SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 9, 2024 – Propel Software, creator of the first product value management (PVM) platform, today announced its Spring ‘24 release, transforming how businesses create, sell, and service products. Its first new release of 2024 empowers companies to significantly speed time to revenue, surpass sustainability goals, and elevate product quality through enhanced collaboration and data integration.
“Spring ‘24 continues to build on the promise that many siloed legacy solutions fail to provide,” said Eric Schrader, Chief Product Officer at Propel. “Our platform weaves a trusted product thread throughout the entire product lifecycle, engaging every stakeholder to address critical product success factors: how well it’s designed and made, how effectively it’s marketed and sold, and how efficiently it’s serviced and supported.”
Shorten Go-To-Market Cycles
Expanding product enrichment capabilities, Propel enhances the ways product and commercial teams work concurrently to seamlessly transform and associate a product’s technical definition with its market-facing content, attributes, and rich product information for various sales channels. This ensures that all stakeholders are aligned from the outset, dramatically reducing the time and effort to navigate from design to commercial sales success.
“Propel is clearly offering something very different than what others are doing in the PLM space. Its ability to connect the product record from engineering to marketing will be a significant enabler to driving alignment and speed in any go to market motion,” said Jim Brown, President, Tech-Clarity, Inc. “Propel gives engineering teams a window into marketing’s world, and vice versa. This visibility is essential to ensure a superior customer experience and faster time to market, which leads to greater revenue and market share.”
Strengthen Sustainability Tracking & Reporting
Propel’s Spring ‘24 release also significantly improves sustainability tracking and compliance at a time where environmental compliance, social responsibility, and sustainability are at the forefront of every business strategy. A new integration with QPoint Technology’s Green Data Exchange allows users to effortlessly access suppliers’ declarations, certifying that products meet the highest standards of environmental stewardship before they enter the market.
R&D, product and commercial teams have a unique opportunity to improve market access and bolster customer loyalty by differentiating their offerings on the basis of regulatory compliance and ESG-leadership. The latter being paramount given its continued influence on consumer purchase behaviors. In a survey of 2000 U.S. consumers commissioned by Propel and conducted by OnePoll, 65% cited the importance of brand transparency as they look for environmental claims when making purchases. Savvy consumers shared that they’re not easily tricked as 45% reported if they discovered a brand was “greenwashing” products (making misleading eco-friendly product claims) they would purchase from an eco-friendly competitor instead.
Enhance Customer Satisfaction
Propel's commitment to enabling quality and customer satisfaction improvements has never been stronger. Expanding on the capability announced in the Winter ‘24 release to link serialized end units to the item revision that was used to build it, customers can now relate those serialized customer end units (assets) to quality workflows, and the affected items will be automatically linked. Bridging the gap between commercial and product teams enables rapid contextualization of field feedback. Service and support teams can problem-solve using a familiar, robust framework of customer issues and cases tied to serialized assets. Meanwhile, their quality and engineering colleagues gain immediate visibility to appropriate parts, assemblies, and documents in need of remediation and the scope of potential impact across the entire product portfolio, and all installed assets.
Propel’s Spring ’24 release is currently available. For more information on Propel products and service offerings, please visit propelsoftware.com.
The 40-acre solar facility in Gentry, Arkansas, includes nearly 18,000 solar panels and 10,000-plus bi-facial solar modules to capture sunlight, which is then converted to electricity and transmitted to a nearby electric grid for Carroll County Electric. The facility will produce approximately 9.3M kWh annually and utilize net metering, which helps transfer surplus power onto the power grid.
Construction of the facility began in 2024. The project was managed by NextEra Energy and completed by Verogy. Both Trio (formerly Edison Energy) and Carroll Electric Cooperative Corporation provided ongoing consultation throughout planning and development.
“By commissioning this solar facility, J.B. Hunt is demonstrating our commitment to enhancing the communities we serve and to investing in economically viable practices aimed at creating a more sustainable supply chain,” Greer Woodruff, executive vice president of safety, sustainability and maintenance at J.B. Hunt, said in a release. “The annual amount of clean energy generated by the J.B. Hunt Solar Facility will be equivalent to that used by nearly 1,200 homes. And, by drawing power from the sun and not a carbon-based source, the carbon dioxide kept from entering the atmosphere will be equivalent to eliminating 1,400 passenger vehicles from the road each year.”
As a contract provider of warehousing, logistics, and supply chain solutions, Geodis often has to provide customized services for clients.
That was the case recently when one of its customers asked Geodis to up its inventory monitoring game—specifically, to begin conducting quarterly cycle counts of the goods it stored at a Geodis site. Trouble was, performing more frequent counts would be something of a burden for the facility, which still conducted inventory counts manually—a process that was tedious and, depending on what else the team needed to accomplish, sometimes required overtime.
So Levallois, France-based Geodis launched a search for a technology solution that would both meet the customer’s demand and make its inventory monitoring more efficient overall, hoping to save time, labor, and money in the process.
SCAN AND DELIVER
Geodis found a solution with Gather AI, a Pittsburgh-based firm that automates inventory monitoring by deploying small drones to fly through a warehouse autonomously scanning pallets and cases. The system’s machine learning (ML) algorithm analyzes the resulting inventory pictures to identify barcodes, lot codes, text, and expiration dates; count boxes; and estimate occupancy, gathering information that warehouse operators need and comparing it with what’s in the warehouse management system (WMS).
Among other benefits, this means employees no longer have to spend long hours doing manual inventory counts with order-picker forklifts. On top of that, the warehouse manager is able to view inventory data in real time from a web dashboard and identify and address inventory exceptions.
But perhaps the biggest benefit of all is the speed at which it all happens. Gather AI’s drones perform those scans up to 15 times faster than traditional methods, the company says. To that point, it notes that before the drones were deployed at the Geodis site, four manual counters could complete approximately 800 counts in a day. By contrast, the drones are able to scan 1,200 locations per day.
FLEXIBLE FLYERS
Although Geodis had a number of options when it came to tech vendors, there were a couple of factors that tipped the odds in Gather AI’s favor, the partners said. One was its close cultural fit with Geodis. “Probably most important during that vetting process was understanding the cultural fit between Geodis and that vendor. We truly wanted to form a relationship with the company we selected,” Geodis Senior Director of Innovation Andy Johnston said in a release.
Speaking to this cultural fit, Johnston added, “Gather AI understood our business, our challenges, and the course of business throughout our day. They trained our personnel to get them comfortable with the technology and provided them with a tool that would truly make their job easier. This is pretty advanced technology, but the Gather AI user interface allowed our staff to see inventory variances intuitively, and they picked it up quickly. This shows me that Gather AI understood what we needed.”
Another factor in Gather AI’s favor was the prospect of a quick and easy deployment: Because the drones can conduct their missions without GPS or Wi-Fi, the supplier would be able to get its solution up and running quickly. In the words of Geodis Industrial Engineer Trent McDermott, “The Gather AI implementation process was efficient. There were no IT infrastructure or layout changes needed, and Gather AI was flexible with the installation to not disrupt peak hours for the operations team.”
QUICK RESULTS
Once the drones were in the air, Geodis saw immediate improvements in cycle counting speed, according to Gather AI. But that wasn’t the only benefit: Geodis was also able to more easily find misplaced pallets.
“Previously, we would research the inventory’s systemic license plate number (LPN),” McDermott explained. “We could narrow it down to a portion or a section of the warehouse where we thought that LPN was, but there was still a lot of ambiguity. So we would send an operator out on a mission to go hunt and find that LPN,” a process that could take a day or two to complete. But the days of scouring the facility for lost pallets are over. With Gather AI, the team can simply search in the dashboard to find the last location where the pallet was scanned.
And about that customer who wanted more frequent inventory counts? Geodis reports that it completed its first quarterly count for the client in half the time it had previously taken, with no overtime needed. “It’s a huge win for us to trim that time down,” McDermott said. “Just two weeks into the new quarter, we were able to have 40% of the warehouse completed.”
Trade and transportation groups are congratulating Sean Duffy today for winning confirmation in a U.S. Senate vote to become the country’s next Secretary of Transportation.
Once he’s sworn in, Duffy will become the nation’s 20th person to hold that post, succeeding the recently departed Pete Buttigieg.
Transportation groups quickly called on Duffy to work on continuing the burst of long-overdue infrastructure spending that was a hallmark of the Biden Administration’s passing of the bipartisan infrastructure law, known formally as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
But according to industry associations such as the Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors (CAGTC), federal spending is critical for funding large freight projects that sustain U.S. supply chains. “[Duffy] will direct the Department at an important time, implementing the remaining two years of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and charting a course for the next surface transportation reauthorization,” CAGTC Executive Director Elaine Nessle said in a release. “During his confirmation hearing, Secretary Duffy shared the new Administration’s goal to invest in large, durable projects that connect the nation and commerce. CAGTC shares this goal and is eager to work with Secretary Duffy to ensure that nationally and regionally significant freight projects are advanced swiftly and funded robustly.”
A similar message came from the International Foodservice Distributors Association (IFDA). “A safe, efficient, and reliable transportation network is essential to our industry, enabling 33 million cases of food and related products to reach professional kitchens every day. We look forward to working with Secretary Duffy to strengthen America’s transportation infrastructure and workforce to support the safe and seamless movement of ingredients that make meals away from home possible,” IFDA President and CEO Mark S. Allen said in a release.
And the truck drivers’ group the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) likewise called for continued investment in projects like creating new parking spaces for Class 8 trucks. “OOIDA and the 150,000 small business truckers we represent congratulate Secretary Sean Duffy on his confirmation to lead the U.S. Department of Transportation,” OOIDA President Todd Spencer said in a release. “We look forward to continue working with him in advancing the priorities of small business truckers across America, including expanding truck parking, fighting freight fraud, and rolling back burdensome, unnecessary regulations.”
With the new Trump Administration continuing to threaten steep tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China as early as February 1, supply chain organizations preparing for that economic shock must be prepared to make strategic responses that go beyond either absorbing new costs or passing them on to customers, according to Gartner Inc.
But even as they face what would be the most significant tariff changes proposed in the past 50 years, some enterprises could use the potential market volatility to drive a competitive advantage against their rivals, the analyst group said.
Gartner experts said the risks of acting too early to proposed tariffs—and anticipated countermeasures by trading partners—are as acute as acting too late. Chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) should be projecting ahead to potential countermeasures, escalations and de-escalations as part of their current scenario planning activities.
“CSCOs who anticipate that current tariff volatility will persist for years, rather than months, should also recognize that their business operations will not emerge successful by remaining static or purely on the defensive,” Brian Whitlock, Senior Research Director in Gartner’s supply chain practice, said in a release.
“The long-term winners will reinvent or reinvigorate their business strategies, developing new capabilities that drive competitive advantage. In almost all cases, this will require material business investment and should be a focal point of current scenario planning,” Whitlock said.
Gartner listed five possible pathways for CSCOs and other leaders to consider when faced with new tariff policy changes:
Retire certain products: Tariff volatility will stress some specific products, or even organizations, to a breaking point, so some enterprises may have to accept that worsening geopolitical conditions should force the retirement of that product.
Renovate products to adjust: New tariffs could prompt renovations (adjustments) to products that were overdue, as businesses will need to take a hard look at the viability of raising or absorbing costs in a still price-sensitive environment.
Rebalance: Additional volatility should be factored into future demand planning, as early winners and losers from initial tariff policies must both be prepared for potential countermeasures, policy escalations and de-escalations, and competitor responses.
Reinvent: As tariff volatility persists, some companies should consider investing in new projects in markets that are not impacted or that align with new geopolitical incentives. Others may pivot and repurpose existing facilities to serve local markets.
Reinvigorate: Early winners of announced tariffs should seek opportunities to extend competitive advantages. For example, they could look to expand existing US-based or domestic manufacturing capacity or reposition themselves within the market by lowering their prices to take market share and drive business growth.
By the numbers, global logistics real estate rents declined by 5% last year as market conditions “normalized” after historic growth during the pandemic. After more than a decade overall of consistent growth, the change was driven by rising real estate vacancy rates up in most markets, Prologis said. The three causes for that condition included an influx of new building supply, coupled with positive but subdued demand, and uncertainty about conditions in the economic, financial market, and supply chain sectors.
Together, those factors triggered negative annual rent growth in the U.S. and Europe for the first time since the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, the “Prologis Rent Index Report” said. Still, that dip was smaller than pandemic-driven outperformance, so year-end 2024 market rents were 59% higher in the U.S. and 33% higher in Europe than year-end 2019.
Looking into coming months, Prologis expects moderate recovery in market rents in 2025 and stronger gains in 2026. That eventual recovery in market rents will require constrained supply, high replacement cost rents, and demand for Class A properties, Prologis said. In addition, a stronger demand resurgence—whether prompted by the need to navigate supply chain disruptions or meet the needs of end consumers—should put upward pressure on a broad range of locations and building types.