“I noticed a lot of forward-thinking around the optimization of freight and how you can enhance data drive better business decisions.”
Manifest 2024, the international showcase of supply chain & logistics technology, took place the first week in February in Las Vegas, Nevada. At the iconic Caesar’s Palace, more than 4,000 attendees from shippers, start-ups, supply chain executives, and more walked the show floor.
Manifest 2024 also marked a first-time milestone for Kleinschmidt as an exhibiting company and two employees: Vanessa Eldridge, Key Account Manager, and Jeff Korengold, Director of Sales Support. We checked in with them to get their thoughts and impressions on their first Manifest conference.
First Impressions and Trends
“I noticed a lot of forward-thinking around the optimization of freight and how you can enhance data and transparency to gain visibility within your organization’s infrastructure to drive better business decisions. Whether that is actual systems and tools or equipment, the focus is on how you can use data to become more efficient and find cost savings within your supply chain” Vanessa explains.
Manifest provides a wide focus on topics, and the agenda includes panels on utilizing the power of AI and the supply chain, enhancing supply chain assistance for non-profits like disaster relief organizations, as well educating the next generation of supply chain professionals.
In addition to the panels, Kleinschmidt was an exhibitor on the show floor. Vanessa and Jeff were able to connect with existing Kleinschmidt collaborators and prospective organizations who are considering Kleinschmidt to enhance integrations within their supply chain.
Through their conversations with everyone from food manufacturers to parcel shippers, the Kleinschmidt team walked away with several insights into top-of-mind topics. Such as tracking visibility, real-time pricing, Restful APIs, and more.
“There’s an anticipation,” Jeff notes, “that cross-border freight, particularly between the U.S. and Mexico is going to be exploding in the next few years based on conversations we had with international freight forwarders and systems integration organizations.”
Talking About Technology
APIs and data transparency were the key technology talking points at Manifest 2024. As Vanessa notes, “Open/RESTful APIs were a big topic as they encouraged the idea of sharing data so that everyone has visibility for better results with their overall operations. For example, a carrier shares their location, and sends updates, instead of someone finding out 2 days later that an order is behind.”
In addition to data sharing and transparency, having the staff, infrastructure, and overall support to implement these types of initiatives is a concern, especially as the use of new technology grows.
Connecting Legacy Solutions
“I had a conversation with an individual in the medical supply chain space who mentioned that a portion of the pharmaceutical laboratory supply chain was running on legacy systems. Another organization mentioned that getting their in-house data integration solutions working seamlessly could be difficult,” Jeff recalls.
“For an organization like Kleinschmidt,” Vanessa adds, “we offer the best of both worlds. We’ve recently had several successful API solution implementations that connected via EDI to API integrations. The flexibility of customized solutions allows Kleinschmidt to utilize data transparency between organizations while meeting partners integration needs.”
To dive more into Manifest, check out the show site here, or if you’d like to connect with Jeff/Vanessa, email us at solutions@kleinschmidtinc.com.
