The Logistics of Logistics Inventory is Everything with Jeff Flowers
Jeff Flowers and Joe Lynch discuss why inventory is everything. Jeff Flowers is the Chief Operating Officer of OneRail, a final mile delivery orchestration platform providing real-time visibility, actionable data, and data-driven optimization capabilities for its enterprise clients.
About Jeff FlowersJeff Flowers is the Chief Operating Officer for OneRail. Jeff's professional career began in accounting and finance roles within the Cable Television, High Speed Data and IPTV industry. Quickly moving towards his true passion of operations, Jeff spent 2006-2016 in various roles with the nation's largest building products Distributor, BlueLinx. In his last role at Bluelinx, Jeff was the General Manager of Metal Products Business Unit which generated $250M in revenue sourcing products from 17 different countries serving 18,000 SKUs to national, regional and local building products retailers. In 2016, Jeff partnered with Franklin Young to purchase PTI Security, a leader in Physical Access Control and with support from Source Capital, an Atlanta based Private Equity firm. While there, Jeff was the Chief Operating Officer of PTI where he served the teams that helped grow PTI to 72% market share and transform legacy diskette based software to a cloud based architecture with a leading electronic locking solution. When PTI was sold to HID Global in 2019, Jeff was fortunate to be offered the position of COO and CFO by Bill and Lisa Catania with OneRail where he serves the teams that work to implement, onboard service our customers as they leverage OneRail to productize end-to-end delivery fulfillment in order to create a leading competitive advantage.
About OneRailHeadquartered in Orlando, Florida, OneRail was founded in 2018 by Bill Catania, a serial entrepreneur from the FinTech world, and his wife, Lisa Catania. OneRail is a final mile delivery orchestration platform providing real-time visibility, actionable data, and data-driven optimization capabilities for its enterprise clients. OneRail's cloud-based "delivery switch" simplifies same-day and on-demand delivery execution by connecting the demand signal (POS, eCommerce, ERP) with an ecosystem of delivery networks and internal fleets, in real-time. The result of OneRail's centralized view of disparate final mile data enables data-driven optimization, positively impacting the dependability, speed, and cost of final mile fulfillment.
Key Takeaways: Inventory is Everything- Jeff Flowers is the Chief Operating Officer of OneRail, a last mile delivery solution that reduces delivery times and costs, while providing 100% visibility and a responsive customer experience.
- In the podcast interview, Jeff explains the importance of effective inventory management to supply chains.
- Inventory is tricky – buy too little and miss out on potential sales, but buy too much and your carrying costs rise.
- Managing inventory is very difficult and even the best firms have stumbled recently and it impacted their quarterly earnings.
- Below are some threats to successful inventory management that Jeff and Joe discussed:
- The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) contract expires on July 1. The ILWU is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii, and in British Columbia, Canada. The ILWU represents more than 22,000 workers at 29 ports and a strike would be a huge disruption to already brittle supply chains.
- With supply and demand becoming very unpredictable during Covid, many companies, particularly retailers, found themselves with too much of the wrong inventory and not enough of the right inventory. Jeff and his team at OneRail partner with many brands and retailers to eliminate or greatly reduce these problems.
- Inventory placement and excess inventory are big problems that omni-channel retailers face.
- Companies can meet these challenges by partnering with OneRail. OneRail use technology, data, and a marketplace of transportation options to greatly reduce costs, while improving the delivery experience.
- OneRail's comprehensive 4-in-1 delivery fulfillment solution combines leading technology with a coast-to-coast courier network, a skilled 24/7 Exceptions team and a micro fulfillment labor force to solve last mile logistics more comprehensively than any other solution in the space.
- OneRail provides 100% visibility into the delivery flow, but it's way more than a visibility platform. With the right mix of leading technology, dependable couriers, and a vigilant customer experience (CX) team, customers get the ability to change delivery outcomes in real time.
- OneRail has the largest integrated courier network in the last mile space – a managed marketplace with instant access to 9 million drivers, 292 courier entities and more than 65 logistics companies across 220 major U.S. cities.