Chris Jones is Executive Vice President, Marketing and Services at Descartes

We’ve all been there – buying furniture, home appliances, or that new flat screen TV, when the taxing moment comes to schedule the delivery appointment for our purchase. Whether shopping at a store or online, more often than not, we’re presented with limited delivery options such as half-day time slots for the morning or afternoon or the ever dreaded, “We’ll call you the day before and confirm the time your goods will arrive…”

As consumers, we want choice, convenience and reliability. The more delivery options we have the greater the ability we have to choose an appointment that best conforms to our busy schedules. The narrower the appointment window, the less time we spend waiting for a delivery. These days who can afford to miss a day of work to wait for delivery of a new refrigerator?  And worse… what happens if it is late or fails to arrive?

Leading retailers understand that enhancing customer service for home delivery can be a key competitive weapon. Consumers will be loyal across retail channels to retailers that consistently provide them great service consisting of choice, convenience and reliability. Service failures not only risk consumers not returning, they can also result in poor ratings and negative brand equity.

Few retailers would disagree with the previous statements. Yet, too many retailers mistakenly believe that improved service means higher delivery costs. What if Descartes could offer tighter time windows, premium delivery times and value-added services (installation, removal, etc.) for less cost or increased revenue? Would consumers pay for a premium 2-hour delivery window at lunch or on a Saturday? Would consumers sign up for value-added services if they knew they would be reliably delivered? Would consumers take “free” delivery at times that were cost effective for the retailer? What if all of this could be done across multiple retail channels, stores, web, etc.?

This is just what one of our valued customers, John Lewis Partnership did. John Lewis Partnership is one of the United Kingdom’s leading retailers with gross sales of over £8.2bn across 35 John Lewis shops (29 department stores and six John Lewis at home), johnlewis.com and 274 Waitrose supermarkets.

As part of their multi-channel retailing initiative, they have successfully implemented Descartes’ Reservations and Route Planner solution to consolidate home deliveries for larger goods into one dynamic booking system. The solution allows John Lewis customers and employees to book delivery appointments in real-time on the website and at the point-of-sale while supporting the up-sell of value-added services consumers that consumers want. Unlike batch optimization solutions, the dynamic incremental optimization used by Reservations and Route Planner allows John Lewis to place orders on schedules in real-time, helping to ensure delivery routes are realistic, efficient and productive. The solution’s web-based architecture allows high-speed automated booking, even in the peak holiday season, and enables centralized route planning for all of the United Kingdom. With high-quality results, delivery planners can manage delivery exceptions and concentrate on maintaining high customer services levels.

Regarding the project, Andrew Gay, Systems Manager at John Lewis Partnership said, “Customer service is paramount at John Lewis and Descartes’ Reservations and Route Planning solution are integral to our strategy of offering more extensive, but unified, delivery services across all of our channels. Descartes’ advanced optimization capabilities and architecture were critical to bringing new delivery service options to our customers in an economically feasible way.”

Check out the press release and learn more about John Lewis Partnership.

We are thrilled to continue working with leading retailers like John Lewis who have a vision for using customer service as a competitive weapon. We congratulate them on their success and are so pleased that they are realizing significant benefits. If you want to learn how you can turn your “last mile” delivery operations into a differentiator and revenue generator, please let us know.

Edward Ryan is Chief Commercial Officer at Descartes

On March 21, we announced that our valued customer, Ferguson, implemented our cloud-based MobileLink solution.  Descartes MobileLink™ is a GPS enabled wireless application that is integrated with Ferguson’s implementation of Descartes Route Planner™ solution. The mobile solution is designed to help to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness through real-time tracking and dispatching of mobile resources in the field.

This combination of planning and real-time mobile solutions allows leading wholesale distribution companies, like Ferguson, to better manage their dynamic “last-mile” deliveries.  We were glad to be able to help Ferguson expand their control of their operations from optimized route planning to more efficiently and effectively managing their field resources. The breadth of our Routing, Mobile and Telematics suite and modular approach allowed them to start in one area and expand as they needed greater fleet management capabilities.

Ferguson was founded in 1953 and is headquartered in Newport News, VA.  They are the largest wholesale distributor of residential and commercial plumbing supplies and pipe, valves and fittings in the U.S. Ferguson is also a major distributor of HVAC/R equipment, waterworks and industrial products and services.

Joseph Zanette, Solution Manager, Supply Chain, Ferguson Enterprises, Inc. said “MobileLink allows us to automate our proof-of-delivery process and capture  critical information that can help us improve customer service and the productivity of our operations. Descartes’ integrated Routing, Mobile and Telematics suite allows us to implement a comprehensive fleet  operations solution with one vendor. The mobile solution was a logical extension of our use of Descartes’ Route Planner for route planning and optimization.”

We want to congratulate Ferguson on their successful initiative to improve customer service and reduce their impact on the environment by eliminating excess paperwork and improving on-road miles traveled per day. We also want to thank Ferguson for their confidence in us as a logistics technology provider and look forward to continuing our great working relationship moving forward.

Chris Jones is Executive Vice President, Marketing and Services at Descartes

The team at Descartes is excited to announce the launch of our redesigned website!  The redesign is meant to provide an enhanced user experience for our visitors and customers. It is built upon a completely new navigation structure developed to reduce complexity, facilitate the sharing of information and get you to the page(s) you need with 1-2 clicks. We’ve updated information on our solutions and have made news, events, and resources much more accessible.

As a Descartes customer, you can now access your solution log-in pages with a single click on every page of the website. Just go to the Login/Register box at the top right-hand corner of every page and select your application from the drop down.

We believe Descartes’ new online identity reflects our focus on innovation in pursuit of uniting businesses in commerce. It helps us represent our culture of service and dedication to helping customers deliver by bringing together the people and technology that move that world.

We would like to invite you to visit our redesigned website.  Let us know what you think.

Ed Ryan is Chief Commercial Officer at Descartes

As many of you know, we hold a User Group conference each year to showcase our latest technology as well as provide an opportunity for customers and partners to network. Over the last several years, we have given out our Excellence and Innovation Awards that recognize our customers and partners that have demonstrated and achieved great results, have successfully launched transformational initiatives for their business and/or use Descartes’ solutions in innovative ways.

Last year, we decided it was not only important enough to recognize our customers and partners, but just as important to recognize our own employees for their contributions in helping make our customers and partners successful. Descartes appreciates the commitment, hard work and contributions our employees make and wants to continue to foster a rewarding and high-performing work culture. With that, we introduced the Descartes Quarterly Employee Excellence & Innovation Award Recognition Program for Employees.

To be eligible for the nomination, the employee must have, amongst other attributes, demonstrated:

Innovation – championing of new and valuable ideas to develop new or better processes, tools, methods, systems, products or services in support of Descartes’ mission
Excellence – performance with pride and to the highest professional standards, exceeding expectations, achieving exceptional result(s) for external and/or internal stakeholders

We wanted to tie it directly to our customer and partner awards, and from now on, honor not only our customers and partners at our User Group Conference, but our exemplary employees as well!

I thought it important to give a little introduction prior to announcing the winner. So, without further ado, we would like to honor our very first Descartes Quarterly Employee Excellence & Innovation Award winner – Joe Foley. Joe came to Descartes through its acquisition of Flagship Customs Services in 2006, where he was their Web Products Manager. Joe is currently a Director of Research and Development in our Government Solutions group. His specialties include International trade, and business-to-government and business-to-business messaging.

Joe’s most current project entailed completely redeveloping the backend system of AESDirect for the U.S. Department of Census. AESDirect is the U.S. Census Bureau’s free, Internet-based system for filing Shipper’s Export Declaration (SED) information to the Automated Export System.

Descartes and team, at Census, had a very specific deadline to complete the project, which gave them a little over a year to not only design and develop the new backend to AESDirect, but also to integrate it with the existing front ends. The team had to roll out the system and migrate over 40 million Electronic Export Information (EEI) records, and then transition the almost 75,000 companies that use the system from the old database to the new database. Joe’s leadership was instrumental in the success of the project.

Joe’s favorite parts of the project were problem solving and design. From the beginning, Joe and team had to overcome several challenges to come up with the best solution. I asked Joe what he thought made the project so successful, and he told me it wasn’t just the completion of the technical side, but also that they were able to maintain good communications with the client throughout the project. The team held weekly status meetings to make sure that all key stakeholders were aware of the progress and any potential risks looming on the horizon.

Congratulations to Joe for being this quarter’s Employee Excellence & Innovation Award winner and for being an outstanding project team member.

Cindy Yamamoto, Senior Vice President, Global Logistics Product Strategy at Descartes

On Wednesday, U.S. President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Harper released a joint declaration and action plan entitled “Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness”. I thought the following excerpt, taken from the initial declaration first issued on February 4th, 2011, was a good summary:

To preserve and extend the benefits our close relationship has helped bring to Americans and Canadians alike, we intend to pursue a perimeter approach to security, working together within, at, and away from the borders of our two countries to enhance our security and accelerate the legitimate flow of people, goods, and services between our two countries. We intend to do so in partnership, and in ways that support economic competitiveness, job creation, and prosperity. (source: Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness”, 4 Feb. 2011)

The declaration is an interesting read and can be accessed at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/us-canada_btb_action_plan3.pdf.

Did you know that almost a million dollars of goods and services cross the border every minute? That’s well over a billion dollars a day. I love to see statistics like that; it really makes you think how important the movement of goods is to these two economies. It further talks about the sharing of information, the importance of community-driven efforts and collaboration, an integrated cargo security strategy, screening efforts, and the use of technology at ports of entry. All of which are critical to continued economic growth. In addition, the U.S. and Canadian governments established a Beyond the Border Working Group (BBWG) that would develop the overall plan and help to ensure collaboration between the two countries.

In August of this year, the Canadian government released their Summary Report of Consultations with Canadians. Excerpts from the proposal, listed in the Transportation section, include:

Trucking

• Align the different requirements for safety and hours of operation.
• Align the different requirements for weight and dimension.
• Revise regulations regarding in-transit shipments. If the carrier belongs to a customs supply chain security program, only high-level cargo descriptions should be required.
• Review immigration laws and interpretations to enable a driver to move empty trailers in another jurisdiction to the pickup point of an export load to enhance efficiency.

Marine

• Harmonize safety, environmental and regulatory standards across both countries.
• Harmonize and streamline reporting and vessel clearance requirements between both countries.
• Align Canadian and U.S. marine security regulations.
• Remedy the situation regarding double scanning or no scanning of ocean containers.

Air

• Streamline and automate pre-enrollment border clearance processes.
• Align cargo security regulations.
  (source: Summary Report on Consultations With Canadians on Regulatory Cooperation Between Canada and the United States”, Aug. 2011)
  

Another important outcome should be the development of common standards of security relative to information technology.

In Wednesday’s declaration, U.S. President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Harper, emphasized the need for improved cargo security capabilities, quoted, as follows:

“We will look for ways to reduce the cost of conducting legitimate business across the border by implementing, where practicable, common practices and streamlined procedures for customs processing and regulatory compliance.

We intend to work towards developing an integrated cargo security strategy that ensures compatible screening methods for goods and cargo before they depart foreign ports bound for the United States or Canada, so that once they enter the territory of either we can, together, accelerate subsequent crossings at land ports of entry between our two countries.”

This agreement will go a long way in speeding up the movement of goods across the border, not to mention the significant reduction in cost for both governments. Sounds like a win-win for all. Pilot projects are set to kick off in April 2012.

We issued a press release on Wednesday detailing how we are working with our customers and regulatory agencies to ensure our cloud-based Logistics Technology Platform addresses and supports these initiatives. Our CEO, Art Mesher, was quoted as saying “Our goal is to make our borders as safe, secure and efficient as possible. We welcome the U.S. and Canadian governments’ initiatives to enhance security, while being mindful of the need to even further streamline the flow of cargo across the border. We believe that our expertise in cargo security, in the U.S. and Canada, can help make this declaration a reality and provide a ‘single-window’ solution for importers, exporters and logistics companies to comply with it.”

Some specific examples include joint engagement with key customers and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on CBP’s Air Cargo Advanced Screening (ACAS) initiative. ACAS is designed to provide CBP with data concerning the parties and commodities involved in shipments earlier in the shipment process. In addition, Descartes has achieved “M1″ certification for advanced manifest security filings for ocean shipments inbound to the United States. With this new initiative and certification, Descartes continues to provide one of the most comprehensive suites of cloud-based cargo security solutions available to manage the flow of goods between Canada and the United States for air, ocean and truck-based shipments.

We will be holding informational web seminars for our customers and other impacted parties. To learn more and register to be notified about these and other important customs events, please visit our website and register at www.descartes.com/beyondtheborder.

Chris Jones is Executive Vice President, Marketing and Services at Descartes

We wrapped up our annual Global User and Partner Conference last week, and by all accounts, it was a great success. Last week, a record number of customers and partners, from around the world, converged at the W Hotel in Ft. Lauderdale for Descartes’ Global User and Partner Conference. By all accounts it was an incredible success and great opportunity for our community to network, learn and interact with our most significant and important technology advances.

The event also represented a significant milestone for Descartes – the unveiling of the next generation of our brand identity. We are building upon our 30-year legacy of helping to make the world a better place through solutions that improve the productivity, performance, security and safety of logistics. Our brand reflects our focus on innovation in pursuit of uniting businesses in commerce. It defines how we conduct business and speaks to our values. It represents our culture of service and dedication to helping customers deliver by bringing together the people and technology that move that world.

Since our founding in 1981, we have grown and evolved as an organization, but our core values remain the same. Descartes’ Global User Group is a natural extension of the learning organization that is at our core. The conference provided an opportunity for the Descartes team and our community of users and partners to:

Listen Educate Articulate Research Network

We discussed our product development priorities, and we shared information on the latest technology advancements, best practices and customer/partner success stories. Some of the highlights included:

• The unveiling of our two latest innovations available on the Descartes Logistics Technology Platform:
• The Descartes Collaboration Gateway, which supports secure access for ad hoc parties that casually connect to trading parties as part of the supply chain process
• The Descartes Ocean ACE Filing, an M1-Certified solution for ocean shipments arriving in the US
• Training and demonstrations of our integrated Routing, Mobile and Telematics solutions;
• Annette Sandberg, former Administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, who shared her perspective on transportation regulatory trends;
• Matthew “Whiz” Buckley, decorated Naval Aviator, author and executive who presented a high-energy, team-building session designed to inspire organizations to unleash the power of Afterburner’s Flawless Execution model for achieving mission-critical goals; and
• A robust technology showcase including sponsors/partners such as: Airclic, ALK Technologies, AT&T, GeoMicro, Honeywell, Intermec, INTTRA, Motorola, NAVTEQ, OnTrac, Psion, SAP, SMC3, Sygic, TomTom, and Wavelink

And finally, we successfully concluded our Evolution 2011 Global User & Partner Conference by presenting Descartes’ Excellence and Innovation Awards to a select group of our customers and partners for their work throughout the last year. The Excellence and Innovation Awards recognize Descartes customers and partners that have demonstrated and achieved great results, have successfully launched transformational initiatives for their businesses and/or use Descartes’ solutions in innovative ways that deliver high return on investment and rapid time-to-value. They are models for their industry peers.

Please join us in congratulating the following ten Descartes customers and United by Design partners who were recognized with a Descartes Excellence and Innovations Award for their unique achievements and performance:

• American Airlines
• CVS Caremark
• Delta Airlines
• DHL Global Forwarding
• Ferrellgas
• Infoway
• Jaguar Freight Services
• Joseph Cory Holdings
• Oldcastle
• TJX Canada

Our primary goal is to make our customers and partners successful. Your satisfaction and continued support are key to Descartes’ continued business success. On behalf of the entire Descartes team, thank you for helping Descartes become the global leader in logistics technology.

An event highlights video will be available shortly. Stay tuned!

Chris Jones is Executive Vice President, Marketing and Services at Descartes

Dear Global Logistics Community Member,

We wanted to inform you of an important announcement we made today regarding SAP certification of Descartes’ Global Logistics Network. One of the goals of our company is to standardize and streamline the messages and documents flowing between you and your trading partners. While SAP’s ERP system is already integrated to the GLN, we wanted to take our work a step further. Working closely with SAP, we achieved SAP NetWeaver certification status for integration of SAP solutions with Descartes’ Global Logistics Network. We believe that this certification can result in faster time-to-value for you and your trading partners. We look forward to empowering your SAP solutions with the real-time logistics information you need to keep your company competitive. The full announcement is available at www.descartes.com.

We are also pleased to announce that Till Dengel, Vice President, Transportation & Logistics Industry Business Unit, SAP, is scheduled to speak at Descartes’ Global User and Partner Conference, November 8th – 10th in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Till has been working with us for several years and has some great insight into SAP’s business network strategy, offerings for the logistics industry, and relationship with Descartes. This is a great opportunity to learn more about how SAP and Descartes, working together, can improve the productivity and performance of your logistics operations. To register for the Global User and Partner Conference go to http://www.descartes.com/events/user_group/conference_registration.html.

If you have any questions about this announcement or anything else, please let us know.

Chris Jones is Executive Vice President, Marketing and Services at Descartes

I recently read an article from “Gartner First Thing Monday” on the evolution of the enterprise application (aka ERP) and it got me thinking on how it would relate to the transportation / logistics industry.

Enterprise applications started with a model based upon the manufacturing and distribution industries. It’s for that very reason that enterprise applications have had relatively little penetration in the transportation / logistics industry beyond financials. The cost and complexity haven’t been the real barriers, as both big and small enterprise applications have struggled to be successful. The real reason is that most business processes in transportation / logistics are inter-enterprise.

Transportation / Logistics is about companies coming together to move goods. In particular, when you look at freight forwarders, 3PLs and NVOCCs, their work involves coordination of not only their customers, but the asset (and other non-asset) logistics companies that actually move the freight. If you add the requirements of global trade compliance, this situation gets even more multi-party as additional brokers and government regulatory agencies also become part of the logistics process.

When I think about the current strategies and complexity for enterprise applications, I shudder at how the traditional enterprise model would work in multi-enterprise commerce. Multi-enterprise means that complexity has gone went way up and the longevity of the business processes went way down. Few companies will be able to endure 3-7 year implementations and 7-10 year business process upgrade cycles. Multi-enterprise business processes are way too dynamic. Time to value, not functional completeness, is, and will continue to be, the big value driver. The same goes for flexibility versus rigid standardization.

It’s also not just about the multi-enterprise application strategy and architecture, it’s about the connectivity and community. Logistics companies have 100s to 1,000s of trading partners. If you don’t have the pre-connected relationships, it can take years to get make a multi-party application work – cloud or not.

The other challenges to connectivity, and establishing a community, are the sophistication of communication and the transient nature of the relationships. There hasn’t been the development of communities based upon enterprise application standardization, because of the “overhead” required to get enterprise applications network aware.

Building point-to-point connections is based on the “80/20” rule – you would get the big volume connections, but not necessarily the bulk of the trading partners that consume all of the management time. In addition, business relationships come and go, and are more temporal than ever. For example, we see this in Europe, where Western European Logistics Service Providers (LSPs) are using Eastern European carriers. These carriers are mostly small and technologically unsophisticated. The LSPs use one carrier this month and another one next month, all based upon price and availability. Yet, these LSPs want to manage their freight, and track it in real time, as it moves across Europe. In the traditional models of connectivity, these trading relationships are ignored, because IT organizations don’t have the multi-enterprise tools to react to rapid entrance and departure of partners, nor provide the “low / no tech” and temporal connections.

Lastly, I doubt that successful multi-enterprise applications will be successful if there approach is “all or nothing” standardization. Unlike accounting, business relationships are quite unique and personal. Look at all of the order management systems you have seen over the years that have been highly enhanced / modified / augmented / you name it, because the “standard” approach of the enterprise application didn’t address the business relationship and value drivers. And, this was only for an outward looking enterprise application. Revenue always gets its way, in the end, with IT. Successful providers of multi-enterprise applications will need to be able to have modular and flexible solutions that can allow companies to assemble, change and disassemble their business process, and include the highly inevitable “other” applications that will exist in each of the trading partners, regulatory agencies etc.

Ed Ryan is Chief Commercial Officer at Descartes

We are scheduled to unveil our breakthrough logistics technology platform in New York on Thursday, September 22, 2011. Descartes’ Logistics Technology Platform helps give our customers what they want – modular and interoperable logistics management solutions that reduce the cost and complexity of their operations and improve customer service. This launch event is a great opportunity to see our new Logistics Technology Platform live and in action, with real-life examples of how customers use our technology to improve their logistics operations. Scheduled demonstrations will focus on advances in integrated routing, mobile and telematics, logistics flow control and logistics networking technologies. Our CEO, Art Mesher, will also deliver the keynote address and provide an update on Descartes’ technology and business strategy.

The event will begin at 12 noon (EST) at the Westin New York, Times Square located at 270 West 43rd Street, New York, New York 10036.

Seating is limited. If you are interested in attending please complete your reservation request at http://www.descartes.com/poweroftheplatform

Cindy Yamamoto, Senior Vice President, Global Logistics Product Strategy at Descartes

In a recent press release, we announced that Southwest Airlines successfully deployed Descartes’ cloud-based Air Messaging Service to its cargo customers. We were very pleased to work with the award-winning cargo division, of Southwest Airlines, to continue their great tradition of outstanding customer service. Shipment status messaging, provided by Descartes, now enables Southwest Airlines Cargo to deliver real-time alerts to its freight forwarders and direct shipper customers. With Descartes’ extensive community of freight forwarders already connected to Descartes Global Logistics Network (GLN), Southwest Airlines Cargo was able to quickly connect to its customers, dramatically reducing the time to improve customer satisfaction, reducing costs, and streamlining operational processes.

Kevin Russell, Director of Cargo Revenue Management and Automation at Southwest Airlines Cargo, commented on roll-out highlights, “We initially launched Descartes Air Messaging Service to select freight forwarder trading partners. The cloud-based service was fast and easy to implement and delivered immediate service improvements to our customers and provided full transparency into their shipments. Based on the positive customer feedback that we received about the improved customer service, we are pleased to now offer shipment status messaging to all of our cargo customers.”

As a key success factor, the strength of Descartes’ network of pre-connected freight forwarders helped Southwest Airlines Cargo to reduce the time-to-value for its customers. Electronic air messaging services, including status messaging, are provided by Descartes Global Logistics Network (GLN), which processes over 1 billion electronic messages annually. The GLN is a cloud-based logistics platform that connects 35,000 trading partners and leverages over 50 value-added services. The GLN spans the entire shipment management process, from contract management, to freight bookings, shipment tracking, security and trade compliance filings, mobile resource management, and more.

To learn more about Descartes GLN and our solutions for the air cargo industry, please click here http://www.descartes.com/industries/trans/air_carriers.html