Kevin Hill:
Now we have Jeff Dangelo, the founder of Turvo, joining us via Skype. How are you doing today, Jeff?
Jeff Dangelo:
Doing great. Can you guys see me? Thanks for having me.
New Speaker:
We can see you.
Michael Vincent:
Yeah, we see you clearly. How are you, Jeff? Thanks for being on.
Jeff Dangelo:
I’m doing awesome. Thanks for having me. I feel like I’m underdressed.
Kevin Hill:
Don’t feel that way, certainly.
Michael Vincent:
I’ll have Kevin stand up. He’s wearing shorts.
Kevin Hill:
So Jeff, can you tell our audience a little bit about yourself and Turvo, and what you guys do?
Jeff Dangelo:
Yeah, that’s awesome. I’ll give you a little bit of the genesis story. I spent around 13 years in logistics and supply chain before founding Turvo. We founded in ’14. There were three of us that founded the company. I was the sort of the SME of the organization when we started. The other two came from the consumer tech world. We literally, for eight years before starting the company, looked at a bunch of trends to say, not only when should we start, but why should we start.
Jeff Dangelo:
We were looking at things like how is Amazon influencing the industry, what were they doing? We were looking at, were companies trusting data in the Cloud? And then things like smartphone adoption were certainly important for us, because for us to solve problems in the supply chain logistics industry, and when we talk about problems, we think of siloed systems. Manual work that’s done across the different companies, they’re all doing the same thing and they’re just not getting leverage from it.
Jeff Dangelo:
And we looked at it and we said, the number one thing, or the number one way to solve this is by giving all of the organizations that have to work together, a common tool set. So for example, the reason why Excel works so well, Microsoft Excel, is because when I create an Excel document and I share it with someone, I just assume they have it. And so the only way to really attack supply chain and logistics is to say, how do I have the same software, the same platform, the same data, and share it with my partners, my vendors, my customers, locations, and do it in a way where it makes sense from their perspective. And so we also looked at things like the technology, were companies like Facebook and LinkedIn, the underlying technology, were they readily available at the time we were going to start?
Jeff Dangelo:
So we launched in ’14. We started with a system of record play, and it really geared towards the freight brokerage world. So how would we replace traditional TMS that was built for the company that buys it and sort of create a network ecosystem play? And then we’ve evolved over time to, we still continue to do that, but what we also do is, we also spend a lot of time in digital transformation. So companies that have many, many systems, how do we aggregate data across the systems? How do we digitize their networks? And then really, how do we allow them to get leverage from the companies they work with to be more efficient to operate and differentiate the marketplace?
Kevin Hill:
Excellent. Thanks for that. So you’re providing a ton of visibility to your clients, into their entire supply chain, across all modes, internationally and domestically. So during the COVID shutdown and now the economic restart, it really has exposed a lot of weak links I suppose in supply chain. I would suppose it has, right? Can you give us your thoughts on that? Are you just getting any insight on that?
Jeff Dangelo:
Yeah, I think obviously having siloed systems is troubling. 70% of shippers, at least domestically, have zero software, or at least two thirds of shippers have zero software to manage their shipments. We’re using, Turvo’s is very different than traditional methods to connect and share. So EDI is painful. These siloed environments cause challenges with things like visibility. I think what we saw with our customers is tremendous growth during the COVID time. So you had companies that traditionally relied on things like VPN to actually create these pipes that were not big enough. So were obviously causing challenges with the speed at which they can get to data or actually the ability to get the data, which is a problem.
Jeff Dangelo:
I think you’ve seen companies that put a lot of their eggs in one basket or another, whether it’s, obviously oil and gas had challenges. Organizations that worked in the automotive and supply business from the automotive perspective, they just got crushed. And so I think as those companies start diversifying not only their vendor relationships, they need to create standardization rather than customization within the supply chain. So that it will increase further flexibility and allow them to be able to be more nimble and I would say more future-proof through something like that COVID has caused.
Kevin Hill:
So Jeff, you were talking about across the supply chain and visibility and siloed information. I’ve spoken to a lot of freight brokerages 3PLs. And a part of that siloing I have often found is within their own organization, between different branches, different divisions, that data is often very siloed and not centralized even within the company. Can you explain that a little bit?
Jeff Dangelo:
Yeah. So I’ll give you a couple of examples. So one of the first examples we see with… Let’s just talk domestically for a second. If I’m a large trucking company that also has a brokerage arm, we see those organizations have multiple TMS systems, which is really interesting because you have, a TMS that’s geared towards the trucking division, you have a TMS that’s geared towards the brokerage division, and none of those systems today talk for the most part. When we talk to the larger organizations, they’re having to deal in those multiple systems, which actually creates a silo, like you said, within that organization.
Jeff Dangelo:
So things like, “I want to share my capacity from the asset to the brokerage side.” You’re not able to do that. And so for us, it’s at Turvo it’s how do we either sit on top to aggregate that data so that you can share freight and capacity or share updates or message about that data in a really structured way or it’s how do we replace the systems so you have one unified view without having the extra cost from that legacy system that’s available.
Michael Vincent:
Very interesting. Yeah. Internal silos.
Michael Vincent:
You don’t really talk about that much.
Jeff Dangelo:
Yeah. You have those 3PLs and freight brokers, and carriers as well that have a unified TMS and usually on the freight brokers side, it doesn’t really work all that well, because it’s more geared to the asset, but you keep that legacy system in place because they can kind of communicate in a way with each other.
Michael Vincent:
Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Dangelo:
Yeah. And I think the thing about that is most systems of record were built for one audience or another. So they were really geared towards that one audience versus saying, how do we create an agnostic platform that you can look at an order for your shipper, you can look at an asset. If you’re a carrier, you can look at, basically a shipment if your broker and really bring all those entities together into one place. And obviously it’s easier said than done. And that’s why most organizations and people are focused on the one audience with the one type of system.
Kevin Hill:
So Jeff, we were talking about the supply chain and the diversification of the supply chain. And one of the things that really intrigued me and why I really wanted you on the show to talk about is the tech aspect, the data aspect of that. It was something we really didn’t talk about that much. It was more the fragmented supply chains and these being delayed and blank sailings, et cetera.
Kevin Hill:
But moving forward, you mentioned future-proof and everybody’s talked about, just in time versus just in case. We’ve talked to people, the likes of Lawrence Alvarado professor. He’s CEO of WARECAP and professor at the Catholic University of America, talking about the smaller warehousing space, flexible warehousing space and moving those things off. Can you talk to that a little bit? Is that future-proof, the diversification and more sourcing, less sourcing, more nationalism that we’re seeing across the globe as to sourcing within just North America. Trying to do those and how that plays with the tech, et cetera. How do those two overlay each other?
Jeff Dangelo:
Yeah. It actually plays really nicely with what we’re doing, I think. For many, many years, you have the idea of customization. I have to customize my system of record, my operations. I have to customize this. And what does it do? It creates bad data. Either data is not structured, data is not sort of able to be handled through integrations, think how painful an integration is when the data’s not clean. And so we have to take away customization, say, you need standardization. We have to create some standards, not only in the way data flows, but also in the systems or the technology that organizations use. So you do have those common tool sets
Jeff Dangelo:
So for example, if we’re getting all the way into inventory and orders, the inventory system of record, the WMS, should be connected all the way through to your TMS. You should be able to understand that there’s a signal that says, there’s an order coming down the road 30 days from now, why don’t we have a truck available for that order that’s going to happen on that Monday. So when you talk about, we want to get away from reactive and become proactive in terms of the supply chain. And you have to build, whatever you’re going to build, whatever you’re going to buy has to be, when you talk about future-proof, has to be able to work now, when there’s a lot of people working in that product, making those updates, but also has to be able to work when trucks drive themselves or when there’s an IOT asset, that’s connected to a pallet to tell the software, tell the system to do something. So it’s not necessarily human saying it. It’s actually a system of record telling you or doing the work on behalf of the human.
Jeff Dangelo:
I think, we have a long way to go as a supply chain, from a technology perspective, not Turvo, but just the industry itself. We have to start breaking down these silos and getting things more connected to be able to create some of that automation.
Kevin Hill:
Yeah, definitely. I definitely agree with you and say it’s going to push the supply chain further. To learn more about Turvo, Where do people, where do our audience go and find Turvo and yourself and connect with you?
Jeff Dangelo:
Yeah. So the www.turvo.com the first place, obviously anyone can email me. I’m one of the founders. I still love being in front of customers. That’s where I spend most of my time at jeff@turvo.com. And then, because Turvo is a network, they might already be using Turvo in one way or the other. They might use it as a system of record, as a way to give visibility or even to make appointments. So I think there’s always ways as you engage the product to interact with us, the organization, and to actually get involved and say, how do I become part of that network on a more permanent basis.
Kevin Hill:
Excellent. Thank you very, very much for your time, Jeff.
Michael Vincent:
Yes. Excellent. Thank you so much, Jeff.
Kevin Hill:
Have a great day.
Michael Vincent:
Have a great day.
Jeff Dangelo:
Awesome. You as well. Thank you.
Kevin Hill:
That’s Jeff Dangelo, the founder of Turvo.
Michael Vincent:
Very interesting stuff.
Kevin Hill:
It is.
Michael Vincent:
We think about supply chain, we think about ships moving and trains moving in inter modal boxes and airplanes, so on and so forth, the connectivity and de-siloing of all that data is essential.
Kevin Hill:
It is essential and it’s something that’s been happening, inch by inch it seems like over the last few years, but it’s going very slowly and hopefully, if one good thing comes out of this COVID-19 crisis is that accelerates that movement.
Michael Vincent:
Yeah. Accelerates a lot of good things, a lot of innovations. Absolutely.