The Power of Together: How Trimble’s Connect and Scale 2025 Strategy is Accelerating the Transportation Industry
“We will go faster.”
This quote from senior vice president Ron Bisio during the opening session of Trimble’s 2022 Insight Tech Conference + Expo succinctly summarizes the Transportation sector’s focus on delivering connected solutions to the industry at a faster pace in order to transform the supply chain.
At Trimble, this strategy is known as “Connect and Scale 2025,” which means connecting users, data and workflows across the industry lifecycle of transportation from procurement to planning to execution, and making it easy to do business with Trimble. At its core, Connect and Scale is a customer-centric strategy that puts users and customers at the center of everything Trimble does.
Trimble CEO Rob Painter, chief platform officer Jennifer Lin and senior vice president James Langley took a deeper dive into this topic at Insight, providing a closer look at what this strategy means for customers and the broader transportation industry and what the “Power of Together” really means.
Where, What & Why
The “Power of Together,” Painter explained, is found by taking the power of “where,” adding the power of “what,” and taking into account the “why” and the power it holds.
In transportation, the “where” is often gathered by hardware devices on assets, the “what” is provided by software solutions interpreting the data, and the “why” is identifying an opportunity to optimize something. At the intersection of these three is where Trimble’s platform can intersect the physical and digital worlds to create the “Power of Together.”
Trimble has embraced the model of coopetition, in order to help create an open ecosystem where partners and competitors alike can all come together in the cloud to solve today’s industry problems. No longer can organizations afford to operate in a silo – trusting each other and proactively sharing data is imperative in order to move forward.
Painter shared that there is a great deal of opportunity in the transportation industry for both carriers and shippers to increase uptime and efficiencies and optimize operations. For example, a 1,000-truck fleet that optimizes its resources by just 1% could eliminate 1 million wasted miles per year, add $2 million to the fleet’s bottom line, and remove 3 million tons of carbon dioxide from the air.
Furthermore, with carriers running an average of about 15% empty miles and operating with more than 80% driver turnover each year, studies show that saving drivers an average of 20 minutes per day could help both alleviate the driver shortage and simultaneously improve uptime.
“I believe my job is to do what is right for the long-term benefit of our customers,” Painter added. “We have been investing significantly in research & development for the Transportation sector, and are integrating data and workflows across our capabilities.”
Cloud Platform
What will enable the Power of Together is an industry-leading cloud platform, chief platform officer Jennifer Lin explained.
By partnering with Microsoft Azure, Trimble is “creating a digital experience that seamlessly integrates data, solutions and workflows to transform the way our customers work,” she said, continuing that the partnership will help modernize how Trimble develops and delivers industry-focused solutions in the cloud.
Overall, Trimble’s strategy is to create a simpler user experience that delivers shared services that can be used to create specific workflows for actionable insights. Trimble’s Transportation Cloud (TTC) allows customers to find the right data, at the right time, to make the right decisions with connected workflows.
“This is about shared capabilities that can help us build, deliver and extend unique value,” Lin explained.
Connected Supply Chain
Senior vice president James Langley took to the stage to showcase how Trimble is connecting its Enterprise, Mobility and Maps capabilities with integration partners within the Trimble Transportation Cloud (TTC) to streamline the lifecycle of transportation—from procurement to planning to execution. By integrating data and connecting workflows, Trimble can better serve all stakeholders across the transportation continuum: shippers, intermediaries, carriers, drivers and more.
“We support customer choice,” Langley stated. “We embrace working with partners in cooperation because we know each organization’s needs are diverse.”
Langley cited an example of Trimble’s Engage Lane solution, which streamlines the procurement process from a timeline of months to just a matter of days. Engage Lane directly connects shippers and carriers to dynamically procure contract freight in the TTC.
“By being open to all parties, the network effect is even greater, enabling shippers and carriers to continually fill the holes in their respective networks with contracted rates,” Langley explained.
In order for Trimble to accelerate these workflows, it must first unlock the data, Langley added. “Moving to a more cloud-based world enables greater connectivity for all,” he said.
All Together Now
Connect and Scale is a platform strategy that empowers developers and users to build and deliver collaborative and innovative workflows, designed to deliver optimization, help fleets solve their most pressing problems and capture their most compelling opportunities.
By facilitating connections in the Transportation Cloud, Trimble is uniquely positioned to make the transportation industry more collaborative, productive and sustainable—for customers, the planet and everyone the supply chain serves.