DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION POWERED BY PARTNERS
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A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH KEY PARTNERS AT THE CORE MARCH 2019
TECHNOLOGY
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WRIT TEN BY
DA LE BENTON PRODUCED BY
JA MES BERRY
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TRAFFIX
CARLOS TRIVINO, DIRECTOR OF IT, EXPLORES HOW PARTNERS AND PEOPLE PROVE KEY AMIDST TRAFFIX’S DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
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or more than 40 years, Traffix has provided comprehensive third-party logistics and transportation solutions to
customers across North America and established itself as a true market leader. Key to the company’s continued success had been a strong vision that 04
places its customers, carriers and internal teams at the forefront of everything it does. The company describes itself as ‘the transportation people’ and this in particular continues to be a true competitive advantage at a time where technology has completely redefined the industry over the last decade. Carlos Trivino joined Traffix back in 2014 as Director of IT for the company, bringing with him an extensive history of experience in transportation, logistics and technology implementation. He joined the company with a simple mission of looking at how Traffix could increasingly utilize technology to better serve its customer base and he admits that joining Traffix was almost a no-brainer. “I had done some consulting with Traffix and after a while I just felt that it was a great company,” he says. “It’s a privately held company and has some key partners MARCH 2019
TECHNOLOGY
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E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Carlos Trivino With 28 years’ experience in various disciplines in the transportation industry, Carlos’ career has encompassed a number of roles from dock floor right through to management. With a passion for systems and technology, he took on the role of System Operator and his career path changed. As Information Technology Manager, Trivino was tasked with supporting the growth, design and development of new functionality within an in-house FMS (Freight Management System).
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TECHNOLOGY
“ IT’S A PRIVATELY HELD COMPANY AND HAS SOME KEY PARTNERS WITHIN THE COMPANY THAT KNOW THE BUSINESS VERY WELL AND HAVE BEEN EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL” — Carlos Trivino, Director of IT, Traffix
extreme pressure on the company as its existing technology architecture was only capable of handling the original number of users. This prompted the company to invest and embark on a digital transformation which would see Traffix respond to this growth spurt and be ready to experience further growth in the future. “We had to make a quick decision as to what type of technology we wanted and needed and what we were going to leverage to achieve our goal, which is to be one of the top logistics companies in Canada,” says Trivino. Key to this growth plan, and to Trivino’s own remit, was striking strategic partnerships with technology vendors
within the company that know the busi-
which could accelerate Traffix’s growth
ness very well and have been extreme-
–this is where the company turned to
ly successful. Over time, as Traffix has
Gibraltar Solutions and Trimble Transpor-
grown and evolved, my role now looks at
tation and Logistics (TMW). As a leading
the technology partnerships, ensuring
Canadian technology provider, Gibraltar
that software and hardware partners
Solutions recommended Nutanix
are vetted and align to what we want
hyperconverged cloud infrastructure.
to achieve as a company.”
Nutanix will allow Traffix to leverage
In 2018, Traffix experienced signifi-
cloud-based technology to effectively
cant growth as its existing user base
monitor and manage a 24/7 operation
of 60-70 users skyrocketed to close to
across its entire footprint. It also allows
300 users at any given time. This placed
Trivino and his IT team to “focus more on w w w.busi w wne w.t ssc rahief. f f ix. com
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TRAFFIX
Trimble Transportation Trimble Transportation provides solutions to create a fully integrated supply chain. With an intelligent ecosystem of products and services, Trimble Transportation enables customers to embrace the rapid technological evolution of the industry and connect all aspects of transportation and logistics—trucks, drivers, back office, freight and assets. Through the combined legacy of PeopleNet, TMW Systems and 10-4 Systems, Trimble Transportation delivers an open, scalable platform to help customers make more informed decisions and maximize performance, visibility and safety. ► Analytics
► Transportation
► Driver Apps
and Efficiency
► Navigation, Routing ► Regulatory
and Final Mile
Compliance
Management
Systems ► Vehicle ► Video
Health and Maintenence
and Safety Solutions
Get moving and find out more at: trimble.com
transforms TECHNOLOGY THAT
TRANSFORMING THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS
TECHNOLOGY
09 the user experience and performance,
information and visibility and accurate
rather than worrying about the technol-
data within their systems. “They want
ogy and troubleshooting X or Y”, notes
to be able to do more analytics on their
Trivino. “We focus on the things that
side so that they can realize greater
really matter and that allows us to drive
cost savings and performance,” he says.
true value across the organization.”
“The information would historically be
Traffix also leverages Citrix’s digital
accessed by a server or a PC but now
workspace to deliver applications, which
it’s about remote desktops and hyper
allows the company to have greater
converged technology, which is where
access to and understanding of data
Citrix comes into play. The technology
flow. Trivino recognizes this as a key
through Citrix makes the data flow faster
trend across the industry. He notes that
and more efficient than ever before, not
companies and users were satisfied
only for end users to be able to access
with “minimal” information, but in recent
but for us to be able to produce that
years customers are demanding more
information.” In addition to Citrix Workw w w.busi w wne w.t ssc rahief. f f ix. com
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“ WE FOCUS ON THE THINGS THAT REALLY MATTER AND THAT ALLOWS US TO DRIVE TRUE VALUE ACROSS THE ORGANIZATION” 10
— Carlos Trivino, Director of IT, Traffix
This is where TMW, through its TruckMate solution, has been instrumental. “Trimble Transportation is pleased to be a critical part of the technology and application backbone helping to fuel Traffix’s explosive growth,” says Harald Fritz, Vice President, TruckMate. “Traffix’s collaboration and partnership drive continuous improvement within the TruckMate TMS including Command Center, CRM, Agent Mobile Solution and several complimentary, 3rd party software solutions. Embedded business intelligence (BI) capabilities and KPIs provide critical data into the entire decision continuum, from Sales through
space, Traffix, with Gibraltar’s assistance,
execution to billing and the company’s
also deployed Citrix SD-WAN, a next
accounting and financials. Traffix is one
generation WAN edge platform that
of the most innovative brokerage and
provides high performance and consist-
logistics providers always challenging
ent application delivery to its branch
themselves and us to capitalize on
offices. Within the branch, Citrix SD-WAN
new opportunities.”
also consolidated expensive routing and
When it comes to scalability, the
security hardware, simplifying network
Nutanix platform holds the key to Traffix’s
management and reducing costs.
technology transformation, as it enables
In order to monitor and understand this
the company to stack and grow without
information flow it requires a comprehen-
“ripping everything out and buying a new
sive and proven multi-modal dispatch,
Storage Area Network (SAN)”. Through
operations and accounting system that
Nutanix, Citrix, Gibraltar Solutions and
truly enables efficiency and scalability.
of course TMW, Traffix can invest and
MARCH 2019
TECHNOLOGY
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put more resources into its infrastruc-
is investing heavily in cloud solutions and
ture as the business continues its rapid
automated technology, but how does
growth with a significantly lower up-front
it ensure that this data is being stored
cost. For Trivino, it represents the value
securely and that customers can trust
both he and the company place in the
the company with sensitive information?
relationships Traffix looks to strike on
Traffix has a wide number of monitoring
its continuous growth journey. “We look
systems that look closely at system
to partner with people that want to
behavior. Should the system behavior
grow together with us. If we succeed,
seem out of turn or erratic, then it creates
the partner succeeds and so over time
an email response to the personal and
they become strategy partners with us.�
alerts them to it. Citrix also plays a key
With vast amounts of data and great-
role in the security of data, securing
er access to that data, the conversation
laptops and servers when out of use
inevitably turns towards security. Traffix
to mitigate the risk of data leaks. Trivino w w w.busi w wne w.t ssc rahief. f f ix. com
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MARCH 2019
TECHNOLOGY
“WE ALWAYS LIKE TO LEVERAGE THE PEOPLE THAT HAVE BEEN WITH THE BUSINESS A LONG TIME. SOME HAVE BEEN HERE MANY YEARS, OTHERS ARE NEW. EACH AND EVERY PERSON BRINGS A LOT OF VALUE TO THE COMPANY” — Carlos Trivino, Director of IT, Traffix
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TRAFFIX
notes that restructuring the technology
1979
Year founded
300
Approximate number of employees
architecture of the company provided him with an opportunity to look a little closer at how Traffix could better monitor the security of its data and effectively build in a new level of threat protection. As the company continues to explore the possibilities of technology, the very core of the business remains the same. Part of the very reason Trivino joined the company was the way it invests in its people, and while Traffix introduces more new technology, such as automation, to its operations,
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MARCH 2019
TECHNOLOGY
these people will always remain key.
“We can strategically place them some-
“We always like to leverage the people
where where we can use their years of
that have been with the business a long
experience in another area, and they
time. Some have been here many years;
can focus more on the company itself.”
others are new. Each and every person
Trivino points to an example where the
brings a lot of value to the company,” he
business would place an employee
says. “In the artificial intelligence (AI)
in a Team Lead role and support new
space, we are looking at the repetitive
people coming in, helping them get to
nature of capturing information and
grips with the technology and overall
removing the person from that and
Traffix operations. “They are teaching
moving them into a role that will bring
the new employees and helping them
a different but more important value
understand that this is how we operate,
to the business.”
this is how we do things, and basically 15
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“EACH PARTNER HAS DIFFERENT TYPES OF SOFTWARE THAT WE CAN LEVERAGE FROM AND SO WE WILL LOOK MORE AT GETTING THAT DATA INTO OUR SYSTEM, AND VICE VERSA, TO BE ABLE TO GIVE OUR END CUSTOMER THE INFORMATION THAT THEY NEED A LOT QUICKER” — Carlos Trivino, Director of IT, Traffix MARCH 2019
TECHNOLOGY
overseeing that department and letting go of that repetitive task that is very mundane,” he adds. Traffix’s digital transformation journey shows no signs of slowing down. In line with the company’s growth ambitions, Traffix will continue to invest and adopt innovative technologies in order to continue to achieve rapid growth and process information. 2018 proved a pivotal year for achieving this as the company focused on investing in its network infrastructure, laying down the foundation for the company’s digital future. “What we’re focusing on now is the user facing and customer facing technology, so more software development and more integration between key partners,” says Trivino. “Each partner has different types of software that we can leverage from and so we will look more at getting that data into our system, and vice versa, to be able to give our end customer the information that they need a lot quicker.”
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Traffix 375 Wheelabrator Way (Unit 1), Milton, Ontario, Canada. Postcode – L9T 3C1, CA
T +905.875.0708 | www.traffix.com