The GoBolt team is driven by a shared mission to simplify logistics. From warehouse management to order fulfillment and last mile delivery, GoBolt orchestrates the logistics operations of its brand partners with precision and finesse. Ever wonder how GoBolt makes this logistics magic happen? Well, we’re giving you a peek behind the scenes of GoBolt’s logistics software and innovative technology!
Join us for this two-part conversation where we catch up with several of the people behind GoBolt’s cutting-edge logistics software and innovative technology: Heindrik Bernabe, GoBolt’s Co-founder and CTO; Aric Pasquill, Director of Product; and Lamya Ezzeldin, Senior Product Manager.
Together, they unveil GoBolt’s role in shaping the future of logistics software and the industry.
An industry of legacy providers and outdated logistics software and practices
Why is it important for GoBolt to stand out as a tech-forward 3PL?
Heindrik: There are three primary reasons. First, evolving customer expectations. Today’s customers expect fast, transparent, and convenient delivery experiences. But believe it or not, today’s traditional 3PLs don’t meet these expectations. For example, I ordered something from a Shopify Merchant recently, and I got my package 10 days later, where the expectation is one-to-two days. At GoBolt, we enable achieving that timeframe through technology.
The second one is operational efficiency. With logistics software and technology, you can automate a lot of delivery and warehouse tasks. All of this needs to be streamlined where technology can increase efficiency and ultimately provide cost savings across our network so we can pass those savings onto our brand partners.
The final part is sustainability. At GoBolt, we’re making a push to make last mile deliveries sustainable through electric vehicles. Because it’s new technology, we need to use our in-house-built routing algorithms and applications to create the standard for this new world of EV deliveries.
Logistics software & its role in sustainability
Will you explain how GoBolt integrates technology to meet its sustainability goals?
Aric: It’s multifaceted. For starters, the entire transportation side of our platform was built from the ground up with sustainability in mind. If you think about how we route deliveries and how we’re planning out our drivers’ days, we’re factoring in how far our EVs can travel, the payload of the deliveries routed to that vehicle and we’re balancing that to reduce emissions while the vehicles are on the road. Outside of that, we’re looking for other areas with opportunities to productize the sustainability experience, such as attempting to influence customer’s delivery window/date choices to support our density in order to reduce the number of vehicles on the road each day.
We’ve architected our platform, the inputs and outputs, and we take that data and turn it into insights. We have sustainability reporting and different data analytics on that front. Obviously, with an increasingly sustainable-focused customer base, a lot of the buying patterns and decisions right now are based on sustainability. We factor that into the customer experience. Sustainability sits at the foundation of a lot of our designs, platforms, and experiences.
The power of insights and logistics data
What role does data play in maintaining GoBolt’s competitive edge in logistics?
Aric: Data and data-driven decision making is the bedrock for us. How we design our products, how we do our routing, and how we optimize our performance is all data driven. We look at how merchants are using the products and what our data is telling us to improve the experience. It’s all with data-driven insights.
We’ve been talking a lot about transportation and routing. That’s all data based. How are we optimizing the routes? How are we sequencing? How are we getting our vehicles out onto the road to get packages to customers? All that data gets synthesized into insights for merchants.
We’re looking to provide them with insights on what their shoppers’ experience looks like, what their spend patterns look like, where there are opportunities to optimize, where their peak performance is, and where they’re down. It all comes through in data. When you ask about data and how that factors into GoBolt and how we provide our service to the merchants, it’s really everywhere. That’s part of the benefit of being a tech-enabled provider.
Let’s get into that a bit more. How does GoBolt utilize data analytics to help brands gain insights into their logistics trends?
Aric: So, we do this in a few ways. One of them is in terms of how we’re simulating different hypotheses, things like how we’re setting up the different day-to-day activities or where there’s opportunities to improve for merchants. In our early cycles with merchants, we work together to understand where their pain points are and where we can unlock solutions through data and analytics. That’s all part of the initial engagement and partnership that we run with merchants.
But, there’s other things that we do that I think are a little bit ahead of the curve. We’re using natural language models to generate insights from customer feedback. Obviously, there’s a ton of data that we’re getting from customers just with the sheer volume of deliveries that we’re doing. Using natural language, we can pull out insights and double down on areas where we have opportunities for improvement, which can differ depending on the type of service we are running and our merchants’ markets. Even in terms of spend patterns, we can offer different opportunities with mid-mile or with carriers to really reduce costs for the merchant.
It’s a balancing act of how can we optimize service, how can we reduce cost, and how can we get packages and boxes to customers at the end of the day with the expectations that they have and with the service level they’re expecting.
Can you elaborate on how GoBolt leverages predictive analytics and innovative technologies to optimize routing and other supply-chain decision-making processes?
Aric: Our routing and decision-making processes are all powered by different forecasting models and various sources of data. We’re running that through different statistical models and machine learning. It’s all in place to make sure we’re providing an optimized service for our merchants and their customers. With each route that we generate, we’re looking for how to get orders there the fastest, and we’re looking to make sure that we’re aligning to the customer’s expectations. Again, that’s all predictive models.
Our platform will actually flag issues in our planning. As we’re generating routes, as it’s getting sequenced, there’s actually opportunities within that experience where our platform is telling us there might be a problem. That it’s outside of that cluster of delivery that we’re expecting. Once again, that’s all predictive analytics.
Part of the benefit of being a tech-first organization and building our logistics software, and having innovation at the heart of our operation, is that we’re always testing and iterating. We’re always looking at new logistics software and technologies. We’re always refining how we do our routing. We’re always looking for different ways of really leaning into what’s the latest and greatest and making sure that we’re staying on the cutting edge of things. That’s not something I think some of our competitors can necessarily say. It really helps us to provide that competitive edge to our merchants and to their customers when partnering with them on the customer experience.
Watch: Aric Pasquill, GoBolt’s Director of Product, covers how GoBolt builds logistics software & technology to simplify logistics every day for brands and their shoppers.
How GoBolt’s logistics software and company culture are changing the industry
How else does GoBolt’s culture of agility, innovation, and sustainability differentiate it from traditional players in the industry?
Aric: In this industry, where there’s such an entrenched way of working, it was really ripe for an organization like ours to come along and change the pace to be more agile, nimble, and iterative. Putting sustainability in the center of everything is such a huge part of us, but also just being able to really push the status quo to try and differentiate ways of doing things.
I can say pretty confidently that some of the more traditional players in the industry don’t have the same luxury we have at GoBolt. Here, we’ll try things for a couple of days, see if it works, collect the data, and iterate from there to really move things forward at a much different pace than I think a lot of players in the industry can.
It’s really culminated in this culture of trying to fail fast and come out with really exciting things that we’re proud of. We strive to ensure things are built with quality, but we know how to do that. It’s not something we have to think about. We just build things that make sense.
Ready to see how GoBolt’s logistics software and innovative technology can improve your operations? Get in touch with us today.
Our conversation on GoBolt’s innovative (and simplified) approach to logistics continues with Senior Product Manager Lamya Ezzeldin delving into its real-time tracking and dynamic routing.
