocation, pickup, deliveries, and so on to minimize lags, RTOs, and human intervention.

It is easily integrable and able to draw data from ERPs, CRMs, OMSs, WMSs, POS, HRISs, emails, communication engines, and any other in-house systems to deliver enterprise-wide unified visibility and efficiency. Using data from ERP and TMS, one can see the status of pending orders, the company’s existing fleet of vehicles, decide when to seek 3PL services, generate airway bills, perform route planning and optimization to enable maximum deliveries per vehicle while keeping vehicle capacity and life in mind. Another remarkable feature is end-customer visibility. Automated updates on the consignment help stakeholders keep track of the whereabouts of the parcel. It gives ample space and time to business teams to focus on other productive works. When automation and data-led decisions come into the picture, ROI increases significantly.

How low-code SaaS is revolutionizing supply chain management and creating operational efficiency?

Low-code SaaS comes with minimum coding requirements and can easily integrate with other systems at scale. Hence it lowers the development cost and time and eliminates the errors caused by manual processes. Due to its almost readily deployable nature, it is used to bring operational efficiency in complex industries such as logistics and supply chain, especially the latter, which is known for being dispersed and run on multiple outdated systems that do not communicate with each other properly. Here, the technology improves transparency and monitoring of data, making it easier to adhere to the compliance standards that vary from country to country.

Low code simplifies stock visualizing, routes and fleet planning, returns, etc., for a digital-first company by giving a visual response to a complex problem helping the IT managers to respond quickly with negligible downtime. As for the traditional supply chain, it helps them move towards a digital economy.

How AI and big data are helping to create a flexible and adaptable delivery system?

AI and Big Data together pave the way for automation and better decision-making. According to BARC, organizations leveraging Big Data have a 69% chance of better strategic decisions, a 54% chance of OPEX control, and report approx. 8% rise in revenues with 10% reduction in costs among other benefits. For instance, one of the key issues with the delivery system is that of wrong addresses. It could happen due to multiple reasons. Here artificial intelligence can help draw the correct address from the consignee’s previous orders or pick up exact order locations using GPS or detect junk addresses, depending on the case, to cancel/make delivery at the right time and right place, elevating the chances of successful delivery in the first attempt. End customers choose the time slot as per their availability and convenience. AI utilizes this information to plan the dispatch and routes accordingly, allocating orders to the driver heading that way at the time given by the consignee, making the entire delivery system more responsive and flexible.

Growing demand for AI-enabled platforms in the logistics industry.

Customer experience and profit maximization are the two prime business goals and AI-powered platforms help achieve just that. Retail or eCommerce is a rapidly growing industry, bustling with opportunities. With high demand coming from even the interior regions, the onus to deliver the order comes to the logistics provider. We saw the challenge reaching new heights during COVID when it became a matter of pivot or perish for the logistics companies.

AI offers competitive visibility to various stakeholders, including the end customer throughout the first mile, mid mile, and last mile. It brings operational efficiency to the businesses enabling route optimization, maximizing vehicle utilization which helps reduce shipping costs and generate more profits. Moreover, it can assign drivers, minimize RTO, allow CoD settlement by drivers, digitize the proof of delivery, etc. You can also make contactless deliveries in the purview of the contagion.

Future Role of AI in logistics and transportation.

The future of logistics and transportation with AI will be about predictive analysis. There will be greater use of historical and current data and machine learning to identify future outcomes. Enterprises running the traditional way or on legacy systems will realize the massive power of data, which is still somewhat underutilized, to resolve business operation problems. There will be more emphasis on the practical application of data collection and analysis. Businesses can lower their cost per delivery, speed up delivery times, reduce shipping costs and maximize asset utilization. This will result in enhanced profitability and customer satisfaction.