Goods in Motion (GIM) is working relentlessly in providing logistics solutions to reputed firms all over the country to ensure efficiency and visibility in their supply chain ecosystem. In an interview with our Chief Technology Officer, Aunko Abdullah speaks about the aspirations and progress of GIM. The highlighted parts of that interview are given below:
Q. How much have enterprise logistics solutions and platforms evolved in the last 2-3 years? How has the pandemic affected the logistics sector of Bangladesh?
I believe we are witnessing the initial phase of a digital revolution in the enterprise logistics and supply-chain sector in Bangladesh.
All the critical players in the ecosystem (enterprise customers, transportation providers, agents, drivers etc.) are warming up to the idea of leveraging technology to increase efficiency, reliability and transparency in this sector.
The pandemic, although slowed down the transportation sector, has accelerated the adoption of technology platform. We are seeing significant growth over the last three months in demand of our services.
Q. How can digitization help the sector? Please tell us about the online logistics market place of Bangladesh
Like many other sectors, logistics sector can benefit tremendously from technology enablers by creating transparency and increasing efficiency.
The traditional model has been centered on small, local transportation hubs or agents. An organization would either have a pre-selected set of transportation providers or reach out to local hub to hire trucks.
Transportation providers would also rely on local hubs or agents to find a trip for his or her available trucks Obviously, the information sharing is partial and localized and transparency is low.
Our digital platform, in contrast, allows a customer to publish their transportation needs that instantly becomes available to all appropriate enrolled transportation providers. Multiple providers can bid on the trips and customer can choose the partner that best matches their needs.
Transportation providers get the full visibility of all available trips and can even get return trips for the trucks that might otherwise be harder to get.Both customers and transportation providers can track a trip throughout its lifecycle, from hiring the truck to finishing the trip and sending or receiving payments. The platform also provides efficient ways to challan and invoice management, payment etc.
The platform thus creates an online marketplace that provides transparently and efficiency to the marketplace.
Q. What is the role of Big Data in the logistics sector?
Data is the fuel that drives innovation and efficiency by providing insights.
A significant amount of data is generated by any digital logistics platform, and specifically our platform: our platform collects data on trips, trucks, locations and many other data points. As we enhance our platform, the information collection will only go up (e.g. Video Monitoring, Load/Unload monitoring, voice recording etc.).
Big data plays a critical role in managing and analyzing this data set and turning those analyses into actions.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and specifically Machine Learning (ML) relies heavily on availability of large data sets.
Big data analytics and machine learning can be leveraged to understand the demand patters, pricing trends and optimization, seasonality, route optimization, anomaly and many other things.
Q. Which industries would have benefited the most from your digital logistic solution?
Any industry with a need to transport goods would benefit from our platform. Construction, Poultry Feed, Food, Garments, LPG etc. have already benefited from our platform.
Q. What can we hope to see from GIM in the future?
We hope to expand our services horizontally to additional countries and regions and vertically to include other modes of transportation and other supply-chain segments.
We intend to leverage technology innovation to provide additional value to our stakeholders.
Source: Asian Age Online
