Technology
“ You ’ ll have more companies working on a wider range of solutions because the world of supply chain and logistics is getting more complex ,” he added . “ And tech is needed to both manage the complexity and eke out the efficiency gains .”
The largest vendor in the space , project44 , has been pushing its Movement product , a platform intended to unify its datasets across transportation modes and global regions to help shippers make better inventory management decisions , since late 2023 .
“ There has , unfortunately , been a degrading in the belief of what visibility can bring . There have been a lot of false promises .”
Infor Nexus , one of the pioneers of cargo visibility , released its own product aimed at extending the value of tracking data on Jan . 10 . Its NexTrace product is intended to give shippers visibility on raw materials through to finished goods to help them comply with traceability regulations , especially in the EU .
“ This will help our customers to not only meet upcoming regulations like the EU Digital Product Passport but
Investment in visibility and other supply chain software has dwindled since the COVID-19 pandemic . Shutterstock . com also gain a competitive edge by providing comprehensive data on their products ’ journey , composition and sustainability ,” Brian Carelli , Infor ’ s vice president of sustainability and partnerships , said in a statement .
Failure to launch
The impetus behind all of these moves is , as Elenjickal put it , a sort of aggregate failure from vendors to deliver on the promise of how visibility data could help other supply chain software perform better .
“ The market sentiment right now is there ’ s a lack of value realization around visibility ,” he said . “ There were a lot of promises made , including by us . But the value from those promises , very few companies have realized it . The ones that have are progressive and have resources and use data in other areas of supply chain , and they ’ re not afraid to throw people at it .” Conlon agreed . “ There has , unfortunately , been a degrading in the belief of what visibility can bring ,” he said . “ There have been a lot of false promises that have been made . But we ’ ve been clear from the beginning . Visibility is not a solution ; it ’ s a data stream . We ’ ve focused on risk management .”
While Conlon said Overhaul welcomes partnerships with adjacent systems , Elenjickal said FourKites is now charting a course based on the idea that visibility partnerships with transportation management systems ( TMSs ), warehouse management systems ( WMSs ), and enterprise resource planning ( ERP ) vendors haven ’ t yielded desired results for shippers .
“ We always thought that we can be [ neutral ] and enable our partners to consume the data for our customers ,” Elenjickal said . “ But that hasn ’ t happened . They have other priorities . We cannot be dependent on partners . If we can ’ t do it , someone else will do it .”
The intent of the eight control tower products , he said , is to make FourKites more directly accountable to its shipper customers .
“ We cannot appease all our partners all the time ,” Elenjickal said . “ We tried to do it for the past 10 years . We ’ re not trying to build a TMS , [ an order management system ], or a WMS . But we are going to make those systems more efficient , and every customer wants this to happen .”
On Jan . 15 , another visibility provider , Shippeo , announced a $ 40 million investment aimed at helping it expand its customer base in North America and Asia-Pacific .
Shippeo is taking a more traditional path to growth for its multimodal visibility platform — not eschewing partners or building product extensions , but highlighting its work with TMS or ERP system vendors .
Shippeo said it saw a 40 % year-over-year increase in North American customers in 2024 , “ driven by strategic partnerships with e2open , Google and SAP ,” the company said in a statement . “ As the US visibility market matures , companies are increasingly looking to switch vendors , with data quality concerns being the primary driver .”
email : eric . johnson @ spglobal . com www . joc . com February 3 , 2025 | Journal of Commerce 37