Despite the transportation and logistics industry rollercoaster ride in recent years, new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, have emerged to offer a new avenue of innovation and opportunity. In a recent interview with Lee Klaskow, Senior Transportation and Logistics Analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, for Bloomberg’s Talking Transports podcast, Rob Painter, CEO and President of Trimble, discussed the ways transportation companies across the global supply chain are harnessing these technologies to evolve and how Trimble is helping pioneers chart new territory.
Throughout the conversation, Painter explored the state of the transportation and logistics industry and how partners and customers are responding to recent shifts. Plus, he walked through Trimble’s strategy to create a global, connected platform and the many ways Trimble is enhancing its solutions with more robust data streams, more insightful analytics and more efficient workflows, all powered by AI.
"We have a very important and successful mapping business at Trimble and we're continually developing those truck-specific maps and routes,” Painter said of the proprietary commercial maps used across Trimble solutions, such as Trimble PC*Miler, CoPilot and Appian. “We use AI to automate feature extractions out of our large [mapping and routing] data sets. We have a lot of data these days but data isn't the problem. Information is the problem. When you can leverage AI to turn data into information, good things happen."
On the operational management side, Painter explained, "We've introduced Autonomous Procurement and Autonomous Quotation capabilities. In that matching of freight between the shipper and the carrier or the broker, Autonomous Procurement is enabling no-touch buying. What we're finding is when we do this, we can deliver seven to twelve percent savings on the freight. On the Autonomous Quotation side, we're seeing that pricing accuracy is improved… it's more efficient for our customers and they're getting better outcomes when they adopt Autonomous Procurement and Autonomous Quotation."
