The expo hall at Trimble’s 2022 Insight Tech Conference in Orlando was covered with transportation technology providers, many of which have integration partnerships with the company. But perhaps more notable was some of Trimble’s competitors on the floor.
The main theme across the many sessions at Trimble this year was connecting via the cloud across competitive lines.
“Everybody understands (the cloud) is where the world is going. I think it took a while for everybody to believe that, but I believe transportation is there now, and they’re starting to realize they’re never going to be able to integrate this data and workflows until they get there,” said James Langley, senior vice president of Trimble Transportation. “What everybody wants is that truly integrated experience to be able to say it’s not about a TMS, telematics, maps; it’s about what the dispatcher needs to be more efficient. I don’t really care what applications it touches. I care about the workflow for that user to have a more efficient set of capabilities to have more actionable intelligence at my fingertips.”
The company’s focus during the event was on empowering and enabling carriers, shippers and brokers to work better together by creating an ecosystem for all transportation stakeholders to be more connected and support more productivity and sustainability across the supply chain that has been incapacitated since shortly after the pandemic began.
The goal of Trimble’s Connect and Scale 2025 strategy is leveraging the cloud via its recent partnership with Microsoft to connect data beyond the carrier side to the entirety of the supply chain, which Langley said still benefits carriers.
“We’re building from our carrier-centric base, and you have to expand into the greater supply chain to solve their problems,” he said. “Carriers only have visibility into so much freight demand. The more you get connected, the more you gain visibility. The average carrier today is planning for today and tomorrow maybe …
“Imagine trying to optimize that every day. But what if you had the market intelligence, because you can see into the shipper demand and be connected to get two days out, how much more efficient would you get in your holistic planning solution if you could see what freight is going to look like 48 hours from now instead of [only] tomorrow?”
