Supply chain management and logistics are gaining popularity as the space for innovation and product development are drastically expanding in the global markets. It takes extreme care and accuracy to carry goods from one place to another. There are plenty of things to consider when it comes to managing a logistic business in a specific and structured way. Therefore, to make it simple, a perfect management platform must be incorporated.
As we know that smart management with high precision is an attribute of artificial intelligence and machine learning, it is disrupting the technology industry and helping us do smarter tasks that humans cannot, saving a lot of time. With the help of such technologies, companies need not worry about labor implementation, because the machines do all your work.
Many logistic management software companies provide structured and planned services, which help to reduce the functioning of complicated tasks and promotes a simplified workflow process. One prominent name in that list is Transmetrics, which provides a smart platform that delivers integrated multi-variate demand, supply, and positioning forecasts.
Its fully customizable system uses goal-oriented modules to optimize crucial aspects of the business. Empower the planning operations, reduce the tedious and mundane data processes, and provide the team with the time to work on what matters most – delivering service excellence.
“We have developed a unique method to improve data quality via the back-end, using data that is extracted from the systems of our clients. This is an AI-driven data quality framework, which gives reliable results at a relatively low cost with a one-time set-up effort,” says Asparuh Koev, CEO of Transmetrics.
Services on Demand
Transmetrics has developed a unique approach for analyzing, modeling, and predicting transport flows with very high accuracy. Its technology requires a rare combination of knowledge in multiple disciplines, something unique to Transmetrics. Their advantage comes from having strong experience in both the technical – Big Data and Predictive Analytics – and domain – Transport and Logistics – areas. Transmetrics cleanses the data on the fly, without in any way affecting the existing processes while running in parallel to the established operations.
As a state-of-the-art AI platform developed exclusively for the Supply Chain, Transmetrics optimizes transport planning and asset positioning by leveraging the power of predictive analytics and machine learning. Transmetrics combines the strengths of humans with those of AI, ensuring the highest operational benefits, and bringing logistics companies the next generation of Business Intelligence – one built on the synergy between humans and AI.
Empowering the Expertise
The company is now offering 4 products – Linehaul Planning, Asset Positioning, Last-mile Planning, and Maintenance Planning. These products have brought significant benefits to the top-tier logistics companies worldwide that have experienced an up to 25% reduction in transport costs while increasing their fleet utilization up to 14% and maintaining high service levels. On top of that, its products help logistics companies decrease their negative environmental impact by becoming more efficient.
Eminent Leader
Asparuh Koev is a successful serial entrepreneur with a proven record of building companies and leading them to success and currently he is a CEO and founder of Transmetrics. With 18 years of both technical and business background in the transport market and an extensive network within cargo transport companies, Asparuh’s multifaceted domain expertise and leadership, has been a solid basis of Transmetrics growth in the past 8 years.
Before starting Transmetrics, he had founded Sciant AG, a software outsourcing company in Sofia, Bulgaria. Under Asparuh’s guidance, the company grew to 350 employees and $7 million in revenue per year and eventually was acquired by VMWare and became VMWare Bulgaria.
Asparuh’s second company was a consultancy working exclusively with cargo transport companies. Its customers, IntelliCo Solutions have Fortune 500 clients delivering IT projects in the $1 million-$20 million range. All of this as well as the support of the talented and dedicated team helped Asparuh to bring Transmetrics where it is now.
Integrating the Technology
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning have changed BI solutions for the better. Now, organizations understand that their most asset is data, and to properly analyze vast data sets and drive actionable insights, ‘Business Intelligence’ turns to AI and ML technologies. For example, without these technologies, Transmetrics would not be able to drive accurate forecasts and offer optimization suggestions for its clients, since it simply would not have access to the calculating and analyzing power of AI and ML.
However, the next logical step for the development of these technologies is not closing them into ‘black boxes.’ AI can still miss the human factor or other unprecedented events when analyzing the data and produce incorrect or simply wrong conclusions that can hurt the business.
Asparuh says, “this is exactly, why we believe in transparent, explainable, and accessible AI at Transmetrics. Only by combining the domain expertise of a human and the calculating power of Artificial intelligence, organizations can achieve the biggest benefits. We call it Augmented Intelligence.”
Journey in the Pandemic
During covid, the company had seen an unprecedented growth of eCommerce and logistics in general, which also boosted the demand for Transmetrics solutions. Shipping volumes have increased across the global networks and while a lot of logistics service providers faced increasing revenues, it has also faced increasing inefficiencies in their operations. On top of that, the environmental protection laws are getting tougher, and organizations need to find solutions that can decrease its CO2 impact. Transmetrics solutions can help with both.
In the previous years, traveling to their client’s locations was a common practice, and they were spending a lot of time and resources to ensure the quality of the face-to-face meetings. However, the pandemic shortened geographical distances by making video conferencing more socially acceptable for B2B communication and decision making, helping Transmetrics enlarge its reach almost without traveling.
“We have also introduced a much friendlier work-from-home policy and invested in WFH setups for our employees. We have faced some challenges for sure, but the pandemic has been more generous in terms of opportunities for our business.” says Aspurah.
Outlook that Counts
While interviewing Asparuh we asked him what his advice would be to the budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the BI solutions market to which he said, “One of the most important things, in my opinion, is to find your niche. Chances are that you will be able to make a much bigger impact if you focus on a smaller group of people and their challenges.”
Generic AI platforms forget to take the intricacies of a certain industry or profession into account, which is exactly the reason why we focus solely on logistics. There are many challenges to tackle so get out there.” Concluded Asparuh.
The Road Ahead
Since the company was approaching the horizon of 2021 already, Asparuh explains how they managed to scale the operations in 2021 thus far. “By focusing on our core offerings and cutting the rest out. 2020 gave us the clarity of mind to take a hard look at ourselves and reconsider who we want to be. In 2021 we acted on that, by putting resources towards enhancing our core products and cutting others. It might hurt in the short term, but in the long run, we will be better off.”
Another interesting aspect is the ease with which the company could adapt to selling online, which Asparuh thought would be a bigger challenge initially. As he mentioned before, now, it can pitch and showcase its software online in an arguably better way than in real life because all participants can have the same experience when logging into an online meeting and see the shared screen. They long to meet people again and travel to meet their clients and see their operations, but in terms of day-to-day operations, online meetings were a real godsend for them.
Exhibiting Excellence
“Transmetrics is flexible and open to new ideas to which they respond very quickly. A main key differentiator for me is that, unlike other AI/big data companies, they understand the realities of the logistics industry. Transmetrics apply mathematics, statistics, and AI algorithms to create a product that makes sense to logistics experts, and which can be used in daily operations to benefit our business.” – Nicholas Minde, Senior Vice President Overland Germany at Kuehne + Nagel.
“We had been looking for a partner who could help us streamline our empty container flows for a long time. There are different IT solutions on the market, but we chose Transmetrics over other providers because they proved their technical expertise and demonstrated a deep knowledge of the logistics industry and container shipping, which is very difficult to find.” – Carlo Zaalberg, former Global Director Logistics at NileDutch; Currently COO at CARU Containers.