Читать книгу The Digital Transformation of Logistics - Группа авторов - Страница 36

As logistics companies upgrade core systems and storage mechanisms and open up new forms of connectivity options, the reality of submitting rates to a marketplace or having an externally facing quotation portal becomes more of a reality. Platforms will continue to gain attention and capture market share from the traditional service providers. Platforms are discussed in Margand and Heuck, Chapter 16, and in Sullivan, Wong, and Tang, Chapter 23. These marketplaces not only can scale and connect suppliers and buyers with the click of a mouse bypassing the traditional sales cycle, but they also offer instant quotes and the ability to book immediately as opposed to the traditional email‐and‐wait model (Riedl and Chan 2019). Marketplaces are gaining attention especially as they enable a low‐cost solution to direct selling entrants, like steamship lines Maersk and CMA, who now can open their digital sales channels and accelerate disintermediation.

Ironically, research has found that using the performance metric of return on assets (RoA), publicly traded companies in the United States have declined by at least 75% since 1965 (Hagel et al. 2016). This means that despite all the technological improvements that have happened in the past 50 years, companies still are not doing a great job of utilizing technology. Perhaps this could be explained by the lack of focus and the sheer complexity of a large organization. To start a digitalization journey, logistics companies need to invest in talent who have some understanding of logistics, the processes involved, and the integration bottlenecks between core systems that technology could potentially address.