Joe Laskey - Sr. Product Manager - Metafora - Chicago, IL

Preparing to find the right software product for your company at TIA

What do you need to do in order to get the most out of your TIA conference experience?

Freight conferences offer a unique opportunity for folks to get to see a combination of existing transportation technology products, emerging products out there in the marketplace, and companies who can help you help accelerate your business goals
There are 90 or so exhibitors at the conference all offering you information on products or services that can move your business forward, preparation will go a long way to make sure you get the most out of your time

To get the most of your TIA experience, spend your time looking at the right products out there and it starts by looking internally at your business.

Talk to top performers and see where they feel there are shortcomings of the software they use
Review the vendors at TIA and list out what problem they could solve for your business
Rank them with your highest priority issue and seek those vendors out during the conference
Seek out people you trust in the industry to point you in the right direction of which software products you should prioritize looking into
If you come in with a plan of the top 5 challenges your company faces, and get to speak with vendors going about the issue in different ways it will help you get the most out of your time at the conference

Going to the conference is the easy part, the challenge comes in when you get back to your office and have to focus on your day to day work

You need to prioritize your time afterwards to talk through the available options
Did one of the conversations you had spark an idea about how to increase your productivity but dont know where to start?
Did you come out with a list of companies you’d like to work with but dont know where to start or how to prioritize them?

First you need to take a step back and see if the product fits your companies specific needs, there are going to be a lot of great products out there, but you still may need to consider if they are specific enough to you

This is where you may need to start an internal discussion around your product roadmap and whether you should go with a build or buy strategy

Focus on what makes your company great and spend the internal resources you have elevating your specific value proposition

As you get back into your day to day and realize how difficult it may be to dedicate the time and resources to analyze what you just saw, you can reach out to a company like Metafora to perform a technology analysis, taking a look at your specific problems and your company's most important needs
If you have found the time and identified the partners you’d like to work with but dont have the resources to get started on integrations or the best approach for implementation, an integration partner like socket would be worth having a conversation with

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