From Disruption to Adaptation - Navigating Through the Impact of the Red Sea Crisis

All right, so as we are getting everybody on board, I'd like to again welcome all of you to this new webinar called From Disruption to Adaptation: Navigating Through the Impact of the Red Sea Crisis. This is again a webinar organized by the Global Supply Chain Council. My name is Max Henry. I'm going to be your host and moderator, and this webinar is organized in partnership and with the support of InfoNexus. Again, it's great to have you joining us. So with escalating everyday attack and no end in sight, the Red Sea crisis was— will continue to adversely impact the logistic operation of many shippers and 3PLs in substantial ways in 2024. This webinar will highlight the potential risk to the global supply chain and will explore how technology can help on both real-time visibility and dependable data. Today we're joined by 2 speakers. We have Adi Benko, who is the VP of Product Marketing and Strategy at Infor Nexus, and we also have Kass Brentjens, who is the Vice President for Infor Nexus for Asia Pacific and Japan. Adi will first take us through a quick 20-minute presentation, followed by some thoughts and feedback from Kass, And then we'll then start with our Q&A, and then we also welcome all your, all your questions. We really want to make this session very interactive, so please submit your questions at any time by clicking the Q&A button located at the bottom of your screen, and we will answer all your questions after the presentation. The webinar will again end 5 minutes before the end of the hour, so if you have another meeting or call at 11 AM Singapore, Hong Kong, you will be able to make it, so no worries. So first, I'd like to get started with Heidi and welcome Heidi with her presentation. So welcome, Heidi, go ahead.

Great, thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Thank you for everybody for joining today. All right, so let's get us going. And at any point, if, you know, there's any delay or something, please let me know. All right, so topics we're going to cover today, not necessarily in this order, but just to give you a sense, you know, what are we seeing? So what are the impacts that we've been seeing with the Red Sea crisis on supply chains? You know, we, you know, we're a supply chain business network. We work with a number of companies, shippers, 3PL forwarders, etc. So, you know, what are we hearing? What are they doing? How are they navigating this crisis that's going on? It's been going on since December. Also, just some of the things that we see at the network. as a network, some of the insights that we've noticed, which, you know, we manage— monitor things like what are the transit time increases and dwell and things like that. And then just, you know, how are companies managing and what types of capabilities do they need and what types of capabilities do we offer to help them navigate this current disruption? All right, so I'm going to get us started. And, you know, I have Cass on with me who, you know, we're just going to to kind of chime in together and kind of talking points here. Whoops. Actually, I'm gonna pause.

Should we start the poll?

Oh, sorry. What? Sorry. Should we start with the poll?

Yeah. Start the poll.

Yeah, sorry. Thank you. I got my pen.

So, Max, yeah, we've created 2 polls. So if you could open the polls and answer them. Max, are we ready for that?

Yeah. So do you have shipments, right?

Yep.

Yep.

Thank you.

Okay, let's do it. Do you see it?

If you go to the polls.

Okay, it's coming up now.

So if you have shipments inbound, outbound, that should go through or directly impacted Due to the Red Sea disruption. So anyone from the audience, do you have actual or have had actual shipments going through? And then of course, the second question is related to that.

Yeah, we can probably keep the second question after. Let's, let's go. So feel free to answer to that poll and then we'll look at those, those results, you know, a little bit later after the presentation. Perfect. Okay, go ahead, Heidi.

Great. So if I shut this off, we'll get the screen. All right, everybody sees my 4 boxes?

Yes.

Okay, great. Kind of restarting here. All right, so first, you know, what are some of the impacts we're seeing, right? So we continue to see longer lead times, right, from the rerouting. And this is just some of the network insights and You know, because we are a supply chain business network, has been managing global supply chains and international transportation for almost 25 years now. We have a significant amount of volume because we do manage supply chains for some of the world's largest shippers. So we do have a lot of volume on the network. So we are still observing that transit times are increasing, but in some cases, as you can see, some are coming down. Right, but still longer than normal due to the rerouting transit times. So some of the impacts we're seeing, increased transit times, right? But this one is to Europe. And the different lanes, this is all Asia to Europe. We do see some going down. One area that we in particular see that continues to increase, interestingly enough, is really— and these are just 3 lanes examples going to Rotterdam, and these were kind of the highest 3 lanes that we've been observing. And just to explain the lines a little more, You know, we started tracking in October before things going on over there, and then it continued to increase. And this is the dotted lines are estimated for March. So everything else, what actually happened was the actual transit time. And these are the updates that we're predicting in our platform with the information that when the actual arrivals will be. So you can see that going to Rotterdam, they continue to increase. And some others are getting a little bit of a decrease back down. And just another view is North America, same thing. We continue to see that increase, right? And, you know, we've been seeing increases anywhere from, you know, going to EMEA, 6 to 16 days. You know, if I'm looking at APAC going to New York, for instance, we're about 10 days. So still high transit time. So companies were still dealing with that and planning with that. And we'll talk more about, you know, how we're seeing companies Navigate that in a minute. Blank sailings have been up, so we've had a number of customers— how do we deal with that and get ahead of that? Now, it's not to the extent it was before, but they did have an increase when this all kicked up and the reroutes occurred. Those are going back down. And the other thing is, you know, we're seeing a lot of rates and surcharges, and I know, Cass, we were talking about that the other day, right? And what you've been seeing on that with companies and their contract rates. Kev, are you on?

Yeah, exactly. So what we've seen in the market is that customers are reviewing their contracts and also looking for tools to support that bid process to ensure that when they're dealing with all the carriers that they have the right agreements and the agreements including the flexible pricing in place. So we see a big attention from, from shippers to ensure that they have the right agreements with, with the carriers and the alternatives in place.

Yeah, because they are continuously seeing those rates. The other thing we've been seeing that's been interesting looking at the data, so we obviously got the transit times, but we've been monitoring increased well at the Asian transit transship ports. And that's due to, you know, a lot of it's due to the longer transit times coming back from origin and impacting supply chains. So there's a lot of ripple effects. So, you know, this started in December. Everybody's kind of been rerouting. And again, we'll talk about some things that we see companies doing, but definitely across the board, we're seeing the impacts. Now, you know, some of the good things, if we look at different ports and the ability to handle it, a lot of these ports have been modernized, so they're able to get things through faster versus some of the U.S. ports, certainly. But across the board, increased transit time, increased dwell times, which is impacting supply chains and some of the things that we'll continue to monitor on that end. As far as what we see companies doing to navigate this, this really varies on their supply chain. You know, some companies are just— obviously we've got it rerouting, right? We're not going through the Red Sea, so going through the Cape of Good Hope and just, you know, we're already dealing with ocean shipping, just allowing for that transit times. You know, really depends on where I have my DCs, what types of products I have. So some companies are just dealing with the impacts and applying the additional time for that and already having some buffers in there, right? So haven't really heard any impacts to customers. Some companies are rerouting. So if you think about North America, some companies are rerouting not around the Cape of Good Hope, but they're going and they're shifting to the West Coast and then taking things via rail or road getting to their other DCs, again depending on how their supply chains are set up. Now what we don't know is how that's going to start to impact the inland moves. We haven't seen that yet, but that is something to keep an eye on and just, you know, just showing a chart here on the right, you know, we are seeing that change. If we look at, for instance, the shipments going to Canada, we are seeing that the East Coast is going down and the West Coast is going up to account for that reroute. Again, things that companies are doing. Some companies are shipping air, so it really, really has been depending. on that company's particular supply chain. As other maneuvers, as I mentioned, you know, things like blank sailings, just trying to get on top of that and make sure and really monitor that so that way they can make sure they're making that next vessel. So it's kind of, you know, dealing with the new normal and the rerouted information. And constantly, you know, we have companies that are paying attention to that additional transit time data on the platform and what we're seeing as averages so they can factor that into planning. You know, how do I plan for it and when it'll actually be expected to arrive? I know, Cass, anything you'd like to add there?

No, all good. No, nothing to add. Yeah, sorry. Go ahead.

All right. So how do supply chain business networks help and what kind of capabilities do companies need? You know, one of this— I mean, one of the main things this has highlighted is the need for visibility and real-time visibility, right? So I need that live vessel tracking to basically at a moment's notice know where everything is in my supply chain. And it's in these maritime disruptions if I have anything in harm's way. So first and foremost is being able to quickly get to that information and make it— and just the visualization makes it so much easier, right? So here's a picture and we can see things moving through and we can see, you know, it's red there. They're late and I can see how many shipments and these are mine and I can go in and click, get to that information. And then from there, it's really about the impact. So real-time visibility is not enough. I have to know what the impact is to my supply chain. So I need to be able to quickly drill into the underlying transactions. What shipments are on there? What orders for what customers? What product? And for all of that, where's it headed? Do I have enough inventory, for instance? If it's something that I'm receiving, will I be delayed for a customer? How quickly can I make those decisions and see that information? So that's some of the capabilities that we offer for companies. And I'm gonna go in the system for a second and show you like at a click how quick that can be. The other thing is, and it just happened to be we released this at the exact time it was, I think the crisis hit— was it the 14th, 15th midweek? And that same weekend, we actually had just deployed new capabilities. So one of the things that we were releasing was, you know, due to things like the Panama Canal and the low water levels and the slow throughput and the Suez Canal issue before, we were putting in place what we call these critical transit point monitoring and started off with choke points. So what we don't want to have our customers do is constantly monitor and have to sit there every day and go, where's my stuff? Where's the vessel? Is it on time? And putting in these choke points so that way we're doing the monitoring for them. An alert when something goes in, managing it, the process as it goes through, and really then just automatically doing that so I can see if it went through or not. We're managing how much time it goes through, really to diminish the need for manual tracking. And we've deployed a number of these monitor zones or transit points around all these critical both choke points, whether Suez Canal, Panama Canal, and then also to help our companies navigate as they're doing this reroute disruption around the Red Sea with things like the Indian Ocean and could hope to make sure what is that transit time going through. So I think, you know, in the last few years, there's been a lot of new capabilities that have become available. with the live tracking, the AIS data, and the geofences and things like that. So we constantly have been rolling that out so our customers really can manage this as swiftly as possible, right? They need at their fingertips to know where my stuff is, is it late, is it impacted, etc. And Kass, you want to add anything there?

No, this is definitely— we see in the market a lot of interest for those monitored zones and Yeah, both Panama-related, if there are issues there, as well as Red Sea-related there. Additionally, that customer's asking now, hey, what, what at the moment of booking, knowing those choke points, what is the impact on that? And we are developing and continuously enhancing the predictive ETA capabilities to ensure that as early as booking, you already have an indication. what would be a realistic ETA for those shipments.

Exactly. When will it arrive, which is most important. All right, so actually I'm going to try to do a switch here and just go into— just show what I'm showing kind of live real quick. Let me just have it one second. Can I submit? Some reason I have the poll. Let me stop presenting. I'm going to switch, then we'll come back. All right, so. Okay.

Yes, I do. Yeah.

Good.

Yeah, we can see the screen here.

Okay. All right, so I'm in Control Center, which is our control tower, and I'm logged in as my user, which this is managing all my supply chain flows, all my orders, all my shipments in a single place, right? So at any point I can see what's running on time, what's late. I don't have to manage everything. It's automated by exception. And I have over here situations, whether I've late shipments, whether I've projected shortages. So that's really where I can focus my everyday problems versus constantly managing and sifting. And there's other capabilities here, go through in a moment. But, you know, if we think about what I just talked about, live vessel tracking and the Red Sea disruption, again, I know exactly where something is and I want to zoom in on my vessels. Now, right now, this is all the data is really— even though this is demo data, the vessels are live. So I don't— there's nothing going through there at the moment, and the ones we've selected for our demo. So just going to show you how quickly you can get from the vessel to the actual transactions and really what matters. Okay, so here I am. I'm going to select my different modes of live tracking. I'm going to select ocean, right? So I have these vessels right now, and I can see where they're going, and I can see this one. That's probably one I've rerouted. The colors are if they're on time or late. But again, if I want to see what's going on with this vessel, what's the impact of it being late? I can quickly see the vessel and the quantity that's on it. I can just add a click, it brings me everything into context. It's all that shipment information on it. In managing the shipments, it's not just a container level on a shipment, but what orders, what items. I can pull up this, drawer, and this is for this particular vessel, all the shipments that are on it, very quick high-level details on it, where it's going, when it's expected to arrive. Here the required delivery date is, in my example, March 11th. The outlook is April 10th. That's quite delayed, as you can see. And it has which orders, and this one, the way I have it designed is the lines, it actually has each individual product. Right, so depending on who's looking at it, someone transportation, I can— someone in planning, I could have customer service, anyone can look at it under knowing an order number, knowing a particular product number to know if this is something I want to manage an impact. I can get to the shipment details, the full underlying details of this click here, and that brings me to any other information that I want to get about the shipment. To make decisions brings all of it up, brings all of the history, the timeline. What's up with delay? Had a click, but I can also get to again from here. I can get from the shipment to the orders. And then also the different boxes here. So I could actually, if I was tracking inventory locations here, this inventory would actually take me to that. So again, I can just go there at a click versus having to get this information and go to another system, right? So let's say this particular item's very important on the shipment and I want to see what I can do about it. I can go ahead and collaborate directly with my 3PL. Right on the platform, right? So I already see it's that item. It's important. I know it's going to be late. Maybe I want to expedite and the shipment once received and I want to shift it going to rail versus truck. I mean truck versus rail. Or maybe I'm a supply chain planner and I want to look at this item and go see where else I have stuff and I can actually collaborate with those users directly in the platform. Right, it's critical item. I can write my descriptions, right? And then I can look for another organization. So I'll go ahead and I'm going to switch my folder and start having this conversation in the platform. It's critical and it assigns it to No. So again, just at a click, I get to the underlying details. I can see the information and I don't have to leave, and I can go on to the next one. Am I not sharing?

Not yet anymore.

Oh, okay, it stopped. Okay, so that was just kind of a moment, just a quick disruption teaser. Um, let me switch back screen.

So depending, I think, of your connection and the quality of your internet You might have not seen all of the screenshots, but we will anyway share the recording and you'll be able to see it in good quality during that replay.

So I have just, I guess, 2 more slides, but first I think we have a second poll question. You want to run that?

So we have a lot of questions, and so let me get started with maybe And I want to remind again everybody to, as much as you can, to please use the Q&A to push your question. I see that some people are also posing and asking questions in the chat. So let me— if you have a question on the chat and you haven't got any answer, please repeat and copy that in the Q&A. But let me start with a question from the Q&A. The first one is, so are the rates between Asia and Europe coming down?

No.

as the shipping lines better prepared and organized with the new routes in place? What do you see, Heidi or Kas, when it comes to rates?

Sorry, say that again, Max.

So if you look at the Q&A, this is the first question. Are the rates, are the rates of the shipping rates between Asia and Europe coming down now that the shipping lines are better prepared and organized with the new routes in place?

Yes, it's a mixed message at the moment. Some spot rates are coming down, although some carriers are still holding the prices high. So, and they're not really— in the contracting process, they're not yet going down that much in the bidding process. So, it is definitely very high at the moment, although there is some downwards pressure happening. That's what we've been seeing. In the, in the market.

Okay, so this is a question down. Let me move to the next one. Someone is asking, are some shipping lines more impacted than the others, I believe, with the attacks? Shall we work with those which are not linked with Israel in some ways? What is your recommendation for that?

Oh, Heidi, any thoughts?

Shipping lines. I mean, we've been monitoring. I mean, it's a good question. We haven't been looking at the actual carriers. We've been more the lanes, and some have certainly been impacted more than others. And so that one exactly. And I do think— I mean, I've at least heard, you know, who's been targeted and things like that. But it's been more for us as managing just the overall lane information. And there was a while, and actually my latest charts don't have it, that the times going certainly to Israel were pretty significant. We definitely, like I mentioned, are tracking the different lanes to different, like Europe and North America and the impacts there and just the overall lane time.

Yeah, and not everybody has contracts with everybody, so if you then go to Spain, Spot rates, you might not get the best rates either. And also, if you have your shipments via 3PL or via forwarder, they also might not have contracts with everybody. So it's often easier said than done changing carrier, but it's not always that flexible.

Is there some kind of a list of shipping lines where you should not be working or be careful when working? I mean, is there a blacklist that shippers can look at or no?

We don't, not that I'm aware of. They probably are just, yeah, you know.

All right, there's another question, uh, what I think is interesting. Uh, so someone's asking, saying, is vessel— you show us, I gave a vessel tracking which was very interesting— is this available to shippers or do you need to get a free PL to use that?

Nope, it's available to shippers. It's really a service on the platform managing your shipments on the platform.

Okay, and there's another kind of an extension to that question. 3PLs also have their own tracking and visibility tools. Why is Infonexus different from those tools that 3PLs and freight forwarders and shipping lines already offer to their clients?

Yeah, I mean, for a number of reasons. One, ours aggregates it across all the different 3PLs and carriers. And also, you know, we've been— you know, visibility is core to what we do and we're constantly innovating with the network and the information. So for instance, our ETAs are based on global network flows that we manage across all these volumes and all these 3PLs and all these carriers. So really more accurate ETAs because we have all that great data. There's so many different capabilities and tools with that, and it's really a supply chain platform. So you showed the example of it's a late shipment, but managing the orders, what's the impact? Do I have inventory? It's a lot more data and insights and then the ability to collaborate. So if there's a problem and I want to do something about it, I can on the platform connect with my suppliers, I can connect with my 3PLs, etc., carriers or whatever to address it.

And many of the 3PLs are running Nexus as well to provide that service as well.

Okay, so you, so you might be actually using already Infor Nexus for your existing 3PL, right?

Yeah, correct.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And the way Nexus is different, I think there was a question as well, is shipment tracking is what we're talking about, but often you want to go much more upstream at order level and purchase order level. That is often where you can make a difference in your whole end-to-end supply chain. When the shipment has left the port, there's not that much you can do anymore. So that's why with Nexus, there's really the end-to-end from purchase order or before purchase order. That is often where you can manage an impact and have a more agile and higher velocity in your supply chain.

Okay, let's move on. We have a lot more questions and they keep coming in as we speak. So let's bring the next one. Do you have traffic analysis by vessel flags? We are aware that Chinese vessels are less affected by attacks in the Gulf.

That's actually interesting. We— no, we have not done that. No, I do not have that. That's something we should look at.

Cass?

No, exactly. We haven't done that. I'm not sure if we have the vessel flag in our database. Might be good to do some analysis. But I'm not sure if everybody still decides to go through the Red Sea or not, whatever your flag is.

Yeah, we're not— our customers are everyone, man. It's been—

All right, next question. Will you be talking about the Panama Canal and how is this making it harder to maneuver around the Red Sea situation?

I mean, before the Red Sea hit, companies were already Rerouting to avoid the Panama Canal. So it's added more time to the overall supply chain. So companies need to look at now, how do I avoid both? Right. And they're, and they're factoring that— it depends again on their supply chain. Either they're factoring that in and I'm still routing it through to North America and East Coast, or I'm— if I'm going from Asia, I'm going to West Coast and going across. So it really We're seeing it's just depending on the customer supply chain and making decisions on what's best from a cost and timing standpoint for them.

But some of the technologies used to deal with the situation, like the new capabilities about monitored zones around the choke points, they're similar to Panama and Red Sea, right? Where you can set switches, set on an alert before the ship goes in or when the ship gets out, so you're at least aware I'll be alerted when the goods have come out of the Panama Canal. So you have a much better idea on your ETA.

Okay, let's move on to the next question. Do you actively monitor lead time for usual routes by your customer to alert them that they need to ship sooner? Good question.

So we, we provide the lead time analysis, right? So we are— our network insights are providing that analysis so they can actually plan, and what they're doing with it is they're looking at what are those lead times and how are they changing and how do I factor that into my planning system. Now what we alert them with is, as things go, our ETAs will tell you, like in my example, you're late, right? So what's my required date? And we take our ETA and actually turn it into, well, you're late, and give them those alerts.

So the Control Tower Control Center has a number of situations that it's continuously looking at AI-based monitoring those situations. And if you are too late, you get an alert. And also with the idea, hey, why didn't you ship sooner? Or you should try to ship sooner.

Okay. Just want to bring up the result of the first poll that we had just to show you the results. So the question is, do you have shipments inbound or outbound that should go through or are directly impacted due to the Red Sea disruptions? Most of the people have said yes. So that's not a surprise here. And maybe we'd like to bring up a second poll that we had and just get the feedback also from the others. So let me bring this up and you guys can respond to that. Hold on, just let me see. Okay, so The second poll is, what action have you taken to adapt your supply chain strategy to deal with this disruption? So you can feel free to respond. Ship goods earlier, change to air mode for transport, deal with delays, and others. And then if you have others, you can also comment in the chat if you want to. Okay, we're gonna get— let's see, we have a poll running, and then let's go back. You have a few minutes to answer them, and we can look at the results a little bit later on. Let's look at the other questions. So let me raise still more questions. Next question is, are there any insurance policies or coverage options that can help mitigate financial losses during disruptions?

Yeah, I don't know enough about that to answer that. I will tell you that we've had companies that are looking for more information to manage where the shipments are because their insurance policies are making sure they're not going through certain areas and they want to be able to track that information exactly. So it's different than that. I don't know. I would say no. Unfortunately, I don't have that information.

Okay, all right, let's move on to the next one. Thank you for, again, all those questions. There's still more coming in. Let's move to the next one. So this is the— has the cost inflation effects because of the crisis been mostly reflected already, or do we expect to see more of this in the next few quarters?

I mean, we're still— transit times are still longer, we're still rerouting, right? So to some extent, I would imagine it would stay right now as there's just more, you know, availability, things like that. But yeah.

Disruption will come with equipment. Disruption will come up when things start to loosen up. Disruption will go on for a while, and coming out of the situation, you have displaced equipment for a while also due to the longer lead time. So I think it, it's going to take a while before it is smooth sailing again.

Okay, thank you for your response.

Sorry, it'd be interesting to see too as things shift, you know, what other costs shift, like what's going to go on inland, right, in the ports, and if there's going to be more moving other modes, right? And if I'm— sorry, if I'm rerouting to other— to the other coasts and taking it across, right? What's going to happen with there? Is there enough, you know, am I going to be able to manage all my trucks? Is there going to be impact there as well?

Okay, again, I want to remind people, I see still some people asking questions in the chat. Please use the Q&A button to ask a question so we are able to read them and respond to them. in time. So let me bring that next question again. As a buyer-shipper, what are some examples of practical mitigation for such events?

Yeah, so I mean, first is being able to know exactly where your shipments are and your products are, right? So knowing immediately the impact and then seeing—

oops—

what the options are. And things to do. And again, practical depends, I think, on your supply chain, right? So, you know, for many companies that we see, I'm shipping ocean shipments from Asia going to, say, North America or Europe. It's really how do I better manage the time and add that extra time and make sure there's enough in my supply chain that I can still deliver my orders on time.

Then we've seen also that some have moved from ocean to air. If possible, and not all goods can be moved by air. We've seen that, but also that you need to have your, let's say, your infrastructure in place, that you have connections with your air forwarders, that you have consolidation centers in place. So we see that as well moving a bit from ocean to air.

Okay. All right, let's move on to the next question. So let me read that long one. Is this an imperative for supply chain to once again prioritize resilience and agility, leveraging diversification of supply carriers, collaborating on risk, selective inventory hedging, digitalization of visibility, and collaboration across the entire supply chain? Heidi?

Yes, absolutely. Yes, 100%. Yeah, and I think that's what I— top of mind for companies right now, resiliency is like one of the top things, right, that at every level companies are talking about. And a lot of it because things like this are top of mind at the moment, right? Absolutely. And it's to your point, whoever wrote this, um, you have— the key is you have to have a digital supply chain. So, you know, over the last few years we've heard a lot of companies have Wanted to accelerate digital transformation. It started a few years ago with pandemic and how do I navigate, manage my supply chain while the ongoing disruption and things we are continuing to go through. It's, you have, you absolutely have to do that. You have to know from, you know, start to finish, my orders, my products, my inventory, everything digitally.

And supply chains are still not fully digitized, so often companies let's start that journey on the digitization process to ensure that you have your contracts digitized, that you have your shipping instructions, your bill of lading digitized, that whole process with proper freight pay and audit processes, that whole end-to-end supply chain digitized. That's still a journey for many companies to get that in place. All that's mentioned there in the question Absolutely correct. And I think many companies have done pieces of it or silos, but not necessarily the end-to-end part of it.

In Asia, Kees, which strategy do you think is the most relevant right now if you had to pick between diversification and all these different things that has been mentioned in the question here?

I think starting that digitization journey And then you have to prioritize what is most relevant for you. Having a network in place, having connectivity to your forwarders and carriers in place, that is, I think, the starting point of the journey. You won't be able to do everything within one year, but starting the journey to get that fully digitized, and that helps you with the collaboration, that helps you with getting the real-time visibility, which is often the easier ones to achieve. And with that, you build in then the tactics to become more resilient.

Okay.

All right, let's move on to the next questions. And questions are still coming in, so there's no end to it. Europe exports to Asia and vice versa have been affected because of this Red Sea conflict. How can we future-proof our trade lines moving forward?

That's a great question. I think, you know, you have to be prepared for this because I think stuff like this is going to happen all the time. You know, it depends on what capabilities you have and how, you know, part of it is how you set up your supply chain and can you set up manufacturing and suppliers in other places. Otherwise, how much flexibility and agility can you put into your supply chain and be prepared to have to reroute and have, you know, inventory in the right place? So it's about that resiliency and agility is the last person asked.

And then of course, we are a technology provider, but also have immediately insights if there is a delay, because disruptions will continue to happen. As we see, if it's the Red Sea, if it's Panama, if it is something else. But being able to immediately impact— one of our customers showed to us to say, hey, he could see immediately when it was happening, which shipments are there, what's the value of the goods, what products are in the goods, and how does he ensure that his customers' product line, production lines are not not slowing down. They had to airdrop stuff in, but he could tell that within a few minutes by looking at a control tower. So having the tools in place as well to deal with the disruption at the next one that will happen, and the next one will happen, right?

Yeah, for sure. Okay, let's move on to the next questions. So what lessons can be learned from these disruptions to better prepare for And respond to future supply chain challenges or geopolitical events impacting maritime trade routes?

Yeah, I think that's a similar answer, right? Being resilient, have the tools in place to immediately act when they happen. You cannot predict the next one that will happen where, but having it digitized, that, that helps you with dealing with a lot of the high volumes that you typically are dealing with. And that also helps you to build in the resilience. You see where your weak spots are. I say, oh, I might need to have more carriers to deal with or more forwarders. I might need to have different routes. I might need to put up a different sourcing location to avoid certain choke points in the world. Yeah, so it's just looking at all those aspects, I would say.

And I think that getting back to the agility component and with the digital supply chain, there's so many different types of disruptions and how do you plan for each one. And part of it is kind of resetting up your supply chain. But as Cass was saying, but the other thing is I need to be— I have that flexibility that I can sense and respond to no matter what disruption it is, right? If there's a factory shutdown, how far in advance can I get ahead of it and what can I do about it, right? Where else do I have stock? Where else do I have a supplier? What do I have in motion? can I get out, right? Or if it's, you know, the Red Sea and things are getting rerouted, what can I do about it? And as quickly as possible. So I need to understand and see my entire supply chain, where I have inventory throughout my supply chain, where are the statuses of my orders, which orders are critical, all of that stuff. I need that in one place so I can— so I don't have to like go with multiple people, that phone tag of someone in the Red Sea and transportation's, here's the shipment, go figure out what orders, go figure out what items, what customers are impacted. You need to be able to see and make those decisions quickly and then see the alternatives, right? So if I'm going to be late, in the example he was talking about earlier, and I don't have enough stock to meet a customer order, where else do I have stock in the supply chain? Can I have a supplier ship more sooner? I can— I need to make those decisions to have that Okay, thank you.

All right, so let's move on to the next question. Any tip on how can we ensure that our contingency plans are up to date and effective in managing disruptions?

Yeah, it depends what the contingency plan is. But as you— if you want to move to air, if that is an option, Have your forwarders on the network, have contracts in place, have a collaboration process in place. If your contingency plan is going the same way, maybe go to rail, but rail from Asia to Europe is a bit difficult with the Russian sanctions. So some companies might be impacted by that. So that's not necessarily a very good alternative. You know, also that will be disrupted. Yeah, I think continuously monitoring your supply chain, understand what are critical aspects of it, having multiple contracts in place, having multiple routes in place, and multiple transportation modes in place, but also that sense and respond because you cannot predict the next disruption, but being able to respond fast, that is key as well. Obviously, legislation coming in all the time regarding wherever your products source from. Also, then are you able— if you have a very manual or let's say paper-based supply chain, you cannot track and trace your goods anymore. So you're not able to sense and respond. So if you want to send a response fast, I think digitization is the first step to get there.

Okay. All right, let's move on to the next question. We still have a few before we finish. And then I want to also want to thank Wayne, who was on the chat answering the other questions as well. So thank you very much, Wayne, for stepping in. And answering those, those questions. But let's, let's take the next one from the Q&A. Again, related to insurance, how are existing insurance policies protecting sea freight adequate for shipments caught, delayed, rerouted due to the Red Sea conflict? Do insurance companies have to revamp their coverage henceforth?

I'm not an expert on the insurance of Yeah, we don't.

That's actually not an area for us.

Probably a bit too technical for us, but thank you for the question. Yeah. And okay. All right. So next, let's take the next one. We had the Suez Canal crisis and now the Red Sea crisis. Both times, a lot of reactions have been quite reactive. Are you seeing any proactive actions being taken to prepare for future possible disruptions? Having multiple alternative routes on hand with known differences in cost and lead times which can be activated immediately. Do you think shippers are doing this?

Yeah, yeah, that's the air-ocean option. That, that's the very simple and easy one, having both options available, ocean and air. That will resolve many things besides the cost, but it will resolve the time, the availability of the goods, your service level to your customers. That's one of the most common, I think, actions that we see.

And even just the reroutes, right? And having— in that air, right, switching modes. But what, you know, what is my alternative, right, if I'm going to now switch going to the West Coast, right? Right, and all that, but I can see all the rates and all the times in a single place to help make decisions, right? Okay, then I can know which one to trigger. Yeah.

Okay, let's, uh, next question is, we're exploring sourcing and procurement, supply chain planning and inventory manufacturing on the Red Sea impact. Is there any idea how long it will be resolved?

Me.

It's, it's, I, yeah, I wouldn't let the decision depend on the Red Sea disruption because there will be a next disruption. If you look back the last 5 years, there have been disruptions all the time. Yeah, from, from carriers who caught fire to COVID to a port strike. So Red Sea and Panama issues, natural geopolitics, looking back the last 5 years, there weren't any kind of disruptions. Looking forward 5 years, most likely there will be a lot of disruptions coming our way that are very hard to predict. So I would not let the decision depend on when is the Red Sea issue resolved. I would depend more like, hey, let's build a resilient supply chain. Let's be ready for the next And have a sense and response strategy in place, whatever comes to us.

Yeah, I would say, I mean, the companies that have the visibility in the control tower have been able to navigate each one of those, right? And, you know, basically even ahead of their competitors and others because they were able to— what orders, what customers are impacted, where else do I have inventory, what else I can do. very quickly and organize their supply chain. And because it is a network platform, you know, collaborate with the 3PLs, everybody's looking at the same information so you can make better decisions on what you need to do to sense and respond.

Yeah, I just wanted to add also that, you know, as number of conflicts continue and increase, obviously terrorist groups and, you know, people at war know how important those shipping lines are for global supply chains. So I think those, you know, those shipping lines will continue to be the main focus of attacks in the next few years. So, you know, probably, you know, logistics is becoming also a hot topic for them and they want to get a hold of them.

Yeah, but yeah, even, even if one container falls off a carrier, off a vessel, that, that could be a disaster for some companies because you might lose your customer. So It is not necessarily only the big disruptions. Also, the small disruptions can be very impactful for companies.

Okay, next question. Lines are now providing an option to move shipments till Jebel Ali, move by road to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, and carry on with shipping to Europe. Has anyone used this routine? Me, not yet. Any comments on this? Yeah, there seems to be some new road transportation provider for the Middle East, which you take gas?

I think those tactics have always been in place, right? Even combining air and ocean, those are options being offered. So here, a combination ocean-road, ocean-air, water— absolutely, those will come up. And with the right disruption, they have become very viable options. Absolutely, yeah. I have not seen it, one of our customers, in detail yet, to be honest. But yeah, I've seen all kinds of combinations that do make sense for the right disruption.

Okay, all right. Next question is, there are recent increases in trends of Southeast Asia sea shipments changing to air. Any insights on what's causing this trend?

I have to guess, but I'm guessing that ocean is extremely disruptive at the moment. There has been air capacity become available and probably cost for that has come down a bit from, let's say, 1 or 2 years ago. So I think those 2 combinations, and then with where you have to deliver your goods to your customer, whatever it takes. it becomes a viable option. So I think that that combination where, hey, ocean is very disruptive and pricing went through the roof again, while at the same time maybe air pricing came down a bit with the available— with the increase in availability of capacity. I think that combination, you see those trends then happening.

Okay, thank you. Let's move on to the next one. Do you predict that the more recent level of disruption— COVID, freight rates, Panama, Red Sea— Or similar to global supply chain will become the new norm? And if so, how do we prepare, plan, and manage?

And I think this is where we say we are in the new norm. It is the new norm, right? I mean, we've been dealing with disruption for years and it's always something. And I feel like every, you know, in supply chain you're working on one, you just got done with one and there's another. So it definitely could be the norm. And I think that's what we're saying. How do you I mean, there's a number of things. So the upfront network design, right? So where are my suppliers located? What are my route options? And then having that all in a digital way so that way when something occurs, I can see the status of my supply chain and then quickly take action on what to do based on understanding what the best thing to do is, right? Depending on what the disruption is. what's the impact? And then what are my choices, right? Do I want to— if it's urgent product, do I need to switch it via, you know, ocean to air? Can I transfer stock from somewhere else? Can I just add orders or reroute? I just— I can make all those decisions if I have done it digital way. But everyone needs to be able to make those decisions and make the most intelligent decisions too, right? So I think, again, having it digital in a way that you can have better insights More analytics insights, more predictive insights to help your users not spend all their time analyzing what decision to make, right? And then taking time.

And these disruptions do not— or dealing with these disruptions does not start and end with shipping. Dealing with these disruptions starts with your supplier relationship. When does the purchase order happen? Is that fully controlled? Is that fully managed? If a next disruption happens, do you know what is the status of your purchase order? Forget the shipments. What's the status of all your purchase orders that you have placed? What's the status? What's the progress? What has been planned and booked and shipped? It is not only the shipments that are causing the disruption. It is managing that whole end-to-end process much more upstream as well.

Okay, all right, so we are running out of time. Maybe we'll take one final question before we wrap up this session. I'll take probably this one, which is interesting. What's your take? Should we consider establishing a dedicated crisis management team to oversee disruption response efforts?

My initial thought is this is how part of supply chain management today And like it needs to be factored into how you manage everything now, right? That flexibility is, you know, I think before everything was kind of, and it still needs to be war room and reacting to it, but I think a lot of it is as part of managing, you know, supply chains, you do need a cross-functional team, right? And I think that's another thing is, you know, breaking down the silos. So running supply chains as supply chains where everyone's sharing the same information, supply chain planning and transportation where everyone's seeing that so that when something happens, you're easy— more easily to collaborate and make decisions, and it doesn't really have to be, you know, the crisis team. It's just where— that's how we run our supply chains when it runs good or everyday delays or disruption. I don't know, Cass?

Yeah, I absolutely agree. This is— oh yeah, it's almost like business as usual. So It is not a special crisis team. I think it should be part of the full organization because it is supply chain management is often dealing with the disruption and dealing with any unknown that that's coming your way, and you cannot build a special team for the Red Sea crisis because the next tomorrow your container falls off a vessel, and then next week a carrier. catch fires, fire out. So there will— you cannot have a crisis team only dealing with that. I think that should be business as usual and then part of your standard business practice.

Okay, so with that, I want to thank you again for your insights. I just wanted to bring up— I think you have an offer, Kaj. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more of that offer for those participants.

Yeah, happy to do. So Heidi demonstrated demonstrated the Control Center. It was— I was struggling to see it. It was not really sharp. It was a high resolution, and therefore I think my internet was not fast enough. So please send us your name, and we will either send you a high-quality video that you can look through it, or we're also happy to demonstrate it live to you and make it more applicable to you. So please register on the offer. And then we will definitely send you a video or you can— we will do a live demonstration for you.

Yeah, you can just click on that free demo on that pop-up that you see on your screen. But in any case, you know, the Infonix team will be following up and offer you, you know, a link where you can book a demo directly with the team. Okay. So again, thank you very much. I want to thank you for— it was a fantastic session with lots of questions. So clearly it's a hot topic and people are interested. I want again to, you know, thank you, Heidi and Cass, for being with us today. I also want to have a special thanks to Wayne for stepping in and helping us on the chat questions, and there were quite a number of them as well. So thank you, Wayne, for being with us and supporting us. Like I would say, this session is entirely recorded. So if you missed some of it or if you want to rewatch it, and as Cassie said, if you want to watch again the demo that has been introduced by Heidi, you'll be able to do so. So thanks again for your time. We'll be in touch and we look forward again to see you next time.

Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

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