The company that I will be spending my time with this summer is FreightHub.  FreightHub is a company that is building the globally leading freight forwarder of the twenty first century.  It is a digital asset-free freight service provider located in Berlin (HQ), Hamburg, Cologne and Hong Kong. Their ultimate goal is to create the best freight-forwarding experience for their global customers. They are a digital 3PL forwarder that carries on transports with their partners for their customers by using state of the art technology and experienced logistics experts.  The company operates in the freight forwarding industry but is also a player in the combination of the technology and the logistics industry. The freight forwarding industry has an impressive market size of over 450 billion dollars. Logistics is defined as the the process that provides management over the flow of goods and materials between points of origin to end-use destination. Very popular logistic companies include UPS or Amazon. However, FreightHub doesn’t actually physically transport the products. They don’t own the trucks, air craft, or trains that get products from point A to point B. Instead, FreightHub builds and operates the technology necessary to make this process as efficient as possible for other forwarding companies. FreightHub defines itself as a technology company working in the logistics industry.

The Transport & Logistics sector is a highly competitive and crowded industry in which companies operate on very thin profit margins. Most leading logistics companies can’t compete much on the products they are offering, but instead on price and speed. This is where FreightHub can come into play for these companies. They assist their customers to help them achieve this desirable price and speed by making the transportation process more efficient. Because of this, FreightHub needs to act on its strength to be quick and cheap. The way to achieve this is partially by being analytically savvy. It is extremely important for logistical companies to collect as much data as positive so that they are able to analyze and learn from it. For example, this data could tell companies what products are making the most profit and what processes are costing the most time or money.

Another key strength would be uniformity within said data.  For example, when logging data about shipping containers, or truckloads, there is still not always a standardized measure used by all employees. Even within the same organizations, members at different parts of the process are not recording shipments in a uniform manner. Some may register volume, others loading meters, and others weight, and many companies are failing to even register the size and capacity of different types of vehicles. This disorganized information is all but useless on a big data system, unless it is calculated and logged in the same measurement, which makes fleet optimization to improve efficiency all but impossible as companies are unaware as to how full their truck loads are

In addition being technology savvy is another way for the company to be successful in its freight forwarding industry. As FeightHub says, “technology is eating up the world”. From Facebook to Apple to Amazon it is very clear that technology is becoming more and more important in our world.  This is where FreightHub currently sees a gap in the market because a lot of the customers that own the ships, planes trains do not take advantage of the technology opportunities available. Instead, they are dealing with less transparent supply chain prices. They are paying extra fees because of uncertain delivery times and working with a drastically less efficient back end process.

In order for FreightHub to be successful in its industry, it needs to be reliable and punctual with its services. This means that the company needs to have excellent operational processes that are supported and backed by data and technology. In addition, they need to create strong partnerships so that they are able to offer their customers the most competitive prices possible. They have to be transparent with its customers about any extra fees or potential add on fees to make for more effective collaboration along the supply chain. To be successful, FreightHub should strive for full transparency so they are able to offer real time, accurate data. Lastly, they need to be proactive managers of exceptions and operate effective workflows. They need to plan and execute time and cost savings what it comes to planning the supply chain (including warehouse, working capital, buffer ect.)