Marie Hurst

This post is written by our friends at e2open. E2open is the connected supply chain software platform that enables the world’s largest companies to transform the way they make, move, and sell goods and services. Moving as one.™ Learn More: www.e2open.com.   Transportation teams feel pressure every day. Managing road, ocean, air, rail, and parcel means working across separate systems. When conditions change, teams scramble between tools, emails, and spreadsheets just to keep freight moving. Missed appointments, detention risk, tender fallout, and service failures are harder to avoid when execution lives in silos. A connected Transportation Management System (TMS) for shippers changes that model. Instead of managing each mode in isolation, transportation teams orchestrate execution across modes in one coordinated flow. Automated workflows handle routine decisions, multimodal transport data stays aligned, and planners focus on the exceptions that truly require human judgment. The result is faster response, fewer handoffs, and more confident execution when plans change.   Why “connected” logistics orchestration matters for modern shippers Most shippers didn’t design their transportation stack as a single system. Road, ocean, air, and parcel tools evolved separately, often from different vendors. That fragmentation shows up the moment disruptions hit, forcing teams to react…

Inside the reverse logistics education gap and the economic blind spot keeping it invisible Special Guest Blog Post written by Deborah Dull   Tony Sciarrotta has been asking the same question at industry conferences for years. As the Senior Director of Circularity and Reverse Logistics at the National Retail Federation, he knows what answer he’s going to get. But he keeps asking anyway. “Anybody in here go to school for returns management, reverse logistics, circularity? Any degrees in those fields the room?” It’s rare that anyone raises their hand. “That’s what’s wrong with our industry,” Sciarrotta told me at NRF Rev this January, the first conference under NRF’s new reverse logistics banner. “We still need to fix it.”   The Numbers That Should Make Headlines Here’s what makes reverse logistics so fascinating: the scale is staggering, but the infrastructure to support it needs to be stronger. According to the National Retail Federation, American retailers processed approximately $890 billion in returns in 2024 which is roughly 17% of all retail sales – and it’s higher for ecommerce. But that number almost certainly understates reality. “We have a fragmented industry,” Sciarrotta explained. “Where are all those returns going? It has to be…