“There’s a lot of employee churn. You know, one of the things over my recent years working with brokerages is I was really surprised to see how many users of our software I encountered, that it was their first job in logistics. And they were responsible for booking freight or selling freight. But the key point there is with that churn, the users often lack the time, the skill, the discipline to take advantage of the information that’s available to them to get the market insights that they need, or even to be able to interpret the market insights, to help them make those smarter decisions.”

– Dawn Salvucci-Fauvier, CEO, Greenscreens AI

Greg welcomes Dawn Salvucci-Favier, Chief Product Officer & Acting CEO of Greenscreens.ai. Dawn shares the dynamics of the Logistics Service Provider (LSP) market and what makes it such a challenge for Brokers, 3PLs to quote shipping lanes & value-added services in this fast-paced industry. Dawn & Greg discuss how companies can overcome inexperience, turnover, & data scarcity with real-time and easily accessible information to improve customer experience, process & profit. Listen UP!

Intro/Outro (00:00:03):

It’s time to wake up to tequila, sunrise, Greg white here. And I have spent my career starting leading, deploying, and investing in supply chain tech. So we take a shot at talk founders, execs investors and companies in this hot industry. If you want a taste of how tech startup growth and investment has done join for enough blinding tequila Sentra.

Greg White (00:00:31):

All right. Let’s bring in our guest, Dawn Salvucci. Did I say that right? I was trying to be too French. Wasn’t that The most interesting title I’ve ever introduced? Chief product officer and acting CEO at green screens AI. So Dawn is a product pro she’s been conscripted. It seems to be the CEO and is bringing green screens to market to help, uh, logistics service providers have some more intelligent solutions for the issues that they face day to day. Dawn, thank you for joining us.

Dawn Salvucci (00:01:08):

Great. Thanks for having me, Greg. I’m happy to be here.

Greg White (00:01:12):

Well, this is your first tequila sunrise, or at least your first one on video, probably.

Dawn Salvucci (00:01:19):

So

Greg White (00:01:20):

Let’s jump into it. So there, there are a ton of issues, not the least of which is the changing knowledge about supply chain, but also the changing landscape in supply chain. That’s impacting freight brokers, three PLS, all really logistics service providers, and really anyone who’s selling or sourcing or moving products these days. So tell me a little bit about what you see with your eyes on the market. What do you see as the biggest, most painful, compelling issues out there?

Dawn Salvucci (00:01:52):

Yeah, for sure. So look, market volatility has always been a challenge, right? And in supply chain and certainly in transportation for brokerages and whether it’s an up market or a down market there there’s still volatility, but 2020 and the impact of COVID certainly took that to a whole new level from a rate perspective, from a capacity perspective, from a supply chain landscape perspective. So, you know, from a rating perspective, a lot of folks who locked in on their contracts pre COVID are needing to renegotiate those contracts. Now a lot of shippers have delayed their annual bid processes in favor of more short-term bids and waiting to see what’s going to happen. And while we’re starting to see some normal seasonal downward shifts in the market in January, the message is still mixed as to whether we’ve hit the peak on truck load rates. And, and a lot of experts are predicting that truckload rates are going to continue to, to rise another six to 10% this year.

Dawn Salvucci (00:02:52):

You know, I think the sudden shift to more e-commerce has also changed the flows and the patterns and the supply chain as well as density, which is also going to impact capacity and therefore prices. Uh, it’s just really been a crazy year. I was fortunate enough to have attended the BGSA supply chain conference a couple of weeks ago. And it was really interesting to hear from carriers and shippers and 3PLs, all in one forum about how they had to essentially implement their five to 10 year growth plan for e-commerce in a matter of months last year, right. They all knew it was coming. They all had a five to 10 year plan, but it was just, you know, drop of a hat, go implement this plan. So, you know, that that’s the type of price and volatility that I think are, are really hurting the market today or really impacting the market. But, you know, I think in addition to that for brokerage specifically over the past several years, there’s been a number of either very large or well-funded tech led brokerages that have come into the market that have made really big investments in technology and data science, which has made it really tough for the majority of the market to compete against them in a space that already has super thin margins. Right?

Greg White (00:04:11):

Yeah. You know, it’s funny, we all learned many of us learned a new term force majeure during this time, right? I mean, uh, even the largest of carriers, even the parcel carriers, you know, they forced whatever they did, they used force majeure to take their obligation to fulfill off. And as you said, this whole forced shift by the seismic societal disruption to e-commerce because people couldn’t go and shop has dramatically changed the landscape in terms of what shipping, what fulfillment, what trucking even looks like. And then you add onto it, some of the other issues in the market, but the shortage of containers, the shortage of drivers, right. Which was already an issue. And it’s really confused as the market that, you know, is the term that really jumps out at me for the market.

Dawn Salvucci (00:05:06):

I would definitely agree with that.

Greg White (00:05:07):

When you look at the market from that landscape, what do you think is the most proximate pain, the biggest pain that’s the various players in the marketplace are feeling?

Dawn Salvucci (00:05:18):

Yeah. I, I mean, I think you said it right. It’s confusion or uncertainty, right. I think the market conditions are always driving a lot of operational uncertainty and you know, again, brokerage is near and dear to my heart right now I’m, I’m talking to a lot of those people and, and it’s, you know, the uncertainty as to how to price the business low enough to win it profitably. But high enough to make sure you got a carrier who’s reliable enough is actually going to show up under the load and move it right. Particularly in the spot market, because so many of these contract relationships were just integrated or, or, or lessened, you know, I think there’s a lot of available market data sources and have been for a lot of time, but that data has always been more delayed. The market is just changing more rapidly than those market data sources can really keep up with it. And they really don’t provide a lot of insight into an individual company’s buying abilities. It’s really kind of more what’s the market doing right.

Greg White (00:06:16):

Individual companies buying abilities, what do you mean

Dawn Salvucci (00:06:19):

An individual brokerage or, or logistics service provider or even shipper for that matter? Right. What, what is your, if you’re suddenly buying more on the spot market than you than you were, or if you always have your ability to buy in that spot market is, is going to be very different than an expert, right? Me versus you company

Greg White (00:06:40):

Kind of market price.

Dawn Salvucci (00:06:41):

Right? Exactly. Yes, exactly. Exactly, exactly.

Greg White (00:06:45):

And credibility. If you’re a big broker that you can get closer to market price than if you’re a, you know, a one person show of which there are many right now, right? I mean, so many people have been forced. I have never, I’m sort of new to the brokerage market getting really engaged with it. And I’ve never seen so many, one person shops as I have today.

Dawn Salvucci (00:07:10):

It’s hot. It brokerage is a hot space right now. I mean, look, there’s, there’s 17,000 ish broker brokerage, truckload brokerages in the, in the U S and you know, the top hundred and 50 companies make up 50%, 58% of the market, right. It’s an $80 billion market. And, you know, even those, those top hundred and 50, some of the, the lower end of that market that, you know, their revenue is 30 million, 40 million. So you’ve got a whole bunch of, as you said, one man shows out there, right. That are very small operations that, yeah. They don’t have the access to technology or market data, you know, the capital to spend on, on that type of information,

Greg White (00:07:52):

17. So it’s a highly competitive and a highly confused market with some highly powered and highly armed competitors in it. Right. When you think about some of these, what you call, what did you call them? Techniques, sorry,

Dawn Salvucci (00:08:06):

Glenn tech lead brokerages. Yes. Yeah.

Greg White (00:08:10):

I think that’s a daunting task to make way in this space, right?

Dawn Salvucci (00:08:15):

It is. And there’s also a lot of churn, even in the big organizations. There’s a lot of employee churn. You know, one of the things over my recent years working with brokerages is I was really surprised to see how many users of our software. I encountered it, that it was their first job in logistics, and they were responsible for booking freight or, or selling freight. But the key point there is, is with that churn, the users often lack the time, the skill, the discipline to operate, you know, take advantage of the information that’s available to them to get the market insights that they need, or even to be able to interpret the market insights, to help them those smarter decisions. Right. And they’re often relying on that 15 to 20 year veteran in the office, you know, yelling out, Hey, Greg, how would you price this lane? And poor Greg probably wants to crawl into his closet at the end of the day with his cell phone. Just so people leave them alone. Right.

Greg White (00:09:12):

Yeah. He’s trying to book his own stuff. Right. Right. Exactly. And as you said, calling it market intelligence is a pretty broad overstatement. I mean, considering that some of these reports are what days? Sometimes days. Okay.

Dawn Salvucci (00:09:28):

Sometimes weeks. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Greg White (00:09:31):

In a really fast moving market that seems like hamstring some companies.

Dawn Salvucci (00:09:35):

Yeah, no for sure. And the market was moving so quickly last year that we even with a machine learning type engine found that the market was even moving faster than a machine learning engine. You could keep up with it. And we had to very quickly implement some adjustments to our algorithm that would, would allow it to keep up with the changes in the market and how quickly they were happening.

Greg White (00:09:57):

Let’s talk about that a little bit. I mean, I can’t wait to have you talk about green screens because you are both chief product officer, which I presume means you set the strategy and the roadmap for the product and you’re acting CEO, which means you must have some really odd conversations with yourself.

Dawn Salvucci (00:10:17):

Well, I did that before this job anyways. Yeah. Now, now we get something accomplished, right. One side or the other is getting something accomplished. So yeah, no, it works out. So

Greg White (00:10:29):

If you talk to yourself and your answer yourself back, if you’re playing two roles, you’re not necessarily crazy.

Dawn Salvucci (00:10:34):

I’ll go with that. I’ll I’ll, I’ll go with that for sure.

Greg White (00:10:39):

And I presume you attack some of this problem. So tell us a little bit about how a brokerage or, or three PL or whomever might use green screens or, you know, the specific problem that you guys, the specific challenge that you guys attack.

Dawn Salvucci (00:10:53):

Yeah, for sure. So, you know, first I’ll tell you a little bit about the company. So the company was just started about a year ago, February of last year, with the idea of helping logistics companies navigate. Now this was pre COVID, but still with the idea of helping logistics company navigate a lot of that uncertainty and confusion that we were talking about, that that has always existed, particularly in the area of predictive pricing and task automation and connectivity to the shippers, right? So that’s where those, those tech led brokerages, you know, that that’s where they’re really getting the leg up is in the task automation, connectivity, predictive pricing. So, so that was really the idea that, that, that the company was formed under and over the summer, we operated in kind of stealth mode, working with a handful of, of beta customers to kind of validate our hypothesis and build out the technology.

Dawn Salvucci (00:11:46):

Once we had that product validation is when we really started working on our messaging and go to market strategy and, and really more broadly into the, into the market in November. But, you know, we didn’t do that in isolation. We, we spend a tremendous amount of time with our customers, you know, our beta customers and listening to the market and doing a lot of analysis since we launched in November, we’ve, we’ve actually had tremendous reception from the LSP market. And even some shippers are very interested in what we’re bringing to market. So to answer your question about the, the problem we’re solving is, you know, given all the issues that we’ve already talked about, our, our mission is really to help our customers. Uh, our motto is win more business, more profitably, right? To help them quote with more confidence by that is, you know, real time price predictions that isn’t based on non contextual stale data.

Dawn Salvucci (00:12:38):

Um, it’s not just a general market rate prediction. It is. What should you specifically, it’s a personalized rate based on your individual buying power and buying behavior against what the current market conditions are. It’s helping them to improve operational productivity by reducing a lot of the transaction friction and the uncertainty between the buy side and the sell side, right. As we went out and we talked to customers, if you talk to somebody who was a sell side rep, they would say, geez, I don’t think that the carrier sales team is buying aggressively enough when you talk to the carrier sales team. And they said, well, we think the customer sales team is setting the target prices way too aggressively. And there was a lot of tension and friction on both sides of the transaction. So we’ve really focused on also helping to reduce that friction and uncertainty by kind of synchronizing buy and sell pricing together and helping them to really grow and protect their margins with more accuracy, more accurate pricing. I mean, where we’re at today, the prices that we’re predicting for most of our customers are generally within a percentage or two of what they actually end up paying. Okay. Whereas, yeah, it’s been actually really

Greg White (00:13:52):

Incredible accuracy. Yeah,

Dawn Salvucci (00:13:54):

It is. Now our price predictions come with something called the confidence level high, medium, and low. So there are certainly going to be times when we’re not within a percentage or two, but it’s rare that we’re more than 10% off. I mean, honestly the majority of our price predictions are sub 10% margin of error over what the customer ends up pay.

Greg White (00:14:14):

What are they seeing using days, or I can’t believe you said weeks old data, what are they seeing in terms of accuracy before?

Dawn Salvucci (00:14:24):

Well, you know, I think it varies. I think it varies on, you know, a lot of companies have made the investment in some internal BI and tools. A, you know, it averages anywhere from, you know, 10, 15% to over 20% in COVID, it’s, it’s a tough time, right? I mean, 2020 would be a horrible time to be in the general market data world because things were changing so quickly. But I think the accuracy is more reflective of the timeliness of the data. Right. It’s usually self-reported, you know, there’s a time lag related to it and things like that.

Greg White (00:15:01):

Yeah. And, and getting good sources is tough. There are only a handful of sources of data. Anyway, as I understand it in the marketplace, correct. And even fewer that are live and if they are live real-time data, they’re exceedingly expensive.

Dawn Salvucci (00:15:18):

Right. Right. And you know, that that’s really kind of the last problem that we’re attempting to solve is, is really, although it’s a personalized, you know, we have a pretty high touch implementation as we’re onboarding a customer because we want to get to that level of personalization. And I don’t want to, I hesitate to say customization because we don’t do custom software, but personalization of the engine for each customer, you know, having data scrubbing rules in place, data filters in place. But you know, the other key is that we want to make it as easy and as cost-effective as possible for our customers to connect with us and for us to live within their existing technology ecosystem, right. We want to play with within their systems. We don’t want to replace, we, we want to augment. And that’s both from a backend data collection perspective, as well as a front end user experience, because our experience is the way to drive user adoption is to embed yourself in their existing workflow, not to take them to yet another system.

Greg White (00:16:20):

Well, and like you said, I mean, these people, their job is to sell and, and it happens fast. Right? You can win this. This is the one thing I do know really well. You can win, win, or lose an opportunity remarkably fast. And even when you think you’ve won it, you may not have won it. You could get undercut by another broker. You know, you could have the carrier renege on the quote that they gave you all, all sorts of things can happen. Right. So, yep.

Dawn Salvucci (00:16:48):

Yeah. And I think it, going back to those tech led brokerages and part of the leg up they have is, you know, the direct connectivity to the shippers, right? This whole concept of dynamic spot pricing that really didn’t exist a couple of years ago. Right. It was, Hey, I’m going to shoot an email, pick up the phone, send a Slack message to my broker and say, Hey, I need a price on this. And it was totally acceptable for them to say, okay, I’ll get back to you right now. You don’t have that time. You, you could lose that business in seconds. Right. And, and that, that goes to the task automation that I was talking about is highly accurate price predictions allow you to quote with confidence so that you can automate that task and connect directly to your customer. Just like some of these super large well-funded tech led companies, right?

Greg White (00:17:35):

So this is sort of tech brokerage for every man, right. Seminar child

Dawn Salvucci (00:17:41):

Presented, but it’s the

Greg White (00:17:43):

Democratization play, isn’t it, it’s really bringing that level of real authenticated. And even as you said, contextualized, I love that contextualized prediction to any anyone, right. That’s practical for a one person brokerage, my friend, hope white with hope white logistics. Could she afford this?

Dawn Salvucci (00:18:06):

So there, there is certainly benefit to everybody. I would say that, you know, when we talk about the contextualization and the personalization and the accuracy, a lot of that comes from volume of data, right? So if you’re a hundred million, $300 million brokerage, you’ve got enough data on your own to really drive some highly accurate predictions. And, and things like that. Your friend hope white as an individual broker alone probably would not. But one of the other things that we are doing is, is aggregating and anonymizing the data of our customers and working with some of our TMS partners to again, aggregate and anonymize within their network. So that, you know, the, the 1 million, the 3 million that the much smaller brokerages in aggregate, you know, have the, the data of the $300 million brokerage. Right.

Greg White (00:19:04):

That is brilliant. That truly is democratization. I mean, it’s funny, because as I was asking the question, I was formulating, I realized I put you on the spot there, but actually that is the kind of insight that a product person like yourself would think of as opposed to just a general corporate visionary, by the way. So for all of you listening there, that’s the value of someone who really gets product design and who really gets solving the problem. Right? Because look, Don, I don’t know how much tech you’ve done. I’ve done a ton. And what I’ve seen is so often companies, they go down this presumed path of what the solution will look like, and they leave out some very fundamental things and that causes them to pivot. And when you’re in the investment world, pivot just means wasted capital often, right now, of course, every company does some version of a pivot, but if you have to iterate because you don’t understand dynamics like that, or you don’t understand enough about product strategy to, to think about questions and issues, underlying issues like that, that is, that can be expensive, but man, that is a fantastic insight.

Greg White (00:20:15):

So for whatever it’s worth. Great idea. Congratulations. Good thoughts.

Dawn Salvucci (00:20:20):

Thank you. I, I wish I could take full credit for the idea I can not, but thank you. Yeah, no, we think it’s really powerful. And look, when, when I first came on board with the company, I truly thought that our target audience was going to be SMB right. Small to medium businesses. And they are right, as you said, the democratization aspect of it. But you know, one of the biggest happy surprises that I’m seeing in all of this is that there are some actually very large, more traditional brokerages with well-established that are also really interested in what we’re bringing to the market, because either a they’ve tried it themselves and they know how hard it is or B, they just don’t have the capital to invest in, in developing it on their own.

Greg White (00:21:02):

Yeah. That, and I think you’ll, you will likely find that some of these who have even built their own system, unless they get to just mammoth size, they’ll realize that they need to focus on what their business is. I think more and more companies are beginning to come to that realization that they need to focus on brokerage as their business, not building technology is their business. Right? When Masayoshi son was thrown around $400 million, like it was Skittles, it was a different world. If you called yourself a tech brokerage, he might write you a check, but now even he’s not foolish enough to believe that a huge brokerage with a dashboard is really a tech company. So I think that could swing the market, maybe your direction, but certainly certainly an objective service, not a service that has to be attached to broker J or brokerage C. Right. Certainly an objective service is going to be valuable. So that that’ll be an interesting dynamic to see as you navigate the market.

Dawn Salvucci (00:22:03):

I agree, but you know, on your last statement, a totally different conversation for another day, I think that we’ve also seen a lot of these tech led brokerages getting valuations as a software company, as a SAS software company, because of some of the technology that lives within those. So different conversation for a different day, though. Yeah.

Greg White (00:22:23):

I will say, well, I can say this, you probably don’t want to, but I will say that I believe that that ship has sailed and that everybody, many of the big investors have realized the folly of that because there is, you know, the, the reason you get big multiples is repeatable revenue and repeatable revenue is not 400 people on the shop floor, grinding out phone calls all day long, right. The margins are not the same. And I think it a truly technology organization serving brokerages has the ability to justify those, those kinds of multiples. But yeah, sorry, you didn’t want to go there, but I, yeah. So give me an insight that people would be surprised I’m surprised about in this industry or maybe a complexity that’s misunderstood or somehow hidden or, or, you know, some sort of unique or unknown or not, not commonly known factor in, in the LSP industry.

Dawn Salvucci (00:23:24):

Yeah. You know, we’ve actually already touched on some of it a little bit, you know, until I came to green screens, this is something that, you know, that the 20, 25 year brokerage veteran probably got, but I didn’t, um, until I came to green screens, is it didn’t really occur to me that, you know, one company’s buying power in the spot market could be so significantly different than another’s right. I really was a believer that the market rate is the market rate. And, and while some people might be able to negotiate a little bit better than others, I thought it was a fairly level playing field in the spot market. But w you know, what I’ve learned is that the price swings in the spot market from one company to the next can actually be quite dramatic. And when you’re in a business with already thin margins, that’s super important.

Dawn Salvucci (00:24:10):

I mean, we’ve done testing where we’ve taken the same lane, same equipment type, same commodity, and run it through the different models for different customers. And just the difference in price that we’re see coming back, you know, based on who the customer is is, is crazy. So, so that was one kind of, it was unknown to me. So that’s why I find what we’re doing so interesting right. In that it’s, it’s not just a market rate, it’s that personalized projection of what it is, what it is. And, and, you know, another thing is someone who’s been in this industry for 28 years, I’ll be, you know, only eight or nine of that was as an operator. It’s surprising that we do a lot of lab testing of hypothesis as, as you would imagine on the predictive nature of different attributes of freight and what the impact of those things are.

Dawn Salvucci (00:24:59):

I could geek out on this all day and how that impacts the accuracy of the rate predictions and how different things should be weighted by the engine. And it’s just really been very interesting to me to start getting a sense of how much or sometimes how little different attributes will really impact price, nothing that I ever would have imagined. But what’s been really interesting is through that analysis, how we’ve been able to come up with really novel ways to fill in gaps in data density. So it goes back to your friend hope, right? That small brokerage, that doesn’t have a lot of data and why we’re still able to predict a price for a smaller company with a high degree of accuracy. And confidence is the way that we’ve been kind of able to leverage some of that to fill in gaps in the data density, by understanding how different attributes behave differently. And similarly, and, and, you know, this region behaves like this regions, uh, we can, you know, apply things like that. So it it’s been really interesting.

Greg White (00:25:56):

Yeah. Fascinating. I think, I think about swings in the market. You, we didn’t go into this, but we talked about this pre-show you worked at staples so big time retailer. And imagine the scenario that you could sell to Billy Bob’s office supply, or you could sell the staples, you know, that that’s, that, you know, that it’s a lot more likely, that’s a long-term repeatable relationship where you’re going to get volumes and generate economies of scale at staples than you are with Billy Bob’s office supplies. And I know because I know Billy Bob and he needs some help, but I could see where that would create similar, similar distinctions in the freight markets. Right. Right. So regardless what their level of data is that they can get the, they can get the kind of value out of this that’s. Um, I, I got to loop back to that. That’s really impressive to have included that aggregation of data to, to provide that value. That’s, uh, again, a master stroke. So, so tell me about, uh, when you think about your position in the marketplace. I got it. Okay. Wait, before I ask that, I’m sorry. I have to ask you green screens. Really? Why

Dawn Salvucci (00:27:13):

I inherited the name? I don’t dislike the name. I’m just saying I didn’t name it, but know that there is a story behind it. And, and, uh, it’s, it’s kind of a fun little story. I mean, if you think back to the early days of transportation technology, it was a S 400 based systems, green screens, certainly nothing web based connectivity. What the hell is that market data? What is that? But what we, what we really had back then was smart people who knew the market, right? So the green screens.ai name of the company is really just making that connection between really smart people who knew the market and artificial intelligence and bringing the old and the new together. And so that’s, that’s the, the story behind the name

Greg White (00:27:58):

Nod to the irony. Isn’t it? I mean, it really, yeah. I love that. So tell me about, you know, what you see in terms of your role or the potential for this in the marketplace and what you all hope to achieve for the market.

Dawn Salvucci (00:28:13):

Sure. You know, so we’ve talked a lot about volatility and uncertainty, and as I said, I’ve been in, in transportation, whether it’s on the operation side or on the technology side for 28 years. And we’ve seen a lot of these cycles of capacity supply and demand in balance that drives rate volatility. I think I’ve personally witnessed the perfect storm in transportation at least four or five times, right. It’s not a perfect storm, it’s a cycle. And I’ve been saying that for a long time, it’s, it’s like this, isn’t an anomaly. This happens every few years, whether it’s driven by something like COVID or by a recession or whatever that this, this happens. This is a regular thing. And I don’t expect that’s going to change anytime soon. Right? So that being said, I think in the short term, I hope the green screens can really help our customers maneuver through this current cycle that we’re in and future cycles by, by giving them the business intelligence and decision support that they need to price freight more accurately and, and improve their productivity.

Dawn Salvucci (00:29:16):

And that’s kind of where we’re focused today. Now we do have a really strong roadmap to grow beyond the just chocolate and spot market price predictions into, you know, what I would call an AI based freight procurement platform across multiple modes, you know, getting into more of the demand supply, you know, planning I’d like to call it CPFR for, for transportation capacity right into for that, but a blast from the past. Right. Exactly. Yes. My, my, uh, my supply chain geek is, is showing, but, you know, really getting into that. So for the longterm, as we, I guess, you know, the term that I’ve heard perfectly, Chris capitalist recently called it, you know, transportation portfolio management, which again, isn’t an, isn’t a new term, but that’s kind of my vision. And as we grow and expand our offering, I hope the green screens will really become known as a, you know, an industry leading neutral platform for market data, aggregation, market intelligence, you know, dynamic pricing and capacity, and really that collaboration platform between shippers carriers and LSPs, and really kind of being the engine. That’s powering a lot of these other networks and platforms that already exist out there.

Greg White (00:30:31):

We definitely need an objective platform out there, right. And something that’s that uses intellect and something that is real time. For sure. And, and I know you don’t call it customization. I usually call it configuration, but the personalization to a particular entity that allows them to know based on where they stand in the marketplace, what they can expect. That’s, that’s so useful. Look, I talked to companies like yours, meaning relative startups or early stage companies trying to make changes in the marketplace. And that personalization is a really powerful aspect of what you’re doing. So you’ve got some real, you’ve got some real interesting approaches that should help separate you from, you know, from the pack and, and help you deliver on the vision that you, you hope to you hope to get to. So I’m still fascinated by the fact that you’re a product person, you’re chief product officer and acting CEO. You’re a hell of an actor by the way, because you act a lot like a CEO, but let’s go to your product because clearly there’s some brilliance in this product, and I know you can’t claim all credit for it, but ultimately you’re responsible for it. So let’s talk about how you implement a strong product strategy and how do you tackle that to build effective solutions in a, in a scenario like this, I’d love for some folks to have a takeaway here that says, Hey, do this, don’t do that.

Dawn Salvucci (00:31:58):

Right? Yeah. So there’s, there’s several different things I could say on that. I mean, first and foremost, I’ll, I’ll say that I I’ve been a long time believer and practitioner of the pragmatic marketing framework. I think it’s, it’s served me well over the past 20 years of working in product strategy. It’s always been kind of my North star, right. Whenever I get lost in a vision or a pivot or whatever, I always kind of come back to it. I think

Greg White (00:32:24):

With folks, just high level, just kind of the principles of that, just so they understand what you’re

Dawn Salvucci (00:32:29):

Yeah. Pride, the pragmatic marketing framework is, uh, you know, look it up. It’s pragmatic Institute. Uh, it’s a great framework that lays out you a really solid framework for all of the different parts and pieces that are involved in bringing great products to market Mark, you know, creating and selling and marketing great technology products. And it starts from building a business case through to, you know, sales, training, sales, and customer training, right. And, and all of the different steps in between. And, you know, I was fortunate enough that I worked for a company back, uh, back in the day called Manugistics, who made the investment and, and made sure that we all had that training and we were certified and I’ve since been recertified. And, and it’s just really proven to be really powerful in, in my particular role, not only as a product strategist, but as you said, as an acting CEO, and I also had a previous position as COO, uh, of a, of a small tech company. And there’s just so much that I learned through pragmatic marketing, around business planning and marketing and things like that. So the last thing I’ll say on pragmatic marketing specifically is, is that look, supply chain has changed a ton in 20 years. Technology has changed a ton in 20 years, but the framework has mostly stayed in tact. I mean, there’s been some adjustments for big data and IOT and machine learning and agile development methodologies over the years. But, but the framework itself has really stood the test of time. Um, and it’s served me well,

Greg White (00:34:03):

It’s really the polar opposite of iterative. Isn’t it? I mean, it’s, it’s a much more, I’m not going to say waterfall. It’s not exactly a waterfall methodology, but it is much more structured. It’s very structured, right. So

Dawn Salvucci (00:34:19):

Is very structured, well structured, but flexible because I will say that, you know, for example, here at green screens, there are parts of, of the pragmatic marketing framework that would be complete overkill for us as, as a startup company. I’ve worked, as I said, you know, for larger organizations like, like Manugistics or JDA now, blue yonder where, you know, every piece of that framework is practice. Right. But yeah, so it is very structured, but it’s also very flexible because you can take the parts and pieces that make the most sense for you where you’re at in your evolution as a company. So, you know, most of what I learned, it’s not because I’m brilliant. It’s because I was taught well, right through, through a really solid framework. But, you know, I, I think it, it starts with a well-defined target audience knowing, knowing that audience and understanding what the most compelling challenges they face are.

Dawn Salvucci (00:35:11):

And we talked a lot about a lot about those today. What’s going to drive the most value out of the solution you intend to create. And then from there you can divine your vision and the journey that you’re going to take to get there. But, you know, again, it has to be flexible enough to allow for, there’s always going to be deviations, right? A lot of people talk about two to three year product roadmaps. I’m not a believer, um, in two to three year product roadmaps, I think anything more than 12 to 18 months is crap. To be honest with you, right? Because so much is going to change. I mean, you have to have a vision, but to have a product roadmap that’s more than 12 to 18 months. So, you know, I think focus and prioritization are huge, right? Being able to identify what’s table stakes versus want versus need versus the items that are going to drive the biggest value proposition for your customers and prioritizing those accordingly.

Dawn Salvucci (00:36:04):

And that comes back to staying connected to your customers, you know, understanding the voice of the customer, understanding the market competition, listening to them collectively, not just one it’s it’s, it’s really easy to, you know, get caught up in that one big customer who may be paying the bills right now and what their wants and needs are. But at the end of the day, right, you have to serve a market, not a customer and keeping track of that. You know, I think when it comes to being a good product strategists, a lot of it has be never assuming you’re the smartest person in the room. I tell people all the time, my job is just to listen. That’s my job is to listen. You know, I, I actually like to refer to lyrics from an old grateful dead song, actually, you know, once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places, if you look at it. Right, right. So, and that, that’s kind of another thing it’s like, you always have to be listening to what the customer is doing and saying, so, and that’s why green screens, we spent months with, with our beta customers, engaging down to the end user level and, and listening to them and watching them and really got some great insight from that.

Greg White (00:37:08):

That is a really important takeaway if there’s anything that I see consistently in talking to companies that are trying to break through, trying to make their way in an industry like you are, it is they come to it with too many presumptions and too little research. And again, another, that is another instigator of the dreaded pivot is they use their bias, not only in coming to the market and creating a product, but they actually, they actually instill their bias in their research process. They don’t just listen. They ask not open-ended questions, but framed questions based on their bias when coming to the customer. So you have to be very, very open. I just, in fact, just the other day, I was just talking to a company who they went to, the marketplace asked really open questions. And even, I mean, they’re still in stealth mode, but even before they came out of stealth mode, completely pivoted the company to something they didn’t think was nearly as exciting, but importantly, people would buy and wanted to buy and wanted a solution for now.

Greg White (00:38:14):

And they continue to do their research and find that that is the big opportunity. But it also is an entree, a gateway drug, as I like to say to the next level of solution that they’d like to provide. So the power is there. And I say that because we’ll have a lot, Don we’ll have a lot of founders, a lot of investors, and a lot of, of clients, potential clients of companies, you know, in the early stages, listening to this. So I want to make sure that they, they, we really drive that point home as a takeaway. So if you think about that, look, you’ve come up through staples, man, you JDA blue yonder at all, and now it can’t have been all roses and daffodils. So is there anything, any particular challenge or anything you wish you had known before that you’d like you think would be a valuable lesson for, for our community?

Dawn Salvucci (00:39:13):

Yeah. I, I mean, what, what I wish I had known before, it’s really more, uh, you know, I’m learning a lot since coming to green screens. Like I said, I’ve been doing technology solutions for transportation for 20 years and eight years in operations. And through that whole time, I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with algorithms and optimization, mostly around route optimization and things like that, but I’m kind of O G and a relative newbie to the world of AI and machine learning. And as I was courting the idea of joining the team, um, and certainly since I’ve come on board, I was intrigued and excited by the fact that this was a great use case of applying cool, modern, advanced technology, but in a novel and practical way for transportation, because I’ve been hearing people talking about AI and machine learning for years, and it’s just like, yeah, that’s for robots and Androids. And, but it’s been really fascinating to me understanding about the practical applications for something like transportation that you don’t get much more nuts and bolts in that. So I wish I had realized, or maybe more so been more open-minded and given more credence to a how hard it is not only to do, but to explain and be the Epic applicability in the power of some of these modern technologies to something like transportation and logistics. Right.

Greg White (00:40:40):

All right. Anything, any kind of final takeaways you’d like for our community to know or anything that, you know, anything that ha is sort of top of mind for you right now, either or both of those things.

Dawn Salvucci (00:40:54):

Sure. Yeah. And we’ll talk, I’ll take the top of mine for question first. Eh, you know, I’ve been spending, spending a lot of time recently thinking about what is the post COVID supply chain and logistics industry really look like? You know, when are, are we going to see some return to normalcy, whatever that is in this crazy industry who knows what normal really is, or as much as I hate the term is this our new normal, you know, what of the adaptations that we’ve made will stay, what’s going to go away? You know, even from just the whole work from home thing, are we ever going back to offices? And if so, why? Right. Because I think people are more efficient working from home, but that’s just me. I don’t have any little kids running around behind me. So me other people might disagree with me, but, but, but from all of that, you know, how might we need to look at the business problems differently or create new solutions to new or oral problems, but just looking at them differently.

Dawn Salvucci (00:41:52):

And I think you said it at the beginning, it’s an equally confusing, but yet really exciting time to be in this industry right now. So, so that’s kind of, what’s got my mind share is, is, you know, what, what does this look like two years from now three years from now, even the rest of 2021, right. You know, as far as a final message that I want listeners to hear, it’s really, again, speaking to our potential customer base around AI and machine learning. And I think there’s, there’s a fear that, you know, machines are gonna play replace humans, right? And you know, I, I’m here to tell you that machines are never going to replace humans ever, never, ever, ever. I think there’s certainly many things that humans do that computers can’t. I mean, I think the best example is, is building relationships, right with customers and carriers and understanding emotion and sentiment, but computers are better at and faster at seeing patterns in large volumes of data than humans are.

Dawn Salvucci (00:42:53):

And that’s where we should really focus on leveraging machine model. Right. It can be trained to automatically figure out an algorithm to do something that would take you or me days or weeks to figure out. Right. Recently speaking to a colleague in the industry, he’s like, you know, look, I think there’s a big play and disruption capability in the market for AI to be leveraged, to eliminate the tasks that suck right, is really what it is. The ones that are resource intensive, slow productivity, suckers, right? So AI can get you to a higher degree of accuracy and automation, and then allow you to focus your human capital on the items that require it. Right. And, and that’s why, you know, our play here at green screens, isn’t just on the power and the accuracy of our algorithms. But coupling that with a really intuitive decision support tools that are going to help the humans make better decisions faster when they need to. Right. That’s critical. So my message is I’m not here to eliminate humans or jobs. I’m, I’m here to make the human capital more, more effective, right?

Greg White (00:44:03):

Yeah. And I sense that you’re probably a younger, but gen X person. So we used to have to have that discussion a lot. We used to have to make people feel non threatened by technology. But I think the truth is that the incoming generations, millennials and gen Z, they get it, they get that. I mean, they’ve been living with technology, they get that. It’s not going to take their job. It’s going to enhance their job or enhance their life or do what sucks. I like that let computers what sucks. Right. And I mean, you know, the reality of it is I I’ve, I think of, uh, and have explained AI to people as it’s not, it’s not a computer overlord. It’s more like a child to which you instill your knowledge and it then uses that knowledge and never forgets to use it and uses it much, much faster and never instills emotion in its process. So it does those things that you can do three out of 10 times because on the fourth and fifth time, you’re two PO to do it. And on the sixth through 10th time, you forget some aspect of that and don’t do it. Right.

Dawn Salvucci (00:45:08):

So I think

Greg White (00:45:10):

That’s the beauty of it. So yeah. And I really appreciate your perspective there. So I have a feeling you might get a call or email or LinkedIn requests. So finally, how can our community, how can they touch base with you or connect with you

Dawn Salvucci (00:45:25):

So you can, uh, certainly visit our website@greenscreens.ai. And definitely don’t forget the AI part cause otherwise you may be sent to a video production company or a marijuana dispensary. So don’t forget the.ai part. You can follow us on LinkedIn or you can reach me directly@dawndawnatgreensgreens.ai.

Greg White (00:45:46):

Brilliant. Thank you very much. I really appreciate you joining us.

Dawn Salvucci (00:45:51):

Thanks for having me Dawn.

Greg White (00:45:53):

Yeah, my pleasure. Dawn Salvucci Favi air. Got it right that time. Chief product officer and acting CEO at green screens. AI again, thanks for joining us and look forward to seeing how you guys progress. Thanks Greg. Appreciate it. Alright. Take care.

Greg White (00:46:17):

Tequila, sunrise. As part of the supply chain now network the voice of supply chain featuring the people technologies best practices, key issues in the industry. And Hey, listen up to build your supply chain knowledge. Listen to get this supply chain is boring or Chris bonds connection to the who’s, who that got supply chain, where we are point as to where we’re going and take us to the next level or check out this week in business history with supply chain. Now his own Scott Luton to learn more about everyday things you may take for granted and pick up quick insights you can use as inspiration and conversation starters. I logistics with purpose series puts a spotlight on inspiring and successful organizations that give first and give forward as their business model. If you’re interested in transportation, freight and logistics, have a listen to the logistics and beyond series with the adapt and thrive mindset, Sherpa, Jaymin Alvidrez, and also check out tech talk hosted by industry bet and Atlanta zone Kerryn bursa supply chain pro to no of 2020, where Korean discusses the people processes technology of digital supply chain for sponsorship information on tequila, sunrise, or any supply chain.

Greg White (00:47:35):

Now show DME on Twitter or instagram@gregoryswhiteoremailmeatgreggatsupplychainnow.com. Thanks again for spending your time with me and remember acknowledge reality, but never be bound by it.