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This is the show where we go deeper than the hype. Where we go beyond just the prompt. On the podcast, we talk with product, engineering, and GTM leaders who are building AI-native products and using AI to supercharge how their teams operate.
If you’re looking to scale your business with AI or want to learn from those doing it at the frontier, then you’re in the right place.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (00:00)
that's really cool and interesting and super powerful that like you and the engineers are out in the field to see and talk to your users and
and your potential customers
You mentioned that you're out in the field and you like, I visually saw that this 26 foot truck is not fully filled out.
Erin Blair (00:16)
It's so important to get away from the screen because our people use a screen for about half of their day. maybe a quarter of the day is in front of a screen. The rest of the day, they're with people, they're with trucks, they're with pallets, they're in warehouses, they're doing other things.
you plan to do 1800 miles today with 12 trucks and deliver this much. How did you actually do?
I'll find out a couple of months when my quarterly report comes in. Well, that doesn't help them for next Tuesday when they have the same sequence going on. You want them today to understand and have data driven reports in real time,
Sani Djaya (00:46)
Hey everyone, welcome back to Beyond the Prompt. I'm your host, Sani.
This is the show where we go deeper than the hype, where we go beyond just the prompt. And that's where the name of the podcast comes from. I'm talking with product engineering and go to market leaders who are building AI native products and using AI to supercharge how their teams operate. If you're looking to scale your business with AI or want to learn from those doing it at the frontier, then you're at the right place.
or just want to chat with me on the cool things you're doing with AI, then check out the link in the description to get in touch.
Ever wonder how massive companies like DHL Express manage to deliver goods effectively day after day? big part of the answer lies in sophisticated technology, and today's guess is at the forefront of it. I'm joined by Aaron Blair.
VP of Global Partnerships at Y Systems. They build routing and dispatch automation software powered by machine learning. Think of it as capturing all the invaluable experience, the tribal knowledge of dispatchers and drivers and turning it into an automated system that optimizes tens of thousands of routes daily. Y Systems focuses on making operations proactive rather than reactive, using data to find efficiencies, reduce miles and even help sale's teams
understand where they have delivered capacity in real time.
In this episode, Aaron explains The surprising ways efficiency gains can translate into sales opportunities, why they send their engineers out on delivery routes, and how they're aiming to change the very nature of a dispatcher's role. Let's get into it.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (02:16)
I'd love to just start with telling the listeners about what wise system is, what they do, and then also your role at wise systems as well.
Erin Blair (02:24)
Sure, thanks for having me today. WISE Systems is a routing and dispatch automation tool. We service a bunch of verticals anywhere from courier carriers, the beverage world, the rental industry, how do you call them in rental. We service a plethora of verticals. My role here is I'm vice president of global partnerships. So my role is to help blend technologies together and help find out.
how we can better create a fully integrated, automated solution that can learn over time for our customers who have high pressure, high volume problems to solve every day. so, Systems was born out of MIT. We're about 16 years old, maybe a little, 2016 is when we were born there. Solving congestion in a metro area.
and figured that we really need to get truck routing under control and give the best tools to the people with the largest vehicles to help reduce congestion overall in these metro areas. And out of that really came this tool that we have now. We have a lot of tools, but one big one, which is the route planner we have, ⁓ which actually helps routing and efficiencies for customers, helps clustering and making really efficient routes ⁓ and full dispatch functionality.
We have an end-to-end solution from routing all the way to the mobile app for turn-by-turn directions. ⁓ We are an automated company, so we are not like maybe a more traditional dispatch solutions you'll see in the world, which is we want to automate and give that dispatcher and router more time to deal with ⁓ the exceptions, not the rules. So we want to really give them more automation in their world and help with the things that they're doing.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (04:15)
But can you give the listeners a sense of like scale or some customers that you guys have?
Erin Blair (04:21)
Sure, yeah. We actively work with DHL Express, Hazard Bush, Canadian Royal. Those are kind some of our bigger ones. We have a handful of smaller bottlers that work in the Coca-Cola world, in that. Our volume's pretty high. We crush tens of thousands of routes a day in different parts of the world. We do have to run them through multiple. We use AWS as one of our providers. We have to figure out how to scale our servers because of the amount of volume we do.
It's quite large. We're active in resellers in Japan. We're active in Australia and those locations along with Europe ⁓ and the Middle East as well. And clearly along with North America. We have some users and but we're expanding pretty heavily right now.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (05:07)
That's awesome. Do you happen to know like a number of routes that you guys are optimizing or?
Erin Blair (05:13)
That's a great question. If I had to take a swagger right now, don't know that number off the top of my head, but I'd say somewhere between 20,000 30,000 routes a day. Somewhere in there. Yes.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (05:23)
Yeah, so tons, tons.
Can you talk a little bit more about some of the AI systems that why systems provides and kind of like how it impacts and like why, you know, all of these large companies pay why systems for this? mentioned DHL express, you mentioned and hyzer bush. You know, these are large companies and I'm sure they're paying, you know, a good chunk of change for it your system. And so what's
Erin Blair (05:34)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. ⁓
Yeah,
another good question. So I'm going to localize this a little bit in our product and say that AI is a word that's used a lot in different ways. And what it means to us is really kind of machine learning tools that we've implemented for our users. So we currently have machine learning tools in our, for our route planner. So we will machine learn what routers are doing over time and make adjustments and feedback to them if it's within the business rules.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (06:06)
Yeah.
Erin Blair (06:17)
We have dispatcher preferences that we will machine learn how they're making adjustments in real time based on their environment. We also have driver preferences. If drivers are going out and they're doing this thing where they're mixing up their deliveries a little bit, but they're still sitting in one time windows, but the preferences, they like to go on these roads because it's better for them, whatever the reason may be, it's acceptable for the business. We're going to learn those driver preferences and also start to make those adjustments in our routing and dispatching so that all the users, we're learning this tribal knowledge, right?
within the business rules you want be able to reuse that tribal knowledge over and over again and learn off of it. So holistically when you look at a supply chain and distribution network of users, I'm looking at the people from my routers and dispatchers to my drivers. Those are my constituents. And they're doing a really great job. I want to be able learn that. then all of sudden somebody may get replaced for vacation, someone retires, whatever that may be, I'm now gaining that tribal knowledge with those people and I'm instituting it in my daily activities.
And then I may want to make adjustments to that. Maybe I don't like some of that. So then we can adjust the tools to learn and help in that manner. One of the things we also have that we, another kind of layer deeper is what we call machine learn service times. So one of the biggest things in the world is can I get one more loaded day on my truck? Can I get one more load a week on my truck? I, how do I open up sales capacity?
Well really let's say we just generalize the fact that I'm going out to do a service or I'm doing a B2B delivery. Kind of B2B is our wheelhouse, we do some B2C, but really B2B is our wheelhouse. ⁓ Let's say we generalize it. Every drop our drivers do takes them a half an hour. But we find out over time on one route that Sarah seems to get 15 minutes at four stops. Well if I consistently know that's gonna be her rhythm and that's gonna be something that we can make those adjustments on.
I get her two or three more stops on that route for that day. May not be every day of the week, but once we start learning how often and how much it takes for people to service the locations, along with directing them to the actual loading dock, not to the mailbox, that saves time as well. So using those kind of nuances of our product and learning on those different things that people are doing in real time, that real impact, we can open up the capacity of a truck in some cases.
we actually reduce a route. We can actually eliminate one route or as I like to call it, we open up more sales capacity and say, you know what, sales team, I've now been able to consolidate my routes. I have an open truck on the road for the day. Can you please help me get some capacity in this region at this time of the day? Call your customers, you can get to open up that truck. So really we want to look at the end to end solution of what's happening and how do we learn on all the tribal knowledge.
At the end of the day, what generally happens after using this for about a year or so, people organically start to consolidate dispatch. Because now if I have six or seven dispatchers in a state, you're a national or regional customers. Let's say I six or seven dispatchers taking you to different metro regions because they know the travel knowledge is there. We've given them a tool that's learned over time to help them. We're also now I can centralize my dispatch. Maybe I have two or three dispatchers that now can see, have a global look.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (09:11)
Hmm.
Erin Blair (09:32)
at the entire state and make it efficient. And maybe then we give them the tools where dispatcher isn't looking at putting up fires every day. They're looking at how they get more efficient and have overlapping routes. Maybe they want to change where customer gets service out of which DC, because now I've given them the tools to be able to do that. I think we are, I'll talk to you about the next stages of where we're going to go in a minute. I think you want to talk about that too, but there's going be an organic progression to changing the day in the life of a dispatcher or route.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (10:01)
Yeah, I think you said something that sounded like music to executive ears. It's like, I have more sales capacity with existing assets and existing cost basis that we have today. It's just like, ⁓ yeah, like we can get more sales and get more revenue from our existing base of cost.
Erin Blair (10:22)
But also
you flip the script a little bit on people, right? Because one of the pain points you see in sales and distribution today is the salespeople always hammering operations for when is it going to be there? When can you get this out? Can you do that? I would like to see operations have the, you know, kind of change that conversation to here's when I have available times. So if we can take our system and our data in real time and make that available, we have applications in our system that make sales capacity open to share with them and say, here's where the times when you would want to book a
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (10:32)
⁓ I knew it.
Erin Blair (10:52)
a customer, here's when I can make those deliveries, I have open capacity.
I talked to a national carrier, a tire carrier recently, and they're running 30 % full right now on half of their trucks and their routes. Well, how does the salesperson know that? Does the sales team even know they were only at 30 % capacity after we've done this analysis? And then do we tell them that, hey man, Thursday's afternoons, I've got trucks running out half empty right now, can you please go look at Thursday afternoons for me?
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (11:08)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Erin Blair (11:21)
in this metro region of St. Louis because this is the area we're going and we're servicing in. And you want that in real time because we lose and gain customers. But if that becomes the rhythm of filling up sales space and letting operations be proactive in managing it, we want a system that's proactively managing the environment of which you service. And I think that's really where we need to trend the future towards, which is allowing people to have the right tools to be proactive.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (11:24)
Yeah.
Really? Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, one piece of it is real time because for sure you can like go off and spend a month or two doing some analysis, but then a month or two has passed and things have changed. And now that analysis is two months old, but having real time is super powerful because you're like, ⁓ I know next week we have capacity. And so you can be proactive about it. And then you also share it a little bit, you know, a little bit on the proactive side. Can you talk a little bit more of like how you are all thinking at white systems about
Erin Blair (11:54)
it
Mm-hmm.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (12:18)
being proactive and letting people know there is capacity.
Erin Blair (12:23)
Yeah, I think it's in the reporting tools that we have today. We have reporting tools, have mobile applications that allow for someone to to track their customers. So for a salesperson, I can give them an application that says, hey, here's a list of all your customers today that are getting deliveries. Well, they know that list should be a lot longer, right? So really just an insight into, let's say a salesperson has a hundred accounts in an area in St. Louis daily service, and only 30 of them are getting orders today.
Well, clearly they know exactly who's putting in orders and what they're doing and they're like, wow, I have another 70 customers I'm to reach out to. And they clearly know who they should be reaching out to in real time to try to fill those time slots and that availability that's happening at that point in time. Transparency is the key to being proactive. If my sales team and my operations team are really tied together and seeing what's going on, ⁓ it's very important for them to have that transparency. The other thing we're doing with
to help the sales and operations team work in and together is customer alerts, notifications, which is the Amazon effect, right? So when a sales person's out there selling, they can get in to sell, they may be able to meet that delivery truck at that customer because they know they have a big load coming in or they want to upsell that customer at something and say, hey, I'm here to meet your truck, help you with it. Here's your new driver, Sammy. You know, here we want to have this relationship. We're looking to build a business relationship with you. We want to increase your volume of sales with us. What else can we do for you today?
giving that transparency to the salespeople what's happening in real time, because there's nothing worse than a salesperson going and saying to the customer saying, you just missed your delivery guy, didn't have the right stuff today, or I need more of this, I need less of this. Why don't we have some synergy there and have everybody to come together to the customer to increase our sales volume holistically? So from our standpoint, it's really about transparency, somewhat control as well. So we can have fixed time windows and fixed times when
If you have a high volume customer, want to make a promise that Thursday at 10 o'clock will be here, we can actually fix that in our system. So you have the ability to have kind of your, you know, would say most customers probably have 30 % of their business is fixed time windows. You have a 30 % of, I need it today. And then 30 % of I need it whenever I can get it. Then there's just the rest of it is whenever you get it to me, it's nice to have. Our system allows the flexibility to optimize all of those scenarios to reduce miles.
with the, and also assign the right vehicle. If I have 26 foot box trucks and then maybe I have vans as well, which vehicle am I putting on it for that day? I've been at many loading docks where a 26 foot box truck goes out, maybe with five orders on it that easily could have been in the back of someone's car or could have put in a van and it would have been much better, lower miles, everything, wear and tear. And by the way,
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (15:06)
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah.
Erin Blair (15:14)
I've now opened up that sales capacity. It's really a 26 foot truck is sitting there. Maybe with another driver that I could do a hot shot with for a very large customer that says, I need a couple of pallets. need this today. Boom. can move that truck immediately. Um, so a lot of it's transparency. Can we do more today and not wait till tomorrow? Uh, and some of these high on demand, um, B2B relationships.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (15:20)
Mm-hmm.
That's awesome. That's awesome. So that's a lot of information of why systems and how you use machine learning and AI in your products. Is there anything else that you want to share in terms of AI and why systems?
Erin Blair (15:51)
I think we kind of covered it. think we are, we're every day we're learning more. We are a company of engineers, right? And we listen to customers, but we take our time, we listen to customers, we see what matters to them and we're always building new tools to enable those customers. So one of our biggest value process in the market is we listen, we listen to people, we go learn what they have. Let's assume we have, you know, large organizations and or small ones in verticals that don't have a purpose built solution, right? And so how do we help them?
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (15:57)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Erin Blair (16:20)
Maybe not build, because a lot of people come to us and say, or they'll go to other customers and say, I want these features built up so my dispatchers can manually do this work. We take a different look at it. That may be very valuable. That's your value proposition. You want the market, you want to adjust that. What if we automate it? What if we figure out that they can click one button or maybe two, not 20, however that works out, right? But like, how do we automate your value proposition in your operations and your supply chain?
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (16:29)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Erin Blair (16:48)
⁓ is kind of what we're always looking for. We're looking for very hard complex problems to solve. We like the harder ones. ⁓ I think point-to-point routing is something anybody could do. I think dynamic on-demand high configuration routing is very difficult, challenging, and extremely satisfying when you can do it, when you do it right. Because it changes a business, right? We're all in for this. We love helping companies install business change, which is helping them find
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (16:54)
Mm-hmm.
Erin Blair (17:17)
ways to evolve people's careers internally. And I think we are on a change for dispatchers and routers to have a different role that they historically would not be in.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (17:29)
Yeah, I think that's definitely super powerful of ⁓ listening to the customer, but also seeing like, how can you dig deeper into like, what are they actually trying to solve and using technology and AI to even automate those things and make it even easier than they could have even imagined, because they are not super familiar with technology and what is even possible. Right. So that's awesome. That's awesome. So then moving on to ⁓
Erin Blair (17:53)
That's right.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (17:59)
What sort of tools or products is Y Systems using for their teams to, not the ones that you're building, but like leveraging other ⁓ AI products and tools in your day-to-day work to be more effective? I think like two days ago, we recently just saw, it's not leaked. It's a leaked email from Shopify, the CEO of Shopify, Toby Lutke, I think is his name.
But then he just was like, I'm leaking it publicly so that it's not leaked. It's like, I'm sharing this publicly now, where he talked about it is expected for all employees to adopt and play with AI to be more effective. So I'm super curious around what are you and your teams and people at Weiss this is using in terms of AI products and tools to work more effectively. Cause it definitely seems like it's like a expectation now, just like how there's an expectation of
knowing how to use the internet or the computer at this point.
Erin Blair (18:57)
Yeah, definitely. Our support team and engineering teams are using different forms of AI to help accelerate our knowledge of a use case or a case study or something that's happening. So we see things that are happening in real time. We see things that are evolving with the way customers want to interact. Integrations, right? We're seeing integrations change. We want to have some type of AI that can sit on top of everything and help us make decisions for our engineering team for integrations for customer use.
How much is someone using your product? Where are they using it? And so we have instilled different versions. can't share exactly what they are. Some of it's proprietary. It is a secret to us. Some of our secret sauce is in utilizing this advanced technology to do that. using AI to... We have a lot of very big constraints that we have in our routing program. How do we use AI to reduce that time of results?
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (19:34)
Yeah, no worries. Yeah.
And you're saying.
Erin Blair (19:53)
to our customers. It's also something we utilize. On our support team, we would be using AI to help support tickets, help customers move faster through their journey, answer their questions faster, and or solve internally. If a customer comes into our support team and says, have a problem with something, how quickly do I identify it? Where does it get redirected? And how do we solve for it? We may have tools internally, we do have tools internally, that actually solve for that in real time without an engineer or someone getting involved.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (20:16)
Mm-hmm.
Erin Blair (20:20)
where it can make an adjustment to their account. Let's say somebody has a problem with their account, maybe a driver didn't show up today, whatever it happens to be, we're now installing tools that help that get done and instantly respond to the customer and adding that in immediately without having to use any human intervention. like we are making those adjustments. How people configure, how do people configure the constraints that are most best for their business case? We can actually suggest to them using AI tools, their responses. They give us their business use case, they talk to it, maybe they load data in.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (20:21)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Erin Blair (20:50)
We analyze their data, we see what it is, say, we think you're best to use our solution in this way. So we're always using this. We do, you know, we use a lot of tools internally, a lot of software internally. ⁓ And we actually, of the, you know, probably not more of an AI related tool, but the open source messaging system between any company's choice between engineering teams is a definite key to.
making solutions work better together. So for instance, you can use Microsoft Teams and you open that up to two different engineering teams to work in integration at the same time. There's no more emails. You're not really going to get JIRA involved. You're not going to get the JIRA level involved, but like Slack, for instance, we use Slack at a high level to have two engineering teams who people that like each other, get to know each other, they're doing the same thing, communicating in real time, having huddles in real time when they're working on something.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (21:28)
Yeah.
Ugh.
Yeah. Yeah.
Erin Blair (21:47)
makes them that much more effective and our speed to market with a customer is accelerated because we use internally these tools that help us accelerate any process of enabling the customer.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (22:01)
Yeah, you mentioned emails. I hate email threads between engineering teams. Some people don't hit reply all and then the audience changes like, I'm not looped in in that thread. ⁓ man. I have.
Erin Blair (22:09)
you
⁓ Well, I will
go a level deeper on that. I will say that content has a character. And the character may not seem right today. It may seem off. Maybe the words that are coming through in the writing that I'm doing isn't coming away the way I wanted it to. So it's received on the other end in a way that maybe creates a defensive environment that none of us want. So when you have a messaging application, and even then you can have some of those, but
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (22:23)
Mmm, okay.
Erin Blair (22:43)
When you get the face to, when you allow the channels for two people to work face to face and have communication, even the way you and I are, it allows that conversation and that content to be much deeper and much more to the point solution faster. Cause at the end of the day, we all just want to get our work done, right? And we want to get it done in a really great way that we can do it. A lot of creating content and writing messages between teams, all it does is it takes a long time to learn what someone's writing.
It's like trying to read a book for the first time that you don't know the author, you know how it's written, how it works. You're learning something new every time. Why would we want engineers to spend any time writing books when we can have them coding content together in real time and testing things between each other? Let me make an adjustment over here. Let me bring another team member into this huddle right now because they actually deal with my mobile component. We're trying to do a mobile integration. We're doing an integration and also it's affecting my mobile. Let me bring in my mobile lead right now and they'll help us solve in real time.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (23:39)
Yeah.
Erin Blair (23:41)
for why it's not showing
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (23:42)
Really.
Erin Blair (23:42)
up correctly in the mobile app, you solve much faster. And I people are happier to do it because at end of the day, even with technology, it's all about people. And we need to utilize these methodologies of leadership in our companies and these access points for people to be with people and to enjoy that human content.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (23:46)
100%.
It really is.
Yeah, absolutely. Going a little bit back to like the AI tools to work effectively, looks, it sounds like why systems is building a lot of their own like integrations like within, right? Are there any kind of like third party tools that you're using that you can share about that's like off the shelf? So, you know, like, obviously, I'm sure a ton of people are either using like chat should be T or Claude.
Erin Blair (24:22)
Yep.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (24:35)
⁓ like most, most recently chat GPT, ⁓ improve their image generation. so for example, for me, I needed a logo for something in the area of the product. I had some ideas of what I wanted it to look like. And so I actually use chat GPT to generate a couple of examples to then give to the team, because then I can be like, here's what I'm thinking about visually instead of like, I'm trying to explain in words. What it could be.
And so it's a higher fidelity of a conversation because I can show you a visual of what I'm thinking about. So I'm curious if any kind of off-the-shelf products like that that your teams are using.
Erin Blair (25:13)
Yeah,
the ones I would be able to share, I would be able share with you that we use ChatTBT for exactly that, which is taking content and creating an image. We do that quite frequently internally because our social engineers are on the field, they're gathering information together, they're taking requirements out. Those people like to write books, right? They're going to write down the requirements, but it accelerates our time to value if you use a tool like ChatTBT to turn that into an image or a diagram of what you're trying to accomplish in the value proposition.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (25:18)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Nice.
Yeah.
yeah.
Erin Blair (25:42)
That is one I can share. can't share the other ones because they are, they're secrets. ⁓ You know? Yes sir.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (25:44)
Yeah, no worries. Yeah, there are secrets that part of your competitive advantage. Yeah. But actually what's interesting
that you you said is that you have engineers out in the field. You mentioned that you're out in the field and you like, I visually saw that this this 26 foot truck is not fully filled out. And so I think that's really cool and interesting and super powerful that like you and the engineers are like out in the field to kind of see and talk to the folks that your users and
and your potential customers as well.
Erin Blair (26:14)
It's so important to get away from the screen because our people use a screen for about half of their day. If you take a dispatch of routers, people in technology, people in distribution we work with, half the day is in a screen, maybe a quarter of the day is in front of a screen. The rest of the day, they're with people, they're with trucks, they're with pallets, they're in warehouses, they're doing other things. And we conceptually, as maybe first time people into an industry or business, don't understand their real struggles, their real issues.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (26:42)
Yeah, 100%.
Erin Blair (26:43)
So when you build a web application and now I'm going to go and say, right, I'm going to give this a great web application in the world. I understand why people can't use it. half the time they're trying to open it on their phone because they're running through the warehouse to try to solve a problem right now, but they need what's on their phone, but they can't get it because your web application wasn't mobile enabled. Maybe that's been solved with a lot of people now, having dedicated, really understanding what it's like to sit in the seat of the people you're building software for is so important. We actively, and this is one thing I love about working here,
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (27:00)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Erin Blair (27:12)
Our founders are in the field. Our founders talk to end users. Our engineers, our product people, we all go. I have one of my founders, she will go sit in a truck with somebody and deliver with them. That's impressive. And bring that feedback of usability back and the product enhancements and what we're seeing back to our engineering team in real time. And I think that is the difference in the world that makes successful software is people that are really putting the shoes on of the people that are using the software.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (27:15)
Yeah.
higher.
yeah, absolutely. We do ride alongs as well. I was recently tagged in a thing in a doc. was like, OK, well, here's all the feedback, right? All the notes, and just like tagged and like, here's the feedback. And so then I can be like, wow, this is interesting feedback that I didn't consider. Super powerful when you're like out in the field talking with those folks, going through their days, and then you're getting insights that you would have not gotten if you just was staring in your screen.
Erin Blair (27:47)
Yeah.
in here.
Right?
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (28:11)
like in the office for sure.
Erin Blair (28:13)
Yeah, and trying to communicate over Zoom or something more of a meeting link to somebody. When we, you know, it's really, I think it's very interesting when a solution engineer or product engineer from our team goes out and they go to Belgium and they ride around a delivery truck in Belgium, then they go to New York City and do it. Then they go to LA or San Francisco and they're doing, they're riding same organization and they're learning the different nuances between how that organization operates in different parts of the world.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (28:17)
Yeah.
Erin Blair (28:39)
So you can't take a holistic approach to your software if they're really using it in different ways and different parts. You need to understand that. And the videos that come back from that experience that we can share directly ties our team to that use case and that reason why that function needs to change in their aha moment. Light bulbs go off with these videos of the product people out in the field. Oh, I can fix that. And all of a sudden people start working. You're like, I can do this. I don't need to write up a lot of stuff or talk lot about it. I now can visually see it.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (28:45)
yourself.
Yeah. Yeah.
Erin Blair (29:08)
I completely understand what that looks like. Let's go, let's make an adjustment because the one thing in our world is we don't enjoy, which is taking a long time to analyze a system situation. We want to get it right, but we also want to get it right quickly because at the end of the day, until you actually start deploying software, you don't know the reaction that's going to happen. And so you want to go run through it quickly, get a really good solid solution down, but you want to be able to deploy as fast as you can and not wait till tomorrow and keep going through those things.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (29:22)
Mm-hmm.
Holy.
Erin Blair (29:37)
That's why for us, it's a big deal to keep, move quickly.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (29:41)
Absolutely, All right. So then, you know, we talked a lot about what why system is doing now some of the impact that you've had in the past and currently right now. Where do you think why systems will be in the next like sex at six to twelve months?
Erin Blair (29:52)
Thank
Yeah, sure. I think we will be kind of in a stage of more change management. I think we're starting to really enable this ⁓ dispatchers and routers to have a different way of life. think why systems will continue this ⁓ on the change of the way customers operate, redefining ⁓ a dispatcher, right? Helping organizations be more proactive, less reactive.
Right now it's just complete mayhem. distribute, you know, distribution systems. They're like trying to keep their head above water. Right? You that all the time. I can't lose Jenny in operations at this local, this, this facility because she's the one that keeps it running without her. I've got nothing. Well, that's not a great place for Jenny to be. Right? Like we need to help her be really great. What she has helped her be more proactive and maybe help her have a little more insight and control of what's happening and change.
the way that she reacts to things, way the operations is reacting and take away from them the reactive nature of their business and help them become more proactive. Teach dispatchers and teach routers how to use data to make data-driven decisions. Analytics, plan versus actual. You actually have someone that sits down every day or has a snapshot. I can look at a dispatcher and say, you plan to do 1800 miles today with 12 trucks and deliver this much. How did you actually do?
I'll find out a couple of months when my quarterly report comes in. Well, that doesn't help them for next Tuesday when they have the same sequence going on. You want them today to understand and have data driven things where they know with a report like for our reports in real time,
they know that when Sam comes in on that truck, we got to go talk to Sam because he's all his data is off today. Maybe he had a flat tire, maybe he ran into something, maybe something was very legit, but we need to understand what it is. We need to actually document it to be able to avoid it.
maybe sandwich his girlfriend's house, maybe sandwich his mom's house for lunch. And then we get to say, hey, we like that, but can we schedule that at the right time? So it fits into your day. And then you start to go in and have the dispatcher then change that. So it means a break assertion on Tuesdays, because that route goes by his mom's house. We want to make sure he goes for lunch at this time. And we schedule it for him, not just being reactive to, why were you out for an hour between one and two? Like you were just parked. Like, what is that? Because we're going to show him that data.
And so we start to see those things and help them really become more proactive in their approach and help dispatchers and routers really take an analytical approach to it. then we want them to help us get better. like instead of them, know, a lot of times we're like, we got a new customer. Where do we put them in? I don't know, I've got Dr. Linda and she'll tell you where you can fit that customer in. I want Linda to say to the sales team, here's the open times I have and here's exactly where we're going to put that customer or
They just throw it in our system and it tells them where it's going to be and not have it be a big to do or have it be stressful. It's very matter of fact. So give them the tools, give people the tools and change that allow dispatchers to be on the offense, not on the defense. I think it's going to change the industry's chain supply chain. And then imagine if I now have dispatchers talking between different distribution centers about, hey, I should give you a customer. You should give me one because we're overlapping a little bit. We want them to have those proactive.
conversations and then give their leaders the ability to have those as well. So I think we are still going to continue in the next 12 to 6 months in a proactive world of helping the industry change and evolve so that at the end of the day everyone can be more profitable. People like coming to work, they enjoy doing what they're doing in the supply channel, continues to move forward at an efficient rate.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (33:40)
Gotcha, gotcha. That's awesome. That is awesome. All right, I have a few more questions. I think so as well. I think so as well. And hopefully your customers also think it is awesome as well. All right, I have a few more closing questions. This one has been my favorite one that I ask people on the podcast. What are you most proud of and why? And it can be personal or professional.
Erin Blair (33:45)
We think so.
Right?
What am I most proud of? My family. Because you create, you get to create that right, that's part of you. So I think I'm most proud of my family.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (34:18)
Anything in particular that you feel like... ⁓
Erin Blair (34:23)
You yeah, ⁓ you built something quite about it, not clean to some degree. your, your matrix and paychecks have helped you got to where you are. And then you're helping enable them in this wonderful world right now. And my kids are in their early twenties and they're creating their own life in their own world. So the resiliency in which we've given our family the ability to move forward and live their best lives. I think that is probably the, largest accomplishment ⁓ is the ability to let somebody.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (34:23)
you like emphasize then in terms of your
Erin Blair (34:52)
help provide for someone to live their best lives. And it's not financial, right? It's an attitude. It's inside of you. So I think my largest or my biggest success would be the enablement of my family that makes me the happiest. That's why I get up every day.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (35:12)
you have any advice or tips for building the right attitude for your kids? I don't have any kids right now, I'm not married. This is like-
Erin Blair (35:20)
Yeah, let them
be themselves, play to their strengths, let them be who they are and play to their strengths. Try to give them the the right palette to color it the way they want to. Allow them to become who they are and always pushing them and guiding them. ⁓ You know, I have one rule, treat people the they're be treated. Pretty simple. And I think my kids have taken accelerated that, be good to yourself. And I think really if you're what I've learned now,
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (35:24)
Wow, okay,
Erin Blair (35:50)
⁓ and I still have a ways to go. But I do think it is playing into the strengths of people and helping them find their best path and supporting them. Well, guiding them appropriately too. letting, you know, I think there's one key now. We take a lot of time trying to teach people of youth and at least in my world ⁓ what to think instead of how to think. I would rather give my people the ability of how to think, how to decision make on their own.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (36:14)
Mm-hmm.
Erin Blair (36:20)
then let them decide what is important to them and what they want to make of a situation instead of me predetermining for them what the outcome of that situation should be. Allow them to go through it and you know what the thing too is? Yeah, it hurts to fall down, but you only do it a few times. And then you get back up and you learn how to do it. for me, a lot of it is really teaching my people, giving them the tools of how to think, not what to think.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (36:36)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And then I'm also hearing a little bit of like, help them build that resilience of falling down and getting back up. Right.
Erin Blair (36:54)
I, the only reason why I believe that I've been successful in the role I am now is that I've repeatedly failed. But I've never stopped trying. And I don't want to. Well, yeah, because if you're pushing the boundaries of business, yourself professionally, yourself personally, you're always going to stumble a little bit. You're going to fall into something, you're to make mistakes. And that's why later in life we find out that we wish we had known that what we know then, that kind of thing. So you learn and it's good to learn. It's good to...
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (37:00)
Yeah, yeah. You always come back up.
Yeah.
Erin Blair (37:24)
make mistakes. If you're not in the game, you can't lose it, right? You can't win it either, right? You can't, you gotta be in the game and you have to want to win or want to make yourself better. And we all determine individual winning means to us. mean, it's not financial, right? There are personal goals you have. know, my sister's done this wonderful thing in her life where she's won a certain type of certification years to get and she won and she did that and it was very difficult. You're taking multiple tests and doing things over and over again. And
she succeeded and i think that when you're doing when you're going through life yes it's the difficult things are worth doing right the things that cost a little money are worth it like it's worth being challenged is worth going forward at least from my standpoint um but yes you have to be able to be okay with the with um not being right all the time or not be winning all the time right you know uh in my world there are really you know you you define your own success
And I think if you help people understand what that means to themselves, they'll always be happy with themselves. And I think that's important when we come to work every day and we go into our lives that we're happy with ourselves today. And then we can work in a great world and be a great family member, partner, whatever.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (38:34)
Yeah.
Yeah, and show up in a great way for everybody around. Yeah. All right.
Erin Blair (38:43)
Glass is always
half full unless you want it to be half empty. It's up to you.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (38:47)
true, it's true. Alright, last question of the day. Where can people find you online? Where can people find why systems and how can people be useful to you?
Erin Blair (38:59)
wisesystems.com go to our website. You can sign up there to either get directly to me in the partnerships team. You may go through somebody to get to me eventually. You can me up on LinkedIn if you want to. I'm there as well. But if people have questions about their specific use case and what they're solving for, what their board of directors, what their boss is coming down and asking to accomplish, let's have a business conversation of what you're trying to do. We may or may not be the right fit.
I know enough people and solutions in this world now that I can help you find the right fit to at least get the right direction. I make lot of introductions to people that may help other people solve. I think the world is better when we all share. And so I'm more than happy to help anybody in kind of the final mile space, logistics as a whole. I've dealt with all kinds of verticals within the final mile, large and small and even some government stuff. So I hope I can be.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (39:35)
That's awesome.
Yeah, absolutely.
Erin Blair (39:52)
you know, of help to somebody that's looking to solve. We're making a good decision because it's harder now to make good technology decisions.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (40:00)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Aaron, thank you so much for being here.
Erin Blair (40:04)
Thanks for having me, I really appreciate it.
Sani (like Sunny ☀️) (40:07)
Thanks everyone.
Sani Djaya (40:10)
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