Freight Friends: Grace Sharkey on EDI Economics and the AI Reality Check

Note: this is technically a segment from a recent Freight Friends episode so if you already listened to that convo, thank you. But if you'd like to listen for the first time or listen again, also thank you.

Back in May, I started a new content initiative on CargoRex where I'm interviewing companies/leaders to get their collective take and there's no bigger collective right now than the discussion around AI. 

I shared all 8 of their voices on CargoRex's AI Use Cases in Logistics Guide and I also shared my personal take in the AI that Ships episode right here on EiL. But this one features my good friend Grace Sharkey who is as tech savvy in logistics as they come. She brings the buyer perspective and where AI goes rouge. 

We talked all about this plus her company Orderful's recent raise while somehow making EDI sound interesting. 

Give it a watch/listen here in the podcast player or if YouTube is your jam, head on other there. 

• Connect with Grace on Linkedin
• Grace’s work at Orderful
• ‘The Two Clocks’ article Grace mentioned
• Orderful’s Every Man Jack case study
• CargoRex AI Use Cases in Logistics Guide
  • Solo EiL episode with Blythe’s opinion on AI in Logistics

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CargoRex is the search engine for the logistics industry—connecting LSPs with the right tools, services, events, and creators to explore, discover, and evolve.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:37

All right. Well, let's get into it. I mean, speaking a little bit uh, you know, about, you know, resources and and you know, the content and, you know, the last big thing before I took this trip is uh conducted a series of interviews for the sister site to everything is logistics called Cargo Rex. And so basically a directory building the Google search of logistics over on that site, and um wanted to start taking an editorial approach to content and making resources and guides for folks who are visiting the site because for a lot of folks, they don't they don't know what to look for, they don't know what to search for. And so our content is really starting to get off the ground over there on focusing on the problems that are existing in the industry and who's trying to solve some of those problems. Um, and that's where we came up with the AI use cases guide. And it's essentially, you know, I think you probably hear this a lot too, where you're you hear the phrase AI, and most folks don't even know what they're referring to when they talk about AI. Are you talking about a large language model? Are you talking about a boring process? Are you talking about uh, you know, smart filtering, like uh, you know, even God, uh spell check for God's sakes, is you know, could be considered AI. And so with that phrase, it comes with a lot of connotation. It comes with, you know, some fear around that word, but then it also comes with a lot of opportunity around that word. And and so from my lens of what I wanted to find out is who is actually skipping the marketing fluff of agents and uh you know, bots that make phone calls and things like that. Like, I want to know like what is actually moving the needle. And come to find out after having these eight discussions, we talked to bot auto, we talked to good ship, we talked to Envoy AI, Hey Bubba, Cute, EPG Americas, Sateria, and Sifted. And a lot of what they're solving are boring problems. And I think that that's what gets lost in a lot of this discussion is it's the boring stuff that is at most benefit to AI kind of coming in where you're rethinking your processes and replacing it with a robot where it makes the most sense, or you're replacing it with a process that can be automated where it makes the most sense. Now, I talked specifically to vendors. I did not talk to because it was very hard to get people to submit their stories of how they're using AI if they're not a business owner. But I believe you had a post around the same time that uh the guide released in that you wanted to talk to people who are actually using these tools to find out what is the fluff and what's not. So if you if you want to hear the vendor side of the conversation, who they have plenty of customers who they've talked to and have, I mean, they have customers for a reason, but then on the flip side, what about the users that you have spoken to or even during your own sort of buying processes and um with Ortiful, what have you sort of seen at the the ground level of where the conversation is shifting to when it comes to AI?

SPEAKER_02 3:51

Yeah, you know, I think um well, one thing I I I hit on that post because it was around the time we're seeing Uber and a lot of large enterprise technology businesses as well kind of pulling back on their AI strategy. Um, and and I think there's a number of reasons for that and and and kind of um the deployment of exactly how those strategies get into that a little bit here in a second, but uh I think what's interesting to me is just as generally, you know, in the role that I'm in my marketing era now, you know. Um my goal, right, is to attract buyers and to find buyers at their buying moment, right? And I think what's fascinating is that I wouldn't or I would be surprised uh if other people in the freight tech space are experienced this, but as the clauds of the world became available over the last six or so months, right? We had ChatGBT, but I think Claude in particular really started pushing people into like, oh, uh my regular employees could start using this. As that started to happen, I think we saw across the board a lot of executives getting pushed from, of course, their leaders. We all have a boss. A lot of times you might think that they don't, but a shareholder is still a boss, but getting pushed to not invest money into new technologies, but to try to lower costs and and avoid those investments by like bringing it in-house through like a an agentic type of way, right? Um, and it makes sense. If I was a business leader right now and someone came to me and said, Hey, listen, our quoting tool is trash, I'd like to buy a new quoting tool. My first question would be to you is have you attempted to build that same quoting tool and clot? I would probably hit back with that immediately. And I think that people across the board are seeing that right now from a buying standpoint. And so they're really trying to like figure out okay, where do we have the expertise to build something and and where do we not? Right. Um, what I really love about the companies that you specifically just listed off, I think all of them are focused on tackling, like, like you said, one of those really boring problems. Whoops. Hey, whoa, Cargo Rex, what's that?

SPEAKER_01 6:24

I'm trying to uh do a screen share really quick. Uh, but yeah, here we go. This is the one I wanted.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

Everyone go to cargo rex. Is it Io?

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Oh wait, yeah, cargo rex.io. Yeah, cargo. There we go. That's there's the guide. If you're watching live on on YouTube, we got the guide up on the screen.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Everyone should go look at that site right now.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

I it is, I mean, it is we got some we got some work to do, you know. Website is never truly done. Um, but yeah, we the eight companies you're talking about. Um they're doing some pretty great stuff. I think um I probably might if I had to choose favorites from it, uh, we do have to choose friend of the show, Nick Boston. Um, Michelle McBride was another conversation I loved. Um, Sateria uh was Sarit, she was awesome. And then Tom, of course, is I've been wanting to talk to Tom over at Cute for a long time. And you know, with these interviews, I really wanted to structure them around. You know, if I'm a buyer, what this is how I would maybe have the conversation and then just give the information out and try to keep, I guess, my opinion away from it as much as possible and save the opinion for a show like this. Um, and so for a lot of these interviews, there this is very much like cut and dry. Like, here's the questions I would ask as a buy as a potential buyer. But I mean, admittedly, I'm sure there's some questions in there that um are missed, and you know, and that's where I would really look to, you know, someone like yourself who's on the other side of those conversations as well. Of you know, how are people approaching you about, you know, these kinds of conversations?

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Yeah, well, all of these, if you look across the board, one, they are yeah, they are boring problems. They're workflows, to your point, that happen daily, that happen often. Perfect, perfect re perfect uh place to attack AI, right? And all these companies are using AI within their products. That would be something I would be concerned with. If if a company isn't talking about AI at this point, it's like, why aren't you? Um, which is odd. I think sometimes that scares people in in other industries, but um I I just I I will stand on the fact that shouldn't scare a buyer, that should actually impress a buyer at this point. Um, two, they're all kind of nuanced issues, and a nuanced issue needs a lot of data behind it and a lot of testing behind it to make sure it works well. And as someone who may be an executive looking to be the final decision maker on something like this, you have to ask yourself is that nuance something I'm willing to discover and find and invest in myself, if that is something you're gonna build in-house. Oftentimes it's not, it's gonna take you a while, there's gonna be huge technical debt to it. At that point, like I always what's interesting is like when I hear people are doing that and they're like not also building that product to like sell at some point, it's like gross. Like, why are you doing that? It doesn't make any business sense. Like buy or build and build with the with the thought process in your head that you will exit that build at some point. Um so that's one thing I'd say too. Um and and also like when I talk about the data aspect, like you know, I think the one thing I've learned really also through orderful, but also just like using AI tools myself is like the how do I say this learning how data is stored in re and rem looked back to or remembered right? Like, here's a perfect example. I uh I have a droid, I use my little droid because I build things now, Blythe. I've got a little droid that I have that goes back in time, pulls event leads, see sees how often they were followed up on, gives me a report of what's changed in the past. Um, and if like, for instance, if if someone hasn't been followed up with a certain amount of time, it sets a task for that individual inside Salesforce to make sure that they follow up with them that week. Um it's how I can keep up with like where event leads are sitting, um, how I'm you know managing campaigns to to maybe touch them again, etc. Um, but when I was building that droid, what I started to realize in building it is that if I wasn't storing what it was, what the outcome was of like the first time I ran it, I was never gonna be successful in pulling the change because I wasn't clocking the first poll somewhere, right? So if for instance, and and listen, people, I'm a tech nerd, I'm not a techie. So I know there's like really smart people listening right now, and it's like that's not how you explain that. You know what? Get in my DMs and tell me how to explain it because I'd love to learn, but this is like me dumbing it down. So, like, let's say I wanted to uh keep track of our of you know rain levels in in Lansing, Michigan. I'd have to be storing what the rain level was yesterday somewhere, right? I can't be like, hey, compare it to last week because it never actually like clocked last week. So like I when I'm pulling like this this droid and this event data, I'm also reverting it back and storing it in something like Obsidian so that I can pull back and remember, you know, what it pulled two weeks ago, so it can actually keep track of of the change over time. And so like that's something very small, but it showcases too, like, and I think what a lot of people are learning right now about how difficult it is to build these tools and have them be accurate. And and I mean and so like that's that's something I'd say to you too. Like, if you're looking at these new tools, if you're seeing AI some everywhere, um start investing in like really asking questions of like what their roadmap looks like, how they're managing this, where the human involvement is interacting. Because most oftentimes, and even with orderful, right, we have a lot of AI agentic AI in the behind the scenes that's doing certain things. Um, but we also have points where humans are monitoring that as well. Um, so I think just generally speaking, like one, if you're looking to start getting into AI tools, play around with Claude and play around with that stuff yourself. You're gonna like you'll you'll learn like practices that actually will revert back to poor, I think, technology experiences you had in the past. Because you'll start to realize, oh, that's why that's not working, because I don't even use that field, right? Like in my TMS, or oh, that's why this poor behavior of operation that I've been doing, or this this like revert around isn't working because I'm not I'm not you know doing that correctly. And and so yeah, I guess I kind of went off the topic of your original question, but uh I think right now it's about exploring. I think you've told me this often, like no one really knows AI is like too early and and it's too new to like be an expert at it at this point, right? I think we're seeing that across the board on how AI is being deployed. Um, so just like get your hands in it, get dirty, play around with tools, learn what's working, learn what's not, start with the workflows that you know best, like those eight stories you just touched on, right? We all know how to use retail links, and we all know it sucks to go in there every single day. Thank God Q'd figure out a way to take care of it for us, right? Um but you also at the same time probably invested in Q'd, understood fully how awful that problem is, and realized throughout the last so many months of building your own tools or playing around with it that you're not gonna be able to duplicate that well enough to be worth worth your time. Um, so yeah, like get your hands dirty in AI first and then start, you know, talking with companies and talking with the founders and how they're using AI inside their four walls. And I think you'll be surprised on on how good these products could work for you and how well they are working for their customers now. Every single one of those you just listed off are brands I would like totally stand behind and have heard wonderful things from their from their customers too.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

And I think you know, speaking of cute and and and Tom over there, he talked about in during our conversation about how when he talks with a company, he wants to talk to the biggest skeptic in the company and he wants to sit with them specifically to understand what their processes are and where they think that it won't fit in and where it that has a potential to maybe fit in. And I think it's you know, it's sort of very much like a lot of things in life where it's a pendulum. And I think for you know, the last year, there's been a lot of people who have been, including myself included, who have dove headfirst into this new information layer, this new way of thinking and working and and figuring out where, and just I mean, just figuring it out, trying to figure out where it's gonna make the most impact and where it's not. And there's some areas where I'm just like, God, I wish I could just, you know, me myself could just be cloned. And I have spent probably the last year and a half trying to clone myself, but it doesn't turn up in the numbers. And then it's like, well, maybe that's not the right application to clone myself. Because if you think about from the AI lens, AI is based on data. Data inherently is past tense. And so where our strength comes from as a human is that you're able to use all of that information that's in the past to come up with a solution that will benefit you in the future and in the present. And I think that's where, you know, the machines and the bots will always fall short, is that lack of creativity that gives humans, you know, so much more, you know, sort of superpower. Okay. So if we take that lens and then we kind of, you know, massage it a little bit where, okay, well, I don't need to actually transcribe this conversation that we're having right now. I don't need to personally do that. A machine can do that because it's a set goal, it's a set endpoint. It doesn't require um it maybe a little bit of judgment after the fact to, you know, just make sure that the spelling of companies is correct. Make sure the the people who are, you know, very minor things that could be corrected using human judgment. But it the argument has always been that it'll get you, you know, 80% of the way there, but it's getting to that final 20% that's really going to move the needle as far as impact is concerned. And, you know, and Nick, you know, talked about this during our conversation, the where, you know, it used to take hours for you know their customers to be able to pull the data and pull the information to create a report to send to their customers. But now they can do that in 15 seconds. And so that theoretically will free up that employee to spend more time with the customers and spend more time on problem solving. And I I brought this up in my you know, everything is logistics episode, covering, you know, sort of my overarching opinion on all based on all of those conversations. And then I think remains to be seen is that if what does what does work look like when we automate away the boring? What does it look like when we don't have that bandwidth or we're using all of our bandwidth to focus on the hard things? And I think that's a convert that's a conversation that will probably be had more and more in the next handful of years as work continuously, you know, starts to evolve. Uh I anyone who says that they know where this is going is lying to you because we don't. Um, you know, if Uber Freight knew, you know, where this was going, they wouldn't have blasted through all of their token allotment in the first four months of the year when they had a budget set aside for 12 months. Um, which is, you know, kind of a good thing that their employees are, you know, experimenting in that way. But it just, it's almost like a, you know, a modern problems require modern solutions. And that, you know, as we adopt these new solutions, there are going to be new problems that pop up, but that doesn't mean they're not worth solving. And it doesn't mean the technology itself is not worth adopting. Um, so I think it's it's very much like a mindset shift when I mean, to be honest, the majority of the country is so fearful around this topic. And it's largely in part because of, you know, sort of the doomsday, you know, jobs apocalypse that a lot of these, you know, large language model fountains, Sam Altman and um God, the guy who leads not RJ Andre Karpathy, it's um Dario Amade. Is that yeah, Dario Amade with Claude, who is the CEO of Claude, but they talk about how these tools are so life-altering, so chant, you know, life-changing. And, you know, oh, you can find out how to make a nuclear bomb, you know, with you know, these tools and things like that. And it's they've created a level of fear around these solutions. And now I think it's kind of coming back to bite them in the ass. Uh, so it's it's it's just a level of you know, resistance, I think, too, that is I I think that that delta is only going to increase from the people who are willing to adopt these tools and the people who are staunchly against it, especially if they see it as you know, something that's going to take their job. We we've, I think we've talked before on on this show about this is a common problem with robotics, that when robotics are being introduced inside of a warehouse, they have to go through a level of psychological training with the employees to allow the employees to see the robot as a friend, as something that's going to help you do your job versus take your job. Um, and so there's there's a lot of there's a lot of fear-mongering around the loss of jobs. But I would argue that jobs will always evolve and they will always change. Um, but I do believe that, you know, for a lot of sort of white-collar workers and even some blue-collar ones, that embracing this stuff is not embracing your own doom. I think it's actually setting yourself up for the future in a low-risk environment where you're learning a new informational way of discovery, if that makes sense. I know that was very long, long-winded, but it's just I have an overall positive outlook on these solutions, mostly because it's process optimization and it's just figuring out like where the human plays a role. I think at the core of it, it's your processes and figuring out where human judgment needs to play a role. And if you automate the a key part where human judgment plays a huge role, then you do that at your own peril. Um, so that you know, using uh what is that software called HeyGen, where it like makes uh like a video copy of yourself. And it's like at a high level, it's like, damn, that sounds kind of cool that maybe I could, you know, write up all these scripts and make an avatar of myself. And then you look at it and it's like, I don't even want to watch this. So who else would want to watch this? Like, I think we have to go through these, these things of like, okay, is this a good idea? Is this something you want to adopt? Or it, if not, I think that you were also seeing it too a little bit with like um the the Metaglasses where it's like at first you're like, damn, those are super cool. But then on the flip side, you're like, I don't know if I like these things. And you know, it it changes as you know, I guess you you figure out where these new tools and technologies have a place in your life.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

Yeah, you know, it's um there's an article I was reading this morning. I'll share this with you, and then and you're gonna love this too because it it is on Twitter as we were just talking about the fidelity of Twitter, but uh um it's it's well written, and the guy is kind of he's talking about um actually shout out to Eric Johnson because he had posted about it, um, and and I went and read it, and he's taking the AI look from like a legal from a lawyer standpoint, right? Like um, there's he's the guy who's writing it is like a lawyer consultant, and he's consulting how uh legal firms can start using AI inside their business. And um at some point in the article, he brings up Coca-Cola during when refrigeration became a thing. And he talks about how, like, of course, uh refrigerator, uh refrigerator or whatever, I think it was General Electric was like one of the first to start putting it out. And and Coca-Cola could have said to themselves, like, oh, let's build our Coca-Cola refrigerator, you know. But instead, what they focused on was now let's change our messaging that everyone loves having a cold Coke in their hands because now we live in a world where they can all have a cold Coke in their hands. And I think the problem that we're seeing is in technology right now is that people aren't sure what their cold factor is, or they aren't they aren't focused on figuring out what to do about the new cold lifestyle. Instead, they're like, How do we build refrigerators too? How do we build our own refrigerator? Instead of saying, Well, what is life now like with everyone having access to refrigerators? And I think that's where, and I think we're gonna get into a little bit and I can dive deeper into it. I think that's like one area where Orderful in particular is like really figured that out, um, and especially from like a lawyer perspective, right? Because the problem that he's seen, right, is that a lot of lawyers are like avoiding using this because of the fact that you bill on billable hours, right? So, like, okay, why would I so now you want me to like use tools in order to keep my customers? I have to now use tools that are gonna have me bill less.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Like, that's not great for the business model that we've created, which is so crazy because uh e-commerce and you know, sort of online services went through I went through this myself, you know, years ago. They they tell you, you know, how much as a business owner, when you first go out, well, how much do you want to make an hour? How much do you need to make an hour um in order to earn a living? But then you come to the the or the mindset of like, well, why would I punish myself for working more efficiently? And so it it switched from, you know, you build on you bill on value, you don't bill on the hours that you're working. And if you're uh if you have a an age, a law, a lawyer firm, lawyer firm, if you have a law firm and you're billing on hours, I would argue that you are already 10 years too late for modernizing your firm because you should be billing based on outcome and not on the amount of hours because then you're punishing inefficiency.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Clip it, yes, a thousand percent. Execution of law gets cheap, judgment becomes valuable, judgment is what you bill on now, and I think that right now is kind of like where people are lost and confused and trying to figure things out. Is like, no, it's not about you figuring out either how to resist the change and say it's taking germs, you know, it's taking our germs. Um, which I will say was that I was at a trade show recently where someone said that they're like they were like afraid of the jobs that our AI would take. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

I mean, the the the truth is is that the that phrase of you know, AI is not going to take your job, but someone using AI will. And that is uh that is something that I believe, but it is it shakes up, it does shake up a lot of industries. Uh uh on my end, digital dispatch. I mean, we historically have built websites and we manage them. The people that that were coming to me to have me build them a five-page website, though that market does not exist anymore. And it hasn't existed in about a year, a year and a half, unless you're just completely living under a rock. Um, so me as a business owner, I have a responsibility in order to keep the business afloat to learn how I can pivot my business and how to stay in business. And I have to evolve with it. And I use uh social media as a perfect example where social media managers, social media in general, brand awareness around social media didn't exist 15 years ago, but people evolved with it, and jobs emerged from that. And so, you know, it's it's just the I think it's the level of uh the fear that comes from you know, change just in general. We've had just such an enormous amount of change that's been forced on us really since 2019, um, right before COVID. And I would argue it COVID was a, you know, a mass, I guess, sort of uh it was a method of changing radically, um, where I don't think a lot of folks were comfortable with that change. And I think that the level of acceleration for change is only going to it continue to increase. And people are going to blame AI for this. They're gonna, you know, blame a lot of things on just sort of the natural evolution of business and of roles and things that that should exist and things that won't exist, but the market will tell you of what should exist, and you can either choose to focus on it or ignore it. And you can try to come up with solutions for it. I mean, we're doing that over at digital dispatch of you know, testing out these own, you know, our own AI agents and finding out a lot of them are worth worthless, a lot of them are bullshit. I can't tell you. I spent a week. Have you tried to build like an AI agent for yourself yet? Yeah, it's my event with well, that's I I yeah, I would argue that that is a very good use case. I spent a week trying to build a damn email bot to summarize my emails and filter the ones that are important. It was a giant waste of time. Um, it was infuriating getting it. I tried to bully Claude so much uh to get me something that I actually could use. And it I just said it's worthless. Let's just go back to our Gmail labels and we'll just continue to just filter the labels ourselves because human judgment, I think, plays such a larger role in something like email versus another task where it's transcribing a podcast. Yeah. Um, so it's learning where these things make sense. But to, you know, to your point earlier, if you have not started changing your business to go from hourly and to become more efficient, uh there's a I forget who actually put this photo out, but it was a photo of an invoice and it listed a screwdriver as 15 cents. And then the next line item was knowing where to put the screw, $15,000. That's where we're moving as a business, where relationships matter more than they ever have before. Um, communicating in person matters more than ever before. Personalization matters more than ever before, than ever before. And when you can increase efficiency in other areas of your business, it's going to be up to you to find out and determine where human judgment, human creativity is going to play the most important role. Um and it's not getting a video avatar to send out, you know, 10,000 spam emails because the spam filters are just going to become that much better, anyways.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Oh, 100%. No, I yeah, it's that knowledge. And even like when you talk about the digital dispatch aspect, it's like, but I'm sure what you're finding though is that everyone's building their website the exact same way. Little baby font, big font. I think I sent you guys a picture the other day. I was like, wow, look at this Claude website.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

They're all built, yes, they're all built the same, they all look the same. I hope you realize that. And that's for that. Well, have you heard about the epidemic of you know, club flyers and how they all look the same? And and it's you know, if you think about it from the lens of okay, well, that's Claude, Chat GPT, they're gonna reach if they haven't already, they're gonna reach a level of parity where they all have scraped all of the same information, they're all using the same sort of code bases, and it's how you use that information and then become more creative. Like, you know, on a on our side of things, you know, especially from a content perspective, I know that my take and my opinion is what makes me unique from somebody who's just gonna go to HeyGen and you know come up with, you know, a podcast episode and make up, you know, fake hosts. And I've known of logistics companies in particular who have done that, who use notebook LM to, you know, feed its sources and then come up with a podcast. I mean, I love notebook LM and I've I've used it for some content. Um, but I don't know that I would willingly listen to somebody else's notebook LM. Um, if that makes sense. Like I would rather just do it myself and get my own sources and then listen to it myself. But I I have noticed that even when I do that, I don't retain the same amount of information as if I were to go to a YouTuber and that I have watched for years on a topic that I, you know, I think before we hit record on this conversation, I was watching like the, you know, this the spice road trade and you know, seeing a video, and it was made using, you know, AI videos, uh, and probably use completely made with AI, but I still enjoyed the content.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

But if I had the choice to pick a YouTuber that I've followed for years that is going to cover the same topic versus this AI generated content, then I'm going to the YouTuber that I've known for years. And I think that that it kind of goes back to a theory that I have where I don't think that people will care that they're watching AI content. I think that they will care if they're watching you make AI content, if that makes sense. Like if they've developed a relationship with you uh and they know you're a real person, then they want to hear from you. And they almost feel a little betrayed if you were to go to a, you know, not to pick on Hey Jen, but to go to them and to have that create, you know, a fake avatar of yourself and what you might say. Um, I think people are going to just crave more and more realism as you know, just all of this content is just sort of flooded everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Yeah, I actually think that we'll see more, I think we'll see a pushback into events as well, right? Because it's and even more so, like what something I'm looking more into for the third and fourth quarter is just like customer dinners. Like let's get people in a room together and just like chat. And that has a payoff too, because yeah, at the end of the day, there is a level people understand. Like, listen, I know that you're probably using some type of email tool, right? These days, your or your SDRs are some type of automation. So before I sign a dotted line, I want to at least know who I'm doing business with, right? Um, so I think that is also part of it as well, is that aspect. Like, I want to it drives it makes seeing someone more face-to-face even more valuable. And so now it's like now when I'm face-to-face, you better not drop the ball either, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Yeah, it's a it's a crazy world that we have to sort of navigate through. But I I, you know, I think I think especially with coming up with and having the conversations around this guide and you know, finding out where it's actually working. I think that that's sort of the exciting sort of frontier part of it as well, is like, you know, that the folks who are elbows deep in this stuff and they're trying to come up with solutions, and then they come up with a solution and you know, it might not work, but they might have to tweak it a little bit, or you know, they another customer might have another problem that, you know, it's sort of a maybe a whack-a-mole where you you solve one problem, but then a few more appear. I think that's that's sort of the nature of being in business and trying to problem solve and put fires out, and it's the nature of logistics in general. It's you know, you're you're always going to have new problems to solve. And if some of these tools could help surface solutions and data that help make you solve those problems better and faster and more efficient, then that's that's the whole name of the game since you know, since the container was first invented, since we had merchant ships, you know, that it used to sail across the you know the oceans. And you're always trying to find a little bit better way of getting the stuff that people want. Um, and I think that that you know, technology and AI solutions are not going to take any of that away, but they are going to evolve it. And it's not something to be scared of, it is something to be embraced, but your human judgment of where you choose to embrace it, I think matters more than ever. Um, this doomerism around, you know, it's taking all the jobs, it's taking all of our water, it's, you know, all of these things that are myths, but people still believe them. And it's a perception that has been put out there by these large language model companies, maybe to their own detriment. Um, so I think are you guys experimenting at all? And maybe you don't have to answer this, but I would be curious if you are experimenting with like your own sort of, you know, maybe like internal large language model, or because because that's where I I'm gonna go next is getting the reliance off of, you know, like a chat GPT or a Claude and building it into my own models and my own, you know, system and structure. Because especially as you know, Cargo Rex evolves, it you know, data is our moat, and I don't want to hand all of that proprietary data over to you know, Claude and then have them steal it all and you know, then be able to I think that's what we're gonna see happen next.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

I won't get too much into what we're doing behind the scenes, but I think that's where this goes next is is the yes, your own language models, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:54

What did you did you hear about the Figma example? Yeah, there was um so a high executive within Claude was on the board of Figma, and they brought them in and they were like, Yes, let's you know, let's adopt AI and let's integrate it into our you know the core of our systems three days before Cloud Design was announced. The Claude executive resigned from the board of Figma, and they basically created a Figma clone. And Figma, the stock price, Adobe stock price has plummeted since then. Um, the entirety of their business is being called into question and and called into uh yeah, just all the question about that though, is like so I suck at graphic design, it's all all it's all in here, you know, it all comes out of here, it doesn't come out of here.

SPEAKER_02 39:52

Um I hate Claude and Figma together, like they piss me off. Um now, but it's like back to kind of like what we're talking about. A graphic designer, probably faster for them not to use Claude, I would assume because they're just so good at it. Um, I'm even I'm honestly kind of getting to a point where there are some instances where I'm like, Claude, I can do this 10 times faster by now. But it's like again, it I kind of think back to that too. It's like like shareholders too, like again, like you're panicking way too fast. Like I I just think that there is and I also just think like I wonder behind the scenes, like if the design aspect of things is even that important to them, you know?

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Like well, I think it it was I I I guess I brought it up for more the lens of like Claude is billing themselves as something more than just a collaborative work tool. If you put your systems into these large language models, yeah, there's very real chance that they will gut you, they will cut you out, and they will steal your business and then just look past walk on past your dead body lying on the side of the road. Um, and I think that that is where it's fueling this adoption into more like open source models, um, and building your own models and protecting your own data. Um, I think Claude and Anthropic, in and of itself, uh, you know, they've made an a very big misstep in that regard from the business enterprise community.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

I I totally agree with you. I think that I think it's a big overstep on their hat. I like I it's it's a short-term decision I think is really gonna hurt them in the long run. Um for that exact reason. Like people are it's and it's because you didn't bring to a market a good valuable tool.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

You brought like a you can corporate espionage, really.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

It's corporate espionage, and it's just twir, it's bad quality. I mean, it's the same thing you saw happen with Amazon, right? They they you have to submit your manufacturing information to them so they can know exactly how that your tools or your product is legit, and then they just take that manufacturing info, and then they thought they could be smart and they could, but I actually think that's what's gonna hurt them from dominating in the future, is that they moved way too fast on that, people figured it out way too fast. Um, you know, we had just recently like a town hall where someone was like bringing up um Amazon supply chain, and I just I think do they have like on paper, could they be a monopoly for sure? I think they've already bitten that foot off, though. That's gonna stop them because of because of those exact moves. It's like and and let's be honest. I mean, you and I know this because we've been in this. It's that's the funny part about the investment of everything that's like just seems so clueless to me. It's because they get they get all this money so fast, and they have to deploy it. You can't raise the money that that you get, like the point of even someone like Ortiful raising 35 million dollars isn't isn't to keep 20 million of it in cash reserves, like you know, it's it's the same. So they're like, we gotta deploy it on things, and then you move too fast. I'm gonna get into a capitalism anti-capitalism comment, and it's like you know, it's it's like you guys fell for it. You fell for the the the good old you took too much money now, you need to deliver, and you bit yourself in the foot. And you're a hundred percent right. Instead of like maybe partnering with Figma or actually like building a strong relationship to make integrations that uh that would make these tools actually valuable and make you an ecosystem tool. Yeah, you've like created this like mass hysteria that people are saying, oh wait a second, maybe this is something we can get around if things continue. Like you actually kind of made a really funny point there, but uh it's it's like you you you went so it's like when they say you go so right and you're gonna left now, right? It's like that that aspect you went so hard, which you had to because you raised too much money, and now the long it's like yeah, I would love to see the long-term effect of it. So I I do get nervous that the the bubble will pop because I think that will shareholders will start to realize that faster than they think. I mean, for my 401k, I hope it doesn't pop, but you know, like it just feels like that's naturally where this is going.

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Yeah, I I I would tend to agree because I I think that that is just such a fundamental business misstep that anthropic made was was damaging that relationship with Figma. And uh especially when they had made so much so many strides to integrate you know, Claude into all of the different Microsoft Suite products and integrate it as a layer on top of tools that people were already using. But when you then take that tool and straight up copy it and then make, you know, it just it reeks of, you know, we don't want to, I guess it's not the corporate espionage, but it's just from the lens of well, it is corporate espionage, but then it's it's from the lens of like doing business long term requires, you know, a good relationship. And I I probably will never know what it's like to do business at that high of a level. I just could not see myself as a business operating in the way that you know anthropic has has sort of operated, you know, over the Last, you know, sort of few months. Um, and so it I think that they've damaged their their credibility. I think from the folks who were using, you know, AI, you know, in day in and day out, they have now forced that, especially me as a business. I cannot overinvest into one large language model now. I will diversify just to protect myself. And then I'm looking into solutions where I control the data and I control who scrapes the data and who does it. More importantly, who doesn't scrape the data, you know, in order to keep the livelihood of my business intact. Um, because you damn sure can't partner with somebody like Anthropic anymore. I mean, look at the Microsoft and also OpenAI partnership that has kind of ceases to exist now. Um you can't get in bed with your potential partners and then try to throw them out when they're not useful to you anymore and just bad business. And I think for a lot of businesses, they are discovering that you know, the the hype was a little too much hyped, and that also at the same time it was their own internal inefficiencies, but also combined with the value of their own human judgment, that they have to sort of factor into all of these things on where they choose to make their investments, uh, not just from a monetary standpoint, but where teams are spending their time. Um, because it it does it AI might save you time in some respects. But if you spend a goddamn week trying to build an email agent and it does nothing but waste you time and credits and tokens, um, then you know there's a a loss there as well. And so it's, you know, we're all trying to figure this stuff out. Um, but it is, I guess, sort of to to close out this hour-long segment that we've been talking about. That was probably supposed to be, you know, around 20 or 30 minutes um for this discussion, just to sort of round it all out is that there are a lot of solutions that are being created using these tools, but they're boring. And that's where boring shows up, I think, more in your profit and loss statement, more so than, you know, I, you know, we wasted all of our token budget. I mean, your token budget, of course, is going to show up in your profit and loss statement, um, but the benefits of it won't. Uh, and so it's just weighing the pros and cons. And I think realizing, I think we're coming with the pendulum is swinging back to, you know, valuing the human judgment, valuing in person, um, and valuing creativity, and then, you know, kind of having a better idea that, you know, it's not all doom and gloom. They're not gonna take all of our jobs, they're not gonna send us into water reservoir droughts. Um, you know, there are modern day problems and require modern day solutions. And so you you you had just brought it up.

SPEAKER_00 48:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:18

But let's get into the next segment. That's orderful just raised $35 million. Uh, AI native EDI? Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:30

And API for EDI, that's also AI native. We said let's stack her up. No, I'm I'm really excited about this round, in particular because of the investors that are a part of it as well. So our friends over at Coke, the Coke Disruptive Technologies, and our continued friends over at New Road Capital um have backed us on this one. Um, and and big time with uh $35 million. And for everyone out there, Coke, I mean, you probably know Coke Industries pretty well. Um, I was talking about the other Coke later, but yes, Coke with a K. Um, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

Gotta specify which Coke.

SPEAKER_02 49:12

Yes, the few. Yeah, yeah, the big oil ones. Um, and and actually KBX, so Coke, uh Coke's logistics arm, has been one of uh a long time customer of Orderfuls, one of our first, to be honest with you, especially from the supply chain and logistics standpoint. Um, and and what's really great about this too is you know, Coke has from a commercial standpoint, there's gonna be a lot of really interesting um other investments and other platform connections that we'll make because of this. So I'm really excited for that. Um, strengthening our relationship even more so with um the N4 team over at Coke as well. In4 is an ERP that's owned by them. Um and then, of course, New Roads. Who doesn't know them? They've big investments, platform science, um, big relationships with transportation companies as well.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

Well, well, real real quick for for folks who don't know what EDI is, because I I read uh even in our show notes, I was sending you stuff about ELDs because my brain is still like kind of jet lagged where I was conflating ELDs with EDI. But for folks who don't know what EDI is, electronic document standard that was quietly run or that has quietly run global trade for over 40 years. Every purchase order, every shipment notice, every invoice between retailers and their suppliers and carriers, that's EDI. It's the least sexy, most load-bearing tech in freight. And uh yeah, or with the the new rays with orderful. And you we talked about this about a year ago, but for folks who who uh may not remember, may not have caught that episode, basically orderful, all of these, and and stop me if I'm wrong, but all of these different retailers have different ways of classifying their carriers, their shipments, their products, and things like that. And what Orderful does is that they have already worked with a lot of these retailers and they've templatized a lot of those different integrations. And so whenever you're looking to switch EDI partners, because I believe that uh the recurring contracts, if you sign with an EDI company, 96% of those companies stay with you. And that is a crazy, like in the in the SaaS sort of tech world, to have like less than 10% of your customer churn every year is insanity. And so EDI really is that that quiet technology that has been powering the logistics industry for you know the the last 40 years or so. Um, so orderful creates these templates so it makes it easier for retailers looking to make the jump to make the jump a lot quicker than probably a painful process that they maybe went through previously.

SPEAKER_02 51:57

100%. And and here's the thing, it's I mean, God, you sold that so well. Um yeah, like what we like to how we like to call kind of our our our prospects or customers here is like it's usually a leader and a follower situation. So a leader is one that creates those guidelines, a follower is one that's following those guidelines. So um from different perspectives, if you are a liquid death who is a customer of ours, you're likely following the guidelines of Target, Walmart, uh any store that you're in, right? Grocery stores, etc. Um, and then you also have the leaders, so like the targets, the Walmarts, the Coles, the all of those who are you know telling the items on their shelves how to send that information back and forth. And and another piece to that puzzle, too, that people don't always understand until uh they get hit with it when their full invoice isn't paid, is if those things are wrong, you get what's called a chargeback. Um, if those if that information comes over incompletely, uh there that is taken from your invoice. Uh so not only does it need to be correct um to avoid those situations, but you also need to be able to fight those situations, showing that those things are correct. Oh, I love this use of this case study. Oh my god, I'm so happy we put this out. Perfect timing for this, too. Um and and what's fascinating about it is you're absolutely right. I mean, actually, well, we'll talk about it in regards to the everyman jack situation. Everyman Jack is a company that's under uh the Carlisle group, they own a bunch of brands. Steve Fox became a new CFO of the company a few years ago, and uh they didn't like their their TMS. I think they're an SAP one, uh or sorry, their SOR system of record. Um, and also did not like their EDI provider, who I want to say was True Commerce. SBS and True Commerce are probably the ones we come up through the most. They're the largest SBS is publicly traded. We'll get into that later. Um, and so you're right, Blythe. It's it's very much I like to contribute it to oh wow, I'm gonna show my age on this one a little bit. I like to contribute to like your cable provider or your internet provider, right? You choose the one that you've heard of the most that you know is in your neighborhood, and you probably never move because even though you don't really love their service, you know, the service is gonna be shitty everywhere you go, per se. And so you just kind of stick with them and deal with the hard times, even though you absolutely hate it. As Steve puts it in there, it's kind of like dealing with the IRS, it's gonna suck no matter what, and that's how EDI's always kind of been treated. In our the legacy players out there, um, another thing that you don't realize unless you are probably working in the EDI or have signed uh EDI contracts before is that you're usually paying uh well, some will pay make you pay per transaction, which is kind of crazy. Uh which means as you scale, the bill goes up very fast. Uh we charge and and most modern will charge closer to like trading partners, but on top of that, they oftentimes will charge a managed service fee because, like you said, those guidelines change often, and sometimes they're sent the guideline changes are sent in email. Sometimes those emails go to spam. Sometimes those I'm not gonna lie to you. There's some people out there who send those guideline changes snail mail, like and I'm not gonna expose those guys because I know who they are, but they're bigger companies than you think they would be. Um, so you know that letter gets missing or something happens, your stuff breaks, you get charged. So, what these companies do is they they grow off of the fact that they they know you're gonna need them for that smaller fee that they're charging per transaction, but they also know that they're going that you're gonna pay an extra $15,000 on top of that to make to have us manage it, and that's the call out point that I'm really excited for because that is what Orful has always pointed to and said honestly is bullshit. And I think what's happening now is that people are realizing, oh, like I've literally was talking to someone the other day, someone we know very well, who was like, Listen, I want to talk to you guys because I don't want to pay this fee anymore. I we shouldn't be paying because that fee is sometimes like way bigger than what you're paying just for the EDI service. You might be paying like $2,000 a month, but then you're paying like $7,000 just to like make sure it doesn't break. It doesn't make sense, especially when it is something that can be managed by modern technology. Now it's gonna be hard for you to probably do that yourself, yeah. But you're gonna look at that ten thousand dollar invoice every day and say, that seems like a problem I'll try to figure out how to solve. And back to like the whole Coca-Cola point and everything, like, and and and how are people using AI appropriately? It's just like the lawyer situation, and and you can see it in SPS's stock because they have just collapsed because their shareholders get it. They're like, oh wow, like this extra fee, kind of like the billable hours that we've always you know had revenue off of, is going to go away. And instead of sitting back and saying, Hey, like let's kind of move forward with the times, which is hard to do for a company of that size, I'll be honest. Like, even if they wanted to do it, they're not gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 57:31

Yeah, that's the change, the change management aspect in uh this whole first hour of discussion is probably the biggest bottleneck.

SPEAKER_02 57:39

Yeah, like those people aren't gonna do it fast, but there are smaller players in this industry that, like I've recently heard, are now building themselves with different language models because they don't want people to be able to access. I know a logistics EDI provider that's very ERP specific. Uh, I'm gonna say it trimble. And if you're a trimble user, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. They actually don't even let you see your data because they don't want you to see it because they understand that you could probably that's the like how they're holding on to you, right? And if you move away from us, you lose all of that too. So you're right, they have this 96% hold on you because they make it harder to leave than anything else, and then we just we just don't believe in that as a company at orderful. Like we Eric has never believed in that, we don't believe in that. Everyone's moving towards this open source plug-and-play lifestyle experience that can happen and should happen in EDI. So we look at it from like the two aspects that we talked about earlier, right? Like with the whole like lawyer situation. There's there's this technical jump that you could say. Like, okay, we could use AI um to now read a partner's implementation guide, map fields, uh, catch anything that's ill ill formed, explain why maybe something was rejected. That's like the fast win we'll see. Now, the slow clock, the clock that I think that we've jumped on that other people are like avoiding is the extra fun stuff, the cold aspect, right? We talked about like, all right, I'm gonna sit back, or or if we look at the lawyer aspect or the aspect you're talking about, the knowledge. How do we now make money off the knowledge?

SPEAKER_01 59:27

Yeah, I was about to say, like, oh, how do you guys actually make money then?

SPEAKER_02 59:31

Yes, how do we make we do we do charge by trading partner? But now what we do is we have we've built which is mosaic that now fixes these extra things that really, really make uh that make that fee possible. So, what does that look like? So we can now fix onboarding checklists, like the the tasks that need to happen to onboard a new trading partner, and those tasks can take up to 90 days and often do with those providers. Um, so when someone like every man jack that you brought up is looking to switch systems and move over 57 trading partners within six months.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

Real quick, what do you mean by trading partners? Is that like a your carrier, your broker? What does that what is that?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:18

Uh all of the above, depending on who you are. So for like an every man jack, that's gonna be uh potentially like it could be actually suppliers for them. It could be the targets, the Walmart's, the Walgreens, uh C S C uh, CS CX, CSV or CVS, CVS, there we go. Uh it could be like the shelves, the company, the stores that they're at. Um, oftentimes, so like US Express is a customer of ours now. Um, so theirs is gonna be like uh they're the shippers, they're connected to the shippers' TMSs so they can tender over loads to them. Um, shippers are the same way, they'll they'll tender over um loads from like their logistics units. Uh, we call that I believe a series 400 or the transportation series. There's an 800 series, which is more like purchase orders. Look at me, verbiage. Um, but yeah, so when you hear like, okay, one trading partner could take 90 days, and you know you're an every man jack that needs to do 57. Okay, so you're telling me something that's gonna take like years to do. Um, that's awful. That's that's why that's why they never switch because they're like it's it's hard. And so we've used Mosaic to to fix all of that stuff. So we we now create onboarding checklists, and oftentimes, based off of information that we've already received, already know the steps that we need to take the moment you tell us who you're trading with. Um, the EDI teams who trust more of like the manual review over a model output, we've developed enriched more of that aspect into our models, too. Um also, like we said, the pricing models built around that, like you shouldn't need that anymore. That's how we bring cost savings right back to the customer. Um, so it's realizing like what you can do behind the scenes, um, and in particular for us, right, is like the guideline changes. So once we know from customer A that Walmart's changed to guideline, we don't have to change those guidelines for every single customer we work with. So they don't have to like worry about missing that Walmart information. We have that. Um, and it's it's just doing it for you behind the scenes to the point where, like, you know, it's it's fun because it's something that oftentimes our customers, especially the users, you know, like oftentimes an EDI, the person that's buying it is gonna be like a CFO or C level, but like the EDI analysts themselves will get our product and they're like, oh my goodness, because not only do we we often take like X12 and we put it into JSON, which is like hum, it's just a human readable uh for you. So you don't have to like have to figure out what the code per se is like trying to do. So that's a big part of it. But like what our our customers see when they log on is just like the human aspect that they might need to change, or the they just like the question, it's very much almost like a cloud experience where they might log on and say, like this is broken, is it A or B? You click A and now it's fixed. Where in other legacy models that is being done via email behind the scenes, you don't have any control over it. You're just like, okay, hold on, I guess so. If you needed reports on that, you'd have to wait for that too. We have reporting available for you. That stuff's easy to give out. So I think what's interesting is I think like if you asked us maybe even a couple years ago, like, have we met the market? Maybe not quite yet, but like I think we've now finally orderful met this market. We've raised this money, and now we can just execute on building those commercial relationships and building an even more intelligent product uh and and moving this industry forward to the point where I mean, at the end of the day, it's like we talked about the lawyer situation, those costs will come down. That that world will exist where you don't have to spend that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:29

Um, and you can actually versus the competitors that are, you know, you get a $15,000 invoice and you're you're thinking hard about well, what does this actually everybody is looking at their tech stacks and wondering like what makes sense and what doesn't. And I think when you get a bill like that, that is uh that it creates an incentive for somebody to look for a different solution.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:53

It really is crazy to me. And and honestly, sometimes it's like I'll be I've seen deal situations where it's like they are just like they are gonna they they want to handcuff you to them so bad that they will make even that transition awful. And that's what's awesome, is that we've we're even like building technology to avoid that experience, to avoid even when you want to leave, them making it hard for you to leave because there's certain numbers, there's certain ISA IDs, there's certain aspects that you might need to get from like a legacy provider that you've been with for 10 years, but they're not gonna they're gonna wait four weeks to send you that info, right? Likely from how we can consume your data, and that's like the that's the secret sauce I will tell you on air. Uh that what we're doing there, I think is what's really gonna change the game. I mean, we are like I'll openly say this because I I mean if we're talking we're talking about manifest earlier on this for sure by next manifest. Um honestly, I think I'll I'll be able to showcase this at events no later than like September. Oh well. Is we'll get to a point where you can drop your uh training partner agreement like in a drop box, we'll tell you, hey, come back to us tomorrow, come back to our booth tomorrow, we'll show you that you're set up. Like and and I'll openly say this because I'm telling people this as well. There are some ERPs that we are 100% onboarding people in 48 hours, so it's like in and what I'm talking about in a world where that person has been told by legacy providers that it will be two months, like we it will be ready to go in 48 hours. So um, I get really excited when I see stuff like that because I know we're taking a lot of the headache out of EDI, and I'm not it's not so much that like we want to make it sexy, like it's we want that plaid experience that I've talked to you about where it's just like you know that you could switch ERPs, you know that you could move systems, you know that you could add a trading partner at any moment. But do not want to, yeah, and well, and it's not gonna be a headache, and you're I think what's really fun is like you know, we are just at an event uh called Summer Fancy Food in New York City, and it's an event where actually if you like food. Go to this event. Your logistics something like food, figure out how to convince your manager to go to this event. Because there's not a lot of us tech people. There's only like a whole there's only like 10 of us there. Because I think we people just haven't figured it out.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:43

Oh, you're giving away the secret sauce. No, they're well, the eye companies are gonna show up.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:48

Yeah, exactly. No, they were there, they're just not as good, you know. Um but so at the event, the point of it is to you know, make your food, make your products. Retailers walk around, restaurants walk around, they test them, and the point is to hopefully put you on the shelves. So it's like a perfect trigger point for us because, like, for us, it's like awesome, did you have a good show? You did perfect. The first thing they're gonna ask you for is EDI. They probably don't even know what that is yet. Um, but you as a business, right, want to get on that shelf as fast as possible. This technical step is going to is going to kill you on making that happen in the timeline that you want. And so that's what I get excited for too is like we have a product called Web EDI that's more for like those businesses that just got their first trading partner. Maybe they don't have much of a technology stack, but it's the same thing, it gets you set up right away. You actually don't even need to talk to any of our sales reps. You can go on our site today, put in your credit card, and you'd be connected right now. Um, but it's like that's the experience we want people to have. It's like no matter how big your business is it is, they can make that switch right away with no problem.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:56

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna just ask, but you just answered it. It's just sounds like it as you were talking, it sounds like an enterprise solution. But if you templatize it and you're creating this level of efficiency that is what you're talking about, then it naturally will trickle down into you know the SBs of the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:14

Yes, a hundred percent. Yeah. We've got uh if you're a small business like and and looking one or two training partners, like go to our website today, you're gonna have a great time. It's so easy to use your I can use it, like you don't need to know what EDI is. Um, but now our job is to make that same exact experience for the enterprise level, and we are well on our way there.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:38

Well, that's awesome. I mean, I definitely from like a job security standpoint. It's like it it sounds especially from from having the these conversations with you and you know, your your your time previously at Freight Waves covering a variety of companies, and then now being able to go inside and and work for a company that you can use those media talents for. I mean, that's on like full display right here, where you're able to, you know, explain something that you know, I've worked in logistics for a long time and I've heard the phrase EDI, but I until we started having these conversations, I couldn't tell you what the hell it was. Um, but you know, here we are now understanding or having a full understanding, fuller, I guess I should say, of of what this quiet, you know, the notes called it, you know, the quiet technology that's been powering the logistics industry for 40 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:27

Yeah, and to the to like the every to the job aspect too, I want to touch on because we touch on that in the everyman jack case study we just put out too. Um, funny enough, uh, when we started that project, uh there was they're using a technology consultant to kind of help them guide them through that process. And at the time at Everyman Jack, Raina and James were working in the EDI um department. Uh, Raina actually does not work at Everyman Jack anymore. She now works for the consultant themselves, making more money, enjoying her life, doing you know, the same EDI aspect to a number of other custom companies as well. And James hasn't had to hire someone because of the efficiencies. And now, James, instead of worrying about mappings all day long, spends his time because this is the fun part. Now that you we've fixed your chargeback issue, now when you get chargebacks, now you know that you can fight them because you can prove that it wasn't sent over wrong. So now it's like James gets to now focus on the chargeback. There's so many different things that he can do now in his job, uh, in regards to automation and things of that nature with the EDI data, that it's like it's it's why I was like so I had so much fun doing this case study because one, they were like one of the first customers I got to work with when I started here. So I've seen them on board and go through like a full year of being a customer. They actually won us an award at NRF for that work as well. So shout out to Steve, he's the best. Um, but what I think is really cool is not only through that experience, we saw someone increase you know their livelihood in terms of what they're doing for their own family. And now James isn't stuck like dealing with mapping headaches all day that he absolutely hated. He can focus on bigger tasks that actually help the company make more money for the Carlisle group. Um, and can you know email chat with me whenever he wants to. So shout out Janet. Love you, my dad. The ROI is everywhere. Yeah, the ROI really is there, and so that's why even the whole like job thing I push back because if anything, it like allows them now to use that data to like improve their business in different ways.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:43

Yeah, no, that that all sounds like good stuff, and I I I think it's just one of the the hidden areas of logistics that doesn't get talked about a lot, but it, I mean, it's definitely especially from the landscape of what you the the jump is it, James, that you were just talking about, you know, he has a real dollar amount now that he can go back and it directly impacts the bottom line, and he can prove the value of his own job and prove the value of the technology investments that in the technology partners that he in the decision making that he, the human judgment that that he is being able to make, and he gets to reap the rewards. So um that's pretty cool that where it's like a modern day that that whole segment and orderful's take really, I guess, sort of bring a you know, I guess an extra exclamation point um for the value of like the the boring task of AI and how it's impacting and where human judgment really uh plays a role and shines brightly um for somebody like that. Not every lead is a good lead. CargoRecs helps companies get found faster by buyers who are already researching solutions in their category. So instead of shouting out into the void, your business can show up where the actual buying intent exists. Create your free profile and then upgrade when you're ready over at Cargorex.io.