Lucien Besse, COO and Co-founder at Shippeo, defines his company’s unique proposition.
ucien picks up the story; “The observation we made was that when you order something from an ecommerce website, you have full delivery visibility and great service. However, transportation managers in large companies waiting for containers to arrive at their warehouses every day did not have this same level of visibility. Shippeo was launched to bridge the gap between the visibility that consumers have over the last mile and a company’s visibility over the first or middle mile.”
The Shippeo platform helps any company in the world to have real-time visibility on their freight deliveries across all
geographies and all modes of transport including road, ocean, rail and air. Lucien says, “We provide a single interface to our customers to give visibility on all their deliveries, enabling them to bring a better service to their customers. In addition, this visibility increases the operational efficiency of the transportation and logistics teams because they are able to run smoother operations.”
Why is it so important for shippers, carriers and 4PLs to have full visibility? Lucien answers, “I think the main topic is to anticipate disruption. Today, as a company moving products all around the world, the main reason why you cannot fulfil the promise to your customers
LUCIEN BESSE IS ONE OF SIX CO-FOUNDERS OF SHIPPEO, WHICH STARTED LIFE IN 2015.
is disruption in your supply chain. Supply chain had a direct impact on companies’ ability to serve their customers with a product during the recent supplier shortage crisis. Visibility helps our customers to anticipate the impact of supply chain issues every day. Having visibility on your supply chain and transportation is critical because without it, you cannot fulfil the promise to your customers, which is to deliver your product on time. We have a lot of traction on the market today because customers are urgently asking for this visibility.”
When 2020 began and Covid-19 hit, companies started fearing for their businesses, but in actual fact, Shippeo had the biggest growth it has seen. Lucien explains, “Covid has an accelerating effect on the demand from our customers because everyone was working from home and people were increasingly buying products online. The importance of having visibility on your endto-end supply chain was crucial. The supplier shortage meant more congestion in the ports in Europe and Asia, and uncertainty over when products would arrive. Consumers felt the impact of
this supply chain disruption when their products were not available. The last two and a half years have seen a dramatic increase in the need for visibility because supply chains are becoming more global, more fragile, and more interconnected. If one part of the supply chain is not running according to plan, the end customer will feel the effects.”
Shippeo works with a number of different industries including retail, automotive, building materials and pharmaceutical. Lucien continues, “The business case is different for each industry, which makes what we do very rich and interesting. If you take the automotive industry, for example, the ability to have your car delivered to the car dealer at the end of the chain is related to the ability to
“Shippeo works with a number of different industries including retail, automotive, building materials and pharmaceutical”
deliver the car on the last mile, as well as the ability to be able to produce the car on time. There are two legs, which we call inbound i.e. all the supplies coming into the factories, and outbound i.e. the vehicles delivered to the car dealers. Both inbound and outbound are critical to deliver exceptional customer service, which is delivering the car to the customer on time.”
Renault is a customer for which Shippeo manages the inbound and outbound flows. Lucien
explains, “On the one side, you know when the parts will be delivered to the factories, so there is no disruption to production, and on the other side, the car dealer has visibility on the delivery of the cars, so the customers are able to have them on time.”
On the retail side, Shippeo works with Carrefour to track deliveries from the distribution centres to the stores. Lucien says, “One of the reasons for a product being unavailable is the truck not delivering on time. If you give the
store the visibility of what is being delivered and whether there is a delay on any of the products, they can anticipate the impact of the disruption and either bring a new product to the shelf or warn the customer of the delay. This visibility therefore helps the store to fulfil the promise to their customers.”
Lucien adds that all the different examples come down to the same question of ‘Where is my shipment?’. He elaborates, “If you place an order or go to visit a store, you want your product to be available. If it is not
available, you want to know where it is. And if you want to know where it is, you need to have visibility on your supply chain.”
Shippeo employs a range of technologies to build its solution, which is divided into two fundamental pillars – the network part, and the data part. Lucien explains, “To build the network, involving onboarding the carriers and connecting the systems that they are using, we have built an API solution to help us collect in realtime all the new information that is
available in the carriers’ systems. API is a simple way of exchanging information and that is the main technology we leverage.
“Once we have the data in our network, we need to have the necessary intelligence to enrich it. To be able to know when the delivery will arrive, we have developed a unique machine learning algorithm that predicts the estimated time of arrival. We have been working on it for five years, so we are recognised as one of the most advanced vendors when it comes to machine learning capabilities.”
By design, supply chain is collaborative, and so Lucien highlights the importance of Shippeo’s ecosystem of trusted partners. He continues, “You have multiple parties in supply chain taking multiple steps, so you have to make sure that the information in your platform can be transmitted to a different system. If you want visibility on your deliveries, the people in the factories are using a different system, so you need to be able to connect your visibility platform with their planning system downstream. On the upstream, you need to be able to connect your visibility platform with the planning system of the carriers
or shippers. Our transportation management system partners include Tesisquare and Alpega Group, both based in Europe. They push information into the system of Shippeo, as well as taking back information to be able to run dynamic planning. At Shippeo, we have a vision of what is happening in real time, and we can compare this real-time information with the planning information. That is where the magic really starts to happen!”
Transportation management systems are key to enabling
“Tesisquare is one of the leading transportation management systems in Europe. Tesisquare customers are using the platform to manage their transportation planning”
Lucien Besse, COO and Co-founder
Shippeo to be more agile. Lucien elaborates, “Tesisquare is one of the leading transportation management systems in Europe. Tesisquare customers are using the platform to manage their transportation planning. Our customers are using Shippeo to get real-time visibility on the execution of their transport. When we see a disruption, we push this information back into Tesisquare and then the
Alpega Group also has a transportation management system, as well as a slot management system, which Shippeo leverages. Lucien explains, “Slot management systems help the carrier to make an appointment at a delivery or loading site. If you have one carrier
“Alpega Group has a transportation management system, as well as a slot management system, which Shippeo leverages”
customer can start optimising their planning.”
that is late, the other carriers could be disrupted because your theoretical planning is in danger. This real-time information can be pushed into the slot management system of Alpega Group to help customers to start optimising the slots, so the carriers can adapt their delivery schedule to the new planning.”
As for the future of supply chain, Lucien points to three main trends. He says, “Firstly, collaboration between the different systems thanks to the API solution is key, and I think it will become increasingly important in the future. The second driver is predictability. Artificial
“As well as automation in supply chain with robotics, we are also seeing automation of the decision-making process”
intelligence and machine learning algorithms are enabling supply chain data to enrich various other systems. In the future, the system
will not only be able to predict, but also prescribe actions to the users. At Shippeo, we are working towards prescribing actions to
“We can expect to see more automation in the future designed to enrich the decision making of people working across the supply chain”
enrich decision making within the organisation.”
The third and final trend is automation. Lucien concludes, “As well as automation in supply chain with robotics, we are also seeing automation of the decisionmaking process. More and more customers are asking not just to predict an estimated time of arrival, but to be able to automate their
supply chain processes upstream or downstream thanks to this visibility information. We can therefore expect to see more automation in the future designed to enrich the decision making of people working across the supply chain.”
For further information on Shippeo, visit www.shippeo.com
www.shippeo.com