Data Offers New Route to Profitability for Logistics Firms

With today’s supply chain complexities and economic pressures, shippers need to know where their goods are, how they’re getting to where they’re going and what options the shipper has available to them to ensure everything gets there at the right time and right price.

“As the supply chain continues to be disrupted, it’s never been more important for customers to have better visibility, better transparency and more flexibility,” ArcBest CEO Judy R. McReynolds said Friday (July 29) during the supply chain logistics firm’s quarterly earnings call.

ArcBest reported it earned record financial results during the quarter that was marked by market volatility and uncertainty, with revenue growth of 47%.

Focusing on Innovation

New technology, the resulting data and the use of that data to boost efficiency and serve customers contributed to that growth, executives said during the call.

“Our revenue growth was driven by increasing demand across our business line and our breadth of integrated solutions that make it easy for customers to choose ArcBest,” McReynolds said. “At the core of our business and strategy is a focus on technology and innovation investment and, importantly, the development of our people.”

Customers need flexibility in their supply chains, McReynolds said, adding that ArcBest meets this need by offering solutions that enable them to use any mode of transportation without switching providers.

“Customers continue to share positive feedback that our mode-agnostic approach is an important differentiator that helps them keep their supply chains running,” she said.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

Keeping technology up-to-date and ahead of customers’ needs is another necessity. With data capture and reported by technology, ArcBest can identify problems and develop solutions that save its customers time and money and earn the company more business, McReynolds said.

“The world is changing faster than ever, and we are working hard to ensure our investments in technology and innovation stay ahead of those changes both with the way we work and the way our customers use our solutions.”

Investment in technology also helps solve another problem — the current labor shortages and competition for talent that are happening across industries. The metric of success here is employees’ length of service with a company, and ArcBest reports the average combined service of its employees is about 10 years.

“Our tools, training and technology enable employees to do their jobs more effectively, easier and faster,” McReynolds said.

Boosting Productivity

During the call, executives reported ArcBest has made significant enhancements to software used at its distribution centers and has modified its mobile platforms. In some cases, it is having customers pilot new software along with the company to evaluate it.

“We are really looking forward to what we are going to see later this quarter and this year to really solidify the benefits from that,” McReynolds said.

One recent example of margin improvements enabled by technology has to do with optimizing the city routes driven by trucks that ArcBest has deployed, as the company has been doing in a current pilot project.

“One of our distribution centers in Atlanta really benefited from this route optimization being put in place and saw an improvement in their street productivity that was over 10%,” McReynolds said. “What you also saw from that facility was greater ability to grow because of the efficiency that was gained.”