Reflections on Visibility 2018: We're Just Getting Started
It's been a few weeks since nearly 150 of the world's top shippers and supply chain leaders convened in Chicago for our Visibility 2018 user conference. I think anyone who attended would agree we packed quite a lot in a few days! With so much valuable content, insight and perspective being shared among the group, I’ve taken time to reflect on everything I heard and wanted to share some takeaways from our time together.
Learning, not selling. It's not lost on me or my FourKites team how tough it can be to take two or more days out of your busy lives for a conference. Our customers have made it clear that they don't want to be sold, but rather need real-world, practical information to help them take full advantage of the FourKites platform and ecosystem. So, we prioritized presentations from, and informal networking with, your peers, together with soliciting your feedback and collaboration on the FourKites platform roadmap.
Power of Collaboration. I began our meeting with what is becoming a common refrain, talking about the power and value of network effects for every player in this ecosystem—how every new shipper and every new carrier who joins and uses the platform, makes it that much more valuable for every other organization on the network. More users = richer data for benchmarking, analysis and insights to help you deliver more value to your respective businesses.
Many of you then expressed how critical it is that we don't just "participate," but that we collaborate. More specifically, several of you talked about the need to keep nurturing a collaborative culture—first, within FourKites so we stay customer-focused and collaborate with each of you, but also within the broader ecosystem so you can collaborate with each other. We saw the latter in action when we were together, as many of you sat at the same table with companies you compete with on a day-to-day basis, yet shared information and perspectives on how to solve common supply chain challenges.
Shared Focus on ROI. Ultimately, all of this platform participation and ecosystem collaboration should pay off, which leads me to my next big takeaway. Many of you told me that you want to move faster. You want to make sure you're learning everything you can about how to deploy and then leverage the FourKites platform so you can deliver more value back to your organizations. That's what this is fundamentally about—great return on your investment.
It's not the first time I've heard this feedback, but it did underscore for me how important it is that we help each other with the complex change management challenges that can arise when implementing new systems and processes. And so I'm happy to share that FourKites has invested in additional senior account directors in our customer success department. These new team members exist for one over-riding purpose—to help you get more value from the platform. They are currently being introduced to our network, so expect to hear more.
Customer-Driven Innovation. We are nowhere without your feedback. Participation and collaboration are fundamental to FourKites' roadmap, and breakthrough capabilities (Predictive Capacity Management being a great example) stem directly from you and your peers using the platform, sharing information and collaborating on how to derive value from visibility. Constant innovation and continuous improvement are core values here, and our close collaboration with customers is the driving force behind the more than 4,000 product enhancements we've rolled out since launching four years ago.
Bottom line, it's an exciting time and this group's energy is infectious. Rest assured, I am fully committed to helping this community learn, collaborate and innovate—via the platform itself as well as via our Visibility conferences and other events and programs where we have a chance to take advantage of the many brilliant people in this ecosystem. I am convinced that we are just getting started when it comes to tapping the huge potential value of supply chain visibility.