FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Navigating Freight Market Volatility
DETAILS: Dan Lewis of Convoy discusses managing the ups and downs of the transportation markets.
SPEAKER: Lewis is Convoy’s CEO and co-founder.
Before joining Convoy, Lewis was Amazon’s general manager of novel shopping experiences, after working in product and data roles at Microsoft, Google, and several startups. Lewis began his career in supply chain and strategy consulting for Oliver Wyman, where he worked in operations in Europe, Latin America, and the United States.
LEWIS’ KEY QUOTES:
“It’s almost like trying to foresee the stock market,” he says of handling volatility. It’s really difficult to forecast what will happen. I’m leaning toward finding ways to hedge against volatility rather than trying to regulate it. Or, establish a business strategy and a capacity model that are built to react to changing market conditions, and optimize for that.”
On incorporating flexibility into the model: “When I initially started Convoy, I recall thinking, ‘We can foresee the market.'” And then I stopped thinking about it. Instead, I want to focus on structuring our entire organization to be reactive and flexible to what’s going on in the market in the short term, whether it’s weeks or months… and assist our customers through that.”
“Shippers have a duty to come up with a pretty tight budget and set budget,” he says of some supply chain budgets. That’s just how procurement works and how their CFOs expect things to turn out. I believe that schooling in this area may be a bit different as well.”
