This week brought Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC.
While Apple holds many events for the consumer (think their iPhone and iPad launch events held every year), this is one aimed at the people who build software and applications for their ecosystem, Mac OS X (for Apple desktops) and iOS (for the aforementioned iPhones and iPads).
Every year brings new features and functionality for each, and this year brought some major changes to each that will change how users interact with their devices as well as open all kinds of new opportunities for their developers to create great new software features.
This made me stop and ask, how do we in logistics deliver innovation to our clients? Realizing that we don’t control the ecosystem; we have to create our own links and interfaces to truckers, railroads, warehouses, airlines and ocean carriers. Platforms exist to act as clearing houses for some (such as INTTRA), but much like the government working to create that “single window” through the Executive Order mandating the use of ITDS, so are logistics companies trying to figure out what they can do to bring something new to their clients and to woo a new group of others.
Go ahead, start that conference call from THIS one.
The focus isn’t always on saving money or cutting costs for people, it has to also be about the user experience and giving people a reason to remain loyal. Imagine if our telephones were the same metal and rotary dial behemoths mounted to walls decades ago; how would that have advanced communication? Or if the jet engine never developed and we were still flying in propeller aircraft?
Delivering new solutions and innovating are what gain and retain customers.
How can we do that, too?