Product Management in Supply Chain with Hardik Chawla

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In this episode, Hardik Chawla, Senior Product Manager, joins Host Brian Glick, CEO of Chain.io, to discuss:

• The role of product management in supply chain
• Building effective vendor relationships through technology
• Real-time supply chain visibility
• Making data-driven decisions with emerging tech
• Creating user-centric solutions for suppliers
• The future of supply chain innovation

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Brian Glick: Welcome to Supply Chain Connections. I'm Brian Glick, founder and CEO of Chain.io. On this episode, we're going to speak with Hardik Chawla, who is a product manager for Supply Chain at Amazon. Uh, in case you're unaware, Amazon is a small e-commerce retailer based out of the Pacific Northwest, but we'll hear more about them in a moment.

[00:00:21] Really enjoyed, in particular on this episode, bringing the perspective of what is product management and what does it mean as a company that has a two sided marketplace to teach and to work with your suppliers as customers to build those relationships, whether that's with direct product suppliers or logistics service providers, and really bring in that perspective of product management for the thing that doesn't actually face your end customer.

[00:00:50] So I hope you enjoy the episode and talk to you on the other side. Well, Hardik, welcome to the show.

[00:01:00] Hardik Chawla: Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me here.

[00:01:02] Let's start from the beginning. Tell us how you got into this, into supply chain and why you decided to stay in this part of the universe.

[00:01:09] Hardik Chawla: I'm originally from India and after I graduated, I started working with this company called ZS Associates, which was in the healthcare consulting space.

[00:01:17] So there I was dabbling with data science and operations. So really, at the start of my career for the first four years, I was quite deep into, like, data analytics operations and building solutions to help improve the healthcare supply chain of, like, thinking about how companies optimize the healthcare supply chain such that they can keep the cost down.

[00:01:35] And that sort of interested me in the space of operations in general. And then I chose to do my MBA at UCLA. I came to the US and did my MBA at UCLA. And during my MBA, I worked with this transportation provider in New Zealand who was trying to enter into the US supply chain industry. So they were, this was a sort of a manufacturer who used to help improvise how trailers work, like you can, how do you maximize the efficiency of a trailer?

[00:02:01] And that was a product that they wanted to venture into the US with. And that is where I was talking to one of these  top trailer manufacturers or transporters on the logistics side and other companies like Amazon as well to help figure out how we could help this company enter into the US and make a dent in transportation efficiency.

[00:02:23] So that was my first introduction to the US supply chain industry and after that, fortunately enough, I sort of got into Amazon where I chose a team around the supply chain industry. And now I have been working with Amazon for the last two and a half to three years in the supply chain optimization and technology org, which really focuses on how do we procure stuff from vendors and take care of the whole supply chain from vendor to Amazon fulfillment centers and also take care of the Amazon outbound side as well.

[00:02:57] So now I've been working with this industry for three years now, and overall, what has been really interesting to me has been the fact that there's always room to innovate here. Like on the outside, it may seem like as long as I'm getting my package in under one day. Everything is working perfectly fine, but there's always so much room for improvement.

[00:03:19] And we at Amazon are almost always thinking about like, what is that 10, 15 percent efficiency that I could drive more in my business to keep my costs down for vendors doing business with Amazon for my consumers and sort of keep on making the delay speeds even faster, even more efficient, right? So that is what has been very interesting to me so far.

[00:03:40] And before that, I did not really see supply chain as that hot sector, but looking closely, really seems that there's so much room for innovation here.

[00:03:49] Brian Glick: What is a product manager's job? Like, what do you actually do on a day to day basis as a product manager?

[00:03:57] Hardik Chawla: The product manager's job at Amazon is very varied.

[00:04:00] It cannot be described in one sentence. This is something I often get asked as well, right? Like, what is your job? So I would break it down into, let's say, what different roles I play, right? My role really starts with my customer is the vendor, right? So like, on one day I'm talking to a vendor understanding what pain points they have by doing business with Amazon?

[00:04:23] What kind of problems are they having? Are we placing the purchase orders to them in the right manner or not as per their requirements or not? Are they able to like ship confirmed products accurately or not? Are we seeing any issues? In receiving products for them, then, which we probably should not be seeing.

[00:04:41] So really understanding what the vendor pain points are when they're working with Amazon, like that's a major part of my work. Then I have to go back to my team and talk to experts in my team. There are experts who are taking care of how much products you need to purchase against stock managers, vendor managers, trying to understand that.

[00:04:58] Does this pain point really make sense? Or is this something that you're also seeing across different vendors or not? That is my customer research part of this business, like interviewing customers, serving customers, talking to the team to understand and validate those pain points, and then I have to go to my team, like engineering team and the UX team to figure out like what kind of tech product or, uh, like a UX solution or a brand new UI that I need to build to solve this thing.

[00:05:25] And then it's not that, Hey, I figured out one thing and I have to develop this whole new three year long product based on just that, right? I have to then convince people or the leadership that, Hey, this is something that's worth investing in. And this is the benefit that it will give not just Amazon, but also the vendors.

[00:05:44] So that means presenting some kind of a grand longterm vision with good short term tangible outcomes that needs to be presented to the leadership. And then we sort of go on this execution phase of getting this done. And in between that, like I'm talking to finance, legal, marketing, like people who are working closely with the vendors as well, and sort of helping all of them buy into this common vision that we have come up with and make sure that we're executing and meeting those targets.

[00:06:13] So a lot of stakeholder management, a lot of customer research, a lot of product development in terms of talking to different people and a whole lot of convincing as well of figuring out that this is the right problem to solve.

[00:06:25] Brian Glick: What do you think are the personality traits that are important to be successful in doing all of that?

[00:06:31] Like what makes you good at it?

[00:06:34] Hardik Chawla: I would say the first thing is empathy, right? So when you're talking to each vendor, the problems that each vendor faces are very different. For example, I was talking to a vendor that, even though people are talking about automation and seeing that everyone should be automating their processes.

[00:06:53] But they even had  in terms of the resources or like funding that they have to start automating stuff. Right. So they're interested in driving efficiencies, but maybe they just are lacking the guidance or that oversight. Whereas some other vendor is all big on automation and just wants to automate this full supply chain.

[00:07:12] So versus that empathy, where you realize that customer needs are very different and like one size will not fit all. Second is really like stakeholder management, right? So, because as a product manager, you're talking to several people who are tackling different parts of the problem.

[00:07:32] So then you have to understand that everyone will not understand the same language, so you have to manage their expectations accordingly and give them an ambitious vision that they can be bought into and said the last is really this fact that you have to be decisive. At this point, a product manager is a job, which does not really have an authority as such. Like I am not having a bunch of people reporting to me, but I am horizontally managing seven stakeholders.

[00:08:01] So then I have to be decisive because when I'm trying to drive the group to a conclusion, we need to be decisive and we cannot be stuck in a limbo. So sometimes you have to make tough choices and the onus lies on you as a product manager. So I would term this as like a one way door or two way door decision.

[00:08:18] So oftentimes you have to take a trade off about if this is a decision…. if it's a risky decision, do I have the time enough to get back to ground zero from it or not? Because that is what determines most of your life. You cannot be staggering or delaying stuff and you should really have the bias or action to get execution done fast and see results.

[00:08:41] So that I would say is the last three that's, again, one of the more important ones.

[00:08:45] Brian Glick: So that idea of one way door and two way door decisions, we use that internally at Chain. io as well. I know it's a very Amazon term, but I'm going to try to summarize it. Tell me if I get this right, that like, the idea is that if I'm making a decision that I can immediately turn around and go back through that door because the effort it takes to fix the consequences of a bad decision are low, then I don't need to invest inordinate amount of time and energy into the decision

[00:09:15] I was just making go, very rarely there’s a decision that you'll make where you can't walk back through that door, right? You've lit the building on fire on your way out. And those ones you do need to take time and be very careful. But a lot of companies and people use the one way door energy on two way door decisions. Is that, did I get that right?

[00:09:35]

[00:09:36] Hardik Chawla: Yeah, that's exactly right. So a lot of the time is like this identifying whether it's a two way door on a one way door. And if it's a two way door, just go with it. You will feel fast. You will see what happens. And if it's successful, it's a win-win for everyone. If it was a failure, you can just come back from that.

[00:09:53] Brian Glick: What do you do in the culture to make people comfortable, or I know you didn't obviously create Amazon, but like, what do you see in the culture that makes it comfortable for people to make those two way door decisions without feeling like everyone's just going to come down on them if it's wrong?

[00:10:12] Hardik Chawla: The one word that really describes the culture at Amazon really has been ownership.

[00:10:17] Right. So right up from the lowest level employee in the company, everyone has the ownership of how this product's charter looks like, and no one is micromanaging you. So that is where you have the agency to do a task. However, you wanted to get that done. So you have an outcome that you're driving towards and you have full agency of how to get that done.

[00:10:40] At the end of the day, people are sort of evaluating you on the basis of your outcome and not based on the micro choices that you may have made. So then you know that, Hey, if this fits what I want to achieve in the long run, I can make certain mistakes as long as I get to that objective. And even if I do not, no one is going to say that, Hey, why did you make that decision because we regard everyone who's working on a problem as the expert in that area.

[00:11:09] So we rely on them and then they have the ownership to do whatever they want to do. And that I would say is like, as far as an engineer goes as well, like even an engineer, when they're designing a document for the software solution, they can make whatever choices that they have to make. The manager never comes back to them and says, Hey, do this, not that.

[00:11:28] So that is where everyone has that ownership to do whatever they feel is the best fit. And if it fails, we think about how can we do it better the next time? Versus saying Hey, why did you fail? So that's the difference I mean.

[00:11:42] Brian Glick: So everything in supply chain has some level of tech and some level of business process or relationship management, you know, and there's almost nothing that's all one or all the other.

[00:11:55] Right. So when you're thinking day to day about solving problems, right, starting from that, okay, I got some customer feedback and I need to Make the pickup process at the PNG facility easier because they're complaining about X. How do you think about where new tech needs to come in, where it's just, Oh, the customer is just doing something wrong and I just need to show them an easier way.

[00:12:19] Like how do you integrate tech into your life?

[00:12:23] Hardik Chawla: I would say, ideally, that's where the role of product manager really comes in, right? So the engineer will say that, Hey, let's implement tech and this fancy new tech will solve all the world's problems. Whereas you know that the person who is working on the ground with the vendor knows that whether it's a problem, very specific to a vendor or not, or something very generic, right?

[00:12:43] Let's give the example of a pickup problem with a vendor, right? So let's say I'm getting some signal about the pickup problem that's happening with a vendor. The first scenario is for me to send people to work with the vendor closely to see where the issues are actually existing, right? Is it like how they are applying pallet labels or is it how they are sending us electronic documents or is it how just they are, the whole ERP system is configured.

[00:13:09] So firstly, just working very closely with that vendor because suppliers that I have seen for each vendor are very nuanced. So you have to really, especially for the big ones, right? You have to really work with them very closely on a one on one basis to see where the problem really lies. If you figure out that this signal of the problem is very generic and is quite broad in nature, that's where really the tech comes into play.

[00:13:35] And then we think about that, Hey, do I need to develop a tech solution for this or not? Like, for example, One case would be like Amazon fulfillment centers, right? So there is a lot of tech that we have internally, like, you know, how we scan labels automatically, how we have computer vision going on to scan labels on an incoming pallet, attach it to an incoming electronic document and get that received automated as much as possible.

[00:13:59] But we realize that that may not be the case for the vendor, right? So they may not be at the same technology curve. So then we have to make a product for these vendors in a way that it is able to be a hybrid product, right? So it is not something we want to develop for, want to enforce on any vendor.

[00:14:17] We want to make it in a way that everyone can use it. That is where this feedback, human feedback really feeds into how we develop and think about tech. And then what kind of best practices that I see at an Amazon FZ, I can make it more genetic for vendors to use such that most of the validations that we do internally at Amazon can be done by the vendor themselves.

[00:14:38] So that is how we think about tech. And we want to think about tech in a way that most of the hardware is probably, it's that it does not need to be very cost intensive for the vendor to implement and adopt. It should be easier for them to adopt. So as we're thinking about tech, we are thinking about the feedback, the human feedback plus.

[00:14:59] The signal, if I'm getting from different vendors or not, second is that, is this something that I have already figured out in Amazon that I could then give it to the vendor in a simplified manner? And third is like, is it going to be very costly for the vendor to implement? So those are the factors that we considered as we think about bringing tech into the supply chain.

[00:15:18] Brian Glick: So you actually just kind of touched on something that I've always found very interesting and that I think a lot of people in supply chain haven't quite gotten to yet, which is this idea of defining the word product, not only as the thing that we sell to people, but as the thing that people use, is a product, right?

[00:15:40] And when I look at how a lot of companies interact with their suppliers, you know, and since I come mainly from the international side, they're often overseas suppliers who you never have met in person once. There used to be 25 years ago when I started in that space, the person who had the money and was going to give the money to somebody else was the hammer and the other side was the nail.

[00:16:01] And so you would say I, as the U.S. based large multinational, I'm going to tell you the small factor in China that you have to use this website and I'm not going to invest any money in evaluating the U.I. of that website. I'm not going to invest in understanding whether it's useful or sitting next to you.

[00:16:21] I'm just going to buy this tool and then tough, right? Like I'm paying you. It's your problem. And I think this mentality that it benefits everyone to bring the same product thinking that's done on the consumer side to these B2B transactions is important. Maybe just go in a little bit of like, what is the real benefit of creating a good product for that supplier?

[00:16:48] Hardik Chawla: Yeah, that is true. I guess that's something that was valid until like. I would say I think four to five years ago as well. Right. So a lot changed after COVID. Before that, if it seemed most of the supply chains had been very great at the outbound side of things, like you said, the customer side of things.

[00:17:08] So having the best experience of the customers, having like. When you go to any consumer website or any e-com website, you have the best way of recommending products which are similarly sized or similar to your preferences, getting that shipped very fast to you. So it was all good on the outbound side, on the customer experience side for most companies.

[00:17:30] COVID was really the wake up call, the pandemic, because it really stressed upon the fact that supply chain resilience is as much important as just driving pure play GMS of your products. So you have to focus on having a resilient supply chain, having good vendor relationships, and having a good procure to pay workflow.

[00:17:50] And really treating your vendors and suppliers as tier one customers as well. So that wasn't a wake up call to a certain extent. And then this led to this sort of investment. So I say in this aspect as well, like I am then creating products which suit my vendor needs and not just giving them sort of a downtrodden product to use such that they are able to do business with them.

[00:18:18] me accurately, because what I would care for a vendor is that they are able to get the right orders from me. They are able to ship them accurately, and I'm able to receive them accurately. And then in doing so I am able to pay them on time because as long as I'm doing that, that is where I'm ensuring that I am getting a steady supply of inventory and having them use my business as much as possible, right?

[00:18:44] Or rely on me for business as much as possible. So that has really changed, I would say in the last few years, and that is something we see on ground as well when it comes to the decisions people are taking vendors are treated as those class one entities. And then we want to build products for them.

[00:19:01] Brian Glick: So I think one of the places I'm seeing this a lot, and it's, we actually just had somebody on the show, Lance Healy was talking about this, but you see it very transparently now in the US trucking market where truckers themselves and the truck brokers that support them are actively talking on LinkedIn about the quality of the product that is provided to the trucker when they make the delivery, right?

[00:19:28] Dwell time. What are the facilities available to the driver  while they're waiting, you know, like, you know, you see all these memes and posts online of the places that want to charge them for a cup of coffee or won't let them use the bathroom or, or all these things. But I think that's a really practical example of a very physical product, which is like thinking of the driver experience of who's doing the drop off at your distribution center.

[00:19:55] As someone who can choose to take that load or not take that load or can show up in a good mood or a bad mood, which can really affect productivity for everyone, right? You know, so I think that's a really interesting example that we had on a recent episode that should tie this together for people that like if you don't treat all of your suppliers and you know, whether that's your freight broker or the driver or the manufacturer or whoever it is

[00:20:23] well, there are enough markets now to sell elsewhere, but also it affects their productivity. It affects your data quality. If you have a crappy web form and I filled out enough purchase orders on, you know, Okay, 30 year old ERP web forms before where it takes 20 minutes to get through entering a purchase order.

[00:20:45] If you don't do those things well, you never get fired for it, but it really does affect the bottom line of the company in the aggregate across all of those behaviors. So let's talk about the tech. So what tech are you excited about? What's getting you all excited for the next couple of years?

[00:21:03] Hardik Chawla: So like you said, in this world where purchase orders are placed via web forms, automating this whole supply chain transaction flow with vendors. So that would mean using EDI, like which has been existing for the past few years. And then we'll see what we want to this API realm, like now with, so earlier, like you did not have,

[00:21:24] like, things like cloud computing or things like AWS or Google cloud existing as much right or prevalent as much across different suppliers. And now as we are seeing suppliers investing in these cloud computing technologies, there is no reason for people to be using web forms to fill out purchase orders or confirming orders.

[00:21:44] Or even using EDI, which is sort of a, I would say has quite a bit of pros in terms of it being an industry standard and being used quite widely by people, but mechanisms for people to do transactions more autonomously, more frequently and a much quicker latency in a way. That is something that will really improve the efficiency of how teams are structured both on the supplier side and the buyer side.

[00:22:10] So that is one. And the second is like that it is a foundational type that is being developed to improve transactions and operations. But then second is like, how do I make capacity aware or inventory aware ordering possible? So what kind of information do I then need to collect directly from the supplier ERP and WMS systems to make sure that, hey, I know that supplier one and distribution center X

[00:22:34] has like 15, 20 orders for me to procure from, and then I will place the order accordingly. And then how do I help them make the decision of shipping the product to me? Right? So making more capacity of an inventory of decisions, taking into account the supply capability is a big thing. And the third really is that oftentimes with these technologies, right?

[00:22:57] So we are, we have been making big decisions using ML. But a lot of the times where we needed to, but where the gap was that these decisions could not be explained to people. And that is where we are seeing generative AI coming into the play. Now I'm still making those complex decisions or even more complex decisions about who to procure inventory from, how do I receive products, how do I think about the defects that happen in the C process.

[00:23:24] Or how do they want to mitigate them? But now one of these was being captured in some fancy ML model, which was not explainable to a layman, and now generative AI is helping us bridge that gap. So that is where the third aspect is. You are improving upon these models that are developing about getting better at having efficiency in our supply chain.

[00:23:50] How do you make sure that people are able to like, make decisions based on that and are confident in doing so? So that is the third aspect that I'm most excited about in a way that will happen in supply chain.

[00:24:01] Brian Glick: So. A lot of these ideas when they get out into the world, they hit some very concrete realities of the capabilities of everyone else who's playing in this team sport, right?

[00:24:15] That we call supply chain. And a lot of what we do at Chain is, you know, like we work with a Fortune 100 company and we were collecting a lot of data from them. And a lot of it is we're interpreting spreadsheets because the supplier, the person in the other Fortune 100 company, doesn't have access to an IT resource, you know, at their warehouse in Malaysia.

[00:24:37] And so they just, they prefer to just email us a spreadsheet every day, right? And we know that spreadsheets coming out of SAP and it's going into someone else's SAP, but there's still going to be that gap, that spreadsheet in the middle. And one of the things we've been working on, and I'm going to give everyone a little peek behind the curtain because we haven't announced this or even decided to fund it yet, but is kind of a universal set of APIs for some of the freight forwarding activity.

[00:25:03] And what we've heard in our initial product feedback sessions with our customers is as freight forwarders, they are very concerned that their shipper customers are not going to know what to do with the API or not there yet. Obviously you work in the most tech forward supply chain on the planet, right?

[00:25:26] So a little bit of bias, but do you think when you go out and talk to the partners that you work with, is there a demand for you to be more API forward? Or do you feel like you're pulling the industry along with you?

[00:25:39] Hardik Chawla: I would say you really hit the nail there. And like people do recognize the value of investing in API.

[00:25:45] Companies have implemented infrastructure to consume APIs or have them into their systems and plugged into the ERPs. But, so if you come to me with an API, I have to, the value proposition for me to adopt that API has to be great because I have to then implement several other components along with it for people to use.

[00:26:07] For example, let's say I give an API to the end supplier about, let's say, pick up delays or the shipment disruptions. Then it's not like they can just, like the person who is shipping out the product can start using that API. Right? So they have,

[00:26:20] Brian Glick: They can't plug their brain directly to the API right?

[00:26:23] Hardik Chawla: They have to build a dashboard or some kind of an EIP plugin to help that person see that information on a computer screen.

[00:26:32] Right? So some investment is required and all of this was not possible using an EDI. So there is no probability EDI for some of this information that we want to convey by an API, right? So API is needed, but then API comes with a bit of infrastructure as well, which needs investment. And a company will only invest in that if they see

[00:26:53] a lot of incremental value in doing so.

[00:26:55] Brian Glick:  It's a lot of, and I think this gets to your earlier point, that there's a lot of stakeholders and human dynamics and financial dynamics that are actually much more important than the particular tech that they're built on top of. Yeah, we have to get right first, right?

[00:27:13] What are the incentives? And you look at one of the great, I'll call it, failures of the last 20 years was, you know, when, when Walmart had the impression that they were going to push RFID the same way they did the barcode and they didn't take into account the difference in the cost, right? Like adding a barcode to my product, took some product redesign of the label, adding an RFID at the time was going to cost me a dollar.

[00:27:39] Like, that's a, that's a big difference between redesign the label and, and a dollar per unit or, or whatever it was. But yeah, I really appreciate you bringing the perspective of that, you know, there's all these dynamics to this, that it's not just, you know, because I think a lot of people in this industry are still very afraid that when large companies come at them, it's, oh, no, no, no, just we can afford to do this tech, so you just have to deal with it.

[00:28:05] And that doesn't, that doesn't work in the real world. So where do you think the biggest opportunity is on this sort of inbound supply chain side, you know, for the industry, not necessarily for Amazon?

[00:28:18] Hardik Chawla: Yeah, I guess the biggest opportunity and where I'm seeing the most stuff happen is around supply chain visibility, right?

[00:28:27] So as freight is moving from the distribution centers to carriers, to the carrier sites, and then to a buyer, a lot can happen and a lot can go wrong. And that leads to a lot of churn. And that is where I'm seeing a lot of, in the current scenario, a lot of time being spent just like being reactive to the supply chain, right?

[00:28:52] So let's say I gave a purchase order to some supplier. They're shipping that stuff to me, but then I went and saw that I realized that, Hey, this is not matched with what was confirmed. And that leads to this whole layer of turn that, Hey, I did ship you that amount. But then you realize that, Hey, the carrier probably messed up in between, or Hey, the vendor actually had some theft that happened in between somewhere.

[00:29:14] And that leads to a lot of like shortages to a certain extent, which really affects the supplier and buyer relationship. A lot of that could be improved by real time supplies and visibility where I'm seeing companies like 544 doing quite great, right? So they are helping you track your inventory from start to finish.

[00:29:34] Thinking about things like where did this freight get split? Did I receive the right product or not? And much more like the trucker example that you're giving, right? If you go into that world where the trucker is actually giving you a photograph of the inventory that they have procured at each point, you're adding so much evidence in the whole supply chain.

[00:29:52] So that is where, by having supply chain visibility, like it's a very loaded term, but what you're really focusing on is clarity, evidence, and the ability to take proactive actions as much as possible. So that is where I see a lot of investment will go up in the next two or three years. And that really forms a baseline for anything that is supposed to come on top of it, right?

[00:30:16] So if I have good visibility, I can make good interventions. I can make better customer promises. I can make all those changes after that. But this real time supply chain visibility is really, I would say in a way, like, priority zero for me right now. And that's where I see most investments.

[00:30:33] Brian Glick: The way we talk about it internally at Chain is the hard thing that is not the fun thing is getting the facts right.

[00:30:45] That supply chain has got two layers. It's got, we call them execution and insights. And everyone always wants to jump to insights because it's cool and there's graphs and there's machine learning engines and there's all this fun stuff to do, you know, what was my CO2 impact and how can I optimize my spend and rate management and this and that and the other, but all of that is foundationally dependent.

[00:31:10] On having actual facts of what is actually happening at the right level of granularity and fast enough that they are meaningful as opposed to, what did I move three years ago and I just finally got it all correlated onto a spreadsheet, right? Yeah, that's actually a big, that resonates a lot with me personally because we believe that that fact collecting activity in most companies is underfunded and the insights side might be overfunded because you're building on a house of sand, right?

[00:31:45] Hardik Chawla: Yeah, that is where it's see, even if you look at how the different governance GS one and the NSI, like all those like bodies coming with different standards about how to think about like, this map in a way that coupling of the physical and electronic world. So as you say, and that's the, you're getting the facts, right?

[00:32:05] Right. So you may be having your like, it's like electronic transactions, but then there's a straight moment that's happening. And that's where all the disconnect happens. And the fundamental problem there is like, you have different entities here, like there's a vendor, there's a carrier, there is a buyer.

[00:32:21] All of them are generating quite a bit of data, but all of that is in different formats. So it's not easy to link it all together. And so we have these governing bodies like GS1 has the standard go on EPCIS.

[00:32:36] So what that is trying to tell you is that there's a coming up with a standardized way to measure what is coming, when is it coming, where is it coming, how is it coming, and then if it did not come, why did it fail, right? So the industry will quite benefit from having certain standards when it thinks about one of these products and a different granularities to have the similar mental model of how do I think about what, when and where of And if we do so like we are getting our facts right and then all the different fancy ML models can be developed on top of it.

[00:33:10] So I guess until a few years ago, people were jumping the gun because everyone had data analytics. Everyone could do like, I like this about, Hey, where are things going wrong, et cetera. But unless you get the facts right, you're not really fixing the root cause of the problem. So now we are going into that trend with different industry standards as well.

[00:33:28] Brian Glick: Well, as someone who founded a company solely to help a bunch of companies get their facts right, I should be paying you to have this interview. Because I appreciate the validation of our entire underlying last eight years of my life. So, take us out with something optimistic, something that you're excited about, something else that you think is cool in the world of supply chain that gets you out of bed in the morning, and we'll wrap up on that.

[00:33:55] Hardik Chawla: I guess the one thing that I am excited about in the supply chain overall and having worked in this space for like four years is the fact that no one is saying no to innovation right at this point. Everyone is on board and is interested in innovating. So we are no longer in that world where people are setting their own ways.

[00:34:15] People want to think about innovation. Of course, they are thinking about five constraints, like money, people, the cost to retrain people, et cetera. But we are seeing a resurgence in terms of people in supply chain being interested to like, think about the next big things. Like the trends are going towards, like, how do I use things like blockchain, build more transparency into the supply chain, have more ways to integrate AI into the supply chain.

[00:34:44] So all those things that are happening and everyone is interested in doing so. And that is something that I would say is the most optimistic factor right now for this industry. The industry continues to remain resilient and eager to adopt innovation to mitigate all of these challenges. That I would say is a silver lining and something that's quite motivating for everyone who is working on this piece.

[00:35:08] Brian Glick: As someone who's got about 20 years head start on you, I couldn't agree more that the culture in the business has changed and bringing people in who, like yourself, who bring that enthusiasm and that ability to apply a business sense to things is really, really welcome. And it's been so great chatting and thank you so much for being on the show.

[00:35:30] Thanks for having me.

[00:35:37] What a great conversation. Again, you can always find birds of a feather in this industry, and it's so great to hear people who really bring passion. Normally, I'd say the links are in the show notes, but I'm pretty sure you all know where to find Amazon. If you are having any trouble, I suggest just looking out your window.

[00:35:54] As far as Chain. io updates, we'll all be at TPM soon for those of you who are in the ocean freight industry and be sure to reach out and see us there and stay connected to us on LinkedIn and on the blog. Have a great rest of your day.