Inside Shipium's Plan to Turn Freight Audit Into Real-Time Monitoring

Summary

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Podcast Summary: “Inside Shipium's Plan to Turn Freight Audit Into Real-Time Monitoring”

Podcast: Supply Chain Now
Date: July 20, 2026
Host: Scott Lewton, with co-host Marty Parker
Guests: Jason Murray (CEO & Co-founder, Shipium), Tim Meester (VP, Operations & Intelligence, Shipium)

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the transformation of the freight audit industry, exploring how Shipium aims to evolve traditional, reactive audit processes into proactive, real-time monitoring using AI and advanced data strategies. The conversation draws on the extensive backgrounds of Shipium’s leadership and frames “real-time audit” within broader industry trends—spotlighting the margin implications for operators, analogies to the diet industry’s unsolved problems, and the role of root-cause analysis and automation. Rich with tangible examples and lively banter, the episode provides a roadmap for supply chain professionals seeking actionable strategies to tackle billing errors and margin leakage.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Freight Audit Is Broken – And Still Growing

• Audit as a “Non-Value Add”:

  • Tim Meester describes freight audit as “reconciliation hell,” a necessary evil that adds little to business value.

    "Reconciling bills, chasing after the money you're owed, I've always called a reconciliation hell...it's not adding value to your business.”
    — Tim Meester [13:46]

• Industry Growth vs. Ramped Errors:

  • Despite a massive industry (14.2% CAGR over 5 years), operators keep losing 2–6% of spend to billing errors. The complexity of contracts and surcharges grows, yet the core issue remains unsolved.

• Root Cause Never Addressed:

  • Many auditors work post-fact, chasing refunds on repetitive issues. Some fix root causes—but labor-intensively and expensively.

    “The root cause is never addressed. And so that issue isn't detected in the carrier's pricing system. It perpetuates and they catch it again, they get the money back, they collect their percent again.”
    — Tim Meester [17:18]

2. The “Diet Industry” Analogy

• Chronic Problem, Perpetual Cure:

  • The freight audit industry stays healthy because it never solves the “weight problem.”

    “It's been a category that continues to thrive...because it never gets solved...we never resolve the underlying problem.”
    — Scott Lewton [16:53]

• GLP1 for Auditing:

  • Shipium sees its platform as delivering a “diet pill” (GLP1) that could finally address the problem at its root.

• Always On, Not After The Fact:

  • Shipium’s “Always On Audit” moves away from occasional audits and towards constant, AI-driven monitoring and action-taking.

3. Why Real-Time, “Always-On” Matters

• AI-Native Transformation:

  • Jason Murray likens disruptive change to the early film industry’s adoption of editing: real value only follows when processes are re-imagined for new tech, not just bolting AI onto old workflows.

    “Anytime you have an introduction of new technology...the real benefit of that new technology doesn't happen until the processes themselves start to get transformed around the new technology.”
    — Jason Murray [19:30]

• Continuous Monitoring > After-The-Fact Auditing:

  • Real-time systems can flag errors, suggest corrections, and even prevent mistakes as they appear, before any money is lost.

• Impact on Leadership & Team Focus:

  • Removing manual, firefighting workflows allows leaders to focus on innovation, customer value, and operations instead of chasing mistakes.

    “You can focus on the things that customers really care about...and I think folks worry about the elimination of tasks and jobs, but this is one that's thankless, that nobody wants to do.”
    — Marty Parker [22:20]

4. Margin Tax – Not Just “Leakage”

• Direct Impact on Profits:
  • Meester reframes freight errors as a “margin tax,” not mere leakage. Every lost dollar requires $19–$20 in new retail revenue to replace, due to low profit margins.

    “Let's call it what it is. You miss a dollar in your billing and the billing errors, you do not recover that dollar. It goes directly to your bottom line.”
    — Tim Meester [23:46]

5. Where Does the Money Leak, and Why?

• Labyrinthine Cost Structure:

  • Errors sprout from contract complexity, surcharges (delivery areas, weights, dimensional), misapplied rates, and incorrect data from both shippers and carriers.

• Delayed Discovery = Delayed Correction:

  • Slow, manual audits mean mistakes can persist for months or whole seasons, compounding loss.

• Examples of Error Types:

  • Misapplied delivery area surcharges, incorrect package dimensions, overlooked eligibility for refunds, and even undetected error dollars (possibly $2B+) sitting unclaimed.

6. Shipium’s “Always On Audit”: The How & Why

• AI-First, Autonomous System:

  • Unlike human-based audit firms, Shipium’s tech monitors, analyzes, and takes or suggests immediate action 24/7—with escalating AI agent capabilities.

• Intent Data Across Full Journey:

  • Because Shipium manages the entire shipment lifecycle (promise, routing, rating, manifesting, billing), it captures intent and context—offering richer insights than pure invoice-based solutions.

• Step Beyond Replacement:

  • Not just replacing human auditors, but enabling new actions: upstream corrections, autonomous claims, and proactivity previously impossible.

• Simulation & Strategic Insight (“Compass”):

  • Shipium’s Compass offering simulates “what ifs” on live data, guiding procurement and operational decisions in real time, supporting fast, data-driven RFPs and network benchmarks.

    “If you're guided by Data...they changed in round two, they changed their direction, which carriers they were considering. Just the power of being guided by real live data...I've never seen anything like it in my 30 years in supply chain.”
    — Tim Meester [42:38, 45:53]

7. Notable Use Cases & Operator Epiphanies

• Root Cause Correction:

  • Jason’s favorite use case: Early correction of upstream data (e.g., item dimensions) leads to broad, lasting savings and eliminates recurring error patterns.

• Automated Claims:

  • Autonomous bots filing claims save labor and address issues immediately, not weeks or months later.

• Simulation-Driven Eureka Moments:

  • Using Compass, one client discovered that upgrading to a premium carrier service (counterintuitive) actually saved $2.5M due to rate card anomalies—a revelation gleaned only from deep, real-time simulation.

    “It was an epiphany thing...those are just fascinating when you set...we just have to step back and say, okay, what's it telling us and what's weird? And let's drill into that...we're just like every week we're just like, oh my gosh, look what I found.”
    — Tim Meester [54:04]

8. Data Foundation: Why “More” Isn’t Enough

• Normalizing, Not Just Gathering:

  • The value is in turning raw data into actionable insights—normalizing, cleansing, and layering models that surface relationships and anomalies.

• Benchmarking & Cross-Network Insights:

  • As Shipium builds a data “factory,” it can help clients benchmark networks and find optimizations based on aggregated industry knowledge.

9. Looking Ahead – The Next Two Years

• Massive Disruption Forecasted:

  • Jason Murray draws a parallel to “the railroads” in industrial history—AI-first solutions will drive cost pressures and feature leaps, rapidly widening the gulf between proactive and laggard operators.

    “I think we are right now in a moment in time that probably hasn't happened since the railroads, to be honest with you...This AI thing is real.”
    — Jason Murray [57:59]

• Cultural Shift to Data First:

  • The imperative for organizations: build towards data-centricity, cultivate technical team members, and adopt AI-driven processes or risk irrelevance.

• Expansion of Agent-Driven Processes:

  • Next year: deeper push into agentic shopping (AI-driven commerce), further automating and optimizing order-to-delivery journeys.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Reconciling bills, chasing after the money you're owed, I've always called reconciliation hell.” — Tim Meester [13:46]
• “The diet analogy is perfect...let's be proactive with these things.” — Marty Parker [15:28]
• “We’ve cleverly called the product ‘always on audit’... we're trying to upend how we think about this.” — Jason Murray [19:29, 21:09]
• “Let's call it what it is. You miss a dollar in your billing and the billing errors, you do not recover that dollar.” — Tim Meester [23:46]
• “If you can't see it, we certainly can't manage it, we can't take advantage of it, we can't correct it.” — Scott Lewton [46:07]
• “Never underestimate humans’ ability to create new problems.” — Jason Murray [47:18]
• “Normalizing data...is actually tricky...draw insights from it in such a way that it’s useful to you.” — Jason Murray [47:54]
• “Automating a few tasks doesn’t affect the bottom line yet and they're under shareholder pressure to do that.” — Marty Parker [66:30]
• “Decisions have repercussions. Not making decisions has repercussions.” — Marty Parker [57:15]
• “This is a moment that probably hasn’t happened since the railroads...AI is real.” — Jason Murray [57:59]
• “I was slow to get into it...once I got in, it’s amazing...Our clients are in the same kind of mindset.” — Tim Meester [62:24]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [09:37] Guest Intros: Jason’s & Tim’s supply chain background and philosophy
• [13:46] Why freight errors persist & “reconciliation hell” (Tim Meester)
• [16:53] Diet industry analogy; never solving the true problem
• [19:29] The “Always On Audit” concept explained (Jason Murray)
• [22:20] C-suite, value focus, and implications for teams (Marty Parker)
• [23:46] “Margin Tax”—impact of billing errors on profit (Tim Meester)
• [28:27] Where money leaks: practical error sources
• [34:53] Real-time audit—difference from traditional methods (Jason Murray)
• [38:41] Shipium’s competitive differentiator and data advantage
• [42:38] The power of simulation-based insights
• [47:54] Why data normalization and intent matter most (Jason Murray)
• [52:11] Use cases: root cause fixes, automated claims, “epiphany” moments
• [57:59] The AI revolution’s expected industry impact
• [59:49] What’s next for the category and for Shipium
• [66:30] Final takeaways and why AI in freight audit matters (Marty Parker)

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Tone & Language

• Direct, Honest, Pragmatic: No-nonsense analysis, real world stories, plain language from all speakers.
• Playful & Relatable: Use of pop culture analogies (diet, Tribbles, Monty Python), and sports banter.
• Optimistic But Urgent: Strong belief in AI-driven change, with urgency for operators to adapt.

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Final Takeaway

The freight audit industry is ripe for real-time, AI-powered transformation that not only finds errors but actually prevents them, protects margins, and unleashes teams to create customer and business value. Shipium’s approach—native AI, end-to-end data, and actionable insights—shows what’s possible when you stop “chasing fires” and fix the root causes as they happen. As the industry’s next era dawns, those who embrace proactive, data-driven monitoring will outpace the rest, moving from reconciliation hell into a new age of supply chain performance.

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Contact:

• Learn more: Shipium.com
• Find Jason Murray & Tim Meester on LinkedIn

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Your Homework (per Scott Lewton):
“Take one thing Jason, Tim, or Marty shared and do something with it. Deeds, not words.” [69:28]

Transcript

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[Scott Lewton]

The doctor will see you now.

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[Jason Murray]

What we've worked really hard with at Shipium is to stay ahead of that curve, right? And I, I have no doubt that there will be people that will come and compete with us. But I think that the question you got to ask yourself is are these guys leaning in and really AI native or are they not? We are. And I think if they're not, I think they're going to be in big trouble.

[Supply Chain Now Announcer]

Welcome to Supply Chain now the number one voice of Supply chain. Join us as we share critical news, key insights and real supply chain leadership from the globe. One conversation at a time.

[Scott Lewton]

Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you may be. Scott Lewton and the one and only Marty Parker with you here on Supply Chain Now. Welcome to today's show. Hey Marty, how you doing today?

[Marty Parker]

I'm excited, I'm excited to learn. Excited to see some great innovation.

[Scott Lewton]

Me, I am too. You stay in that constant state of supply chain excitement. Is that a fair statement, Marty?

[Marty Parker]

Hey, I'm always learning, my friend. And I'm getting ready to learn again.

[Scott Lewton]

Today we are, we got folks. I'm really looking forward to today's show. We're going to be diving into the world of shipping. In particular, we're going to be discussing the freight audit industry. You know, unfortunately there's a ton of but we've always done it this way type of old fashioned thinking out in the market. However, as is usually the case, there's a big opportunity to lean in to the golden age of supply Chain. Tech and carve out a much better path moving forward. Today we're going to be walking through all of that and more with one heck of a power panel that are challenging industry leaders to take a much different approach to shipping and really overall supply chain performance. Our guests are going to be bringing perspective and expertise that might just change the way you see the supply chain world today and down the road. So stay tuned for a fascinating discussion. Now Marty, always a pleasure when you join us on the show. Given your decades of practitioner and operator experience. I look forward to your take on the conversation today. Are you ready to go, my friend?

[Marty Parker]

I am ready. Let's do this thing.

[Scott Lewton]

So folks, stick around for a great conversation that's going to offer up tons of actionable insights because if they're not actionable, just how good are they? Right? Want to welcome in our wonderful guest joining us here today, starting with Jason Murray who spent over 19 years in varying leadership positions with Amazon, all before co founding ship. I am where he serves as CEO today. Now joining Jason, his colleague Tim Meester is a sustainability minded procurement and supply chain executive that served in leadership roles with companies such as Best Buy and Kohler and now he serves as vice president for operations and intelligence with shipping. Folks, you're going to love Jason and Tim's perspective here today. Let's welcome them both in. Jason, how you doing today my friend?

[Jason Murray]

I am wonderful. Great to be here.

[Scott Lewton]

All right, we are glad you're here as well. And Tim, great to finally rub elbows officially and get you on the record here at supply Chain now. How you doing?

[Marty Parker]

Great.

[Tim Meester]

It's about time. I've been liking your stuff for like 10 years on LinkedIn, I think. So it's great to finally be here.

[Scott Lewton]

We're gonna keep it real here today, folks. But Marty, our audience, our SCN global fam is in for a treat with Jason and Tim here today.

[Jason Murray]

Right?

[Marty Parker]

Yeah, 100%. We are going to learn a new way of thinking about saving money and increasing our margins.

[Scott Lewton]

That's right. No fluff zone here today. No fluff zone. But before we get into all the business, you all know how I like to start, right? With a nice fun warm up question. And we've got, we got two characters that you'll have a lot of common threads and kindred spirits amongst you. Jason, you're much like me. You may not be a bird nerd like I am, but I love getting outdoors, I love nature. And you live up in a beautiful part of the world in the Seattle area where you're a Big rabid Seattle sports fan. So I got a two pronged question for you. Number one, where it's one of your favorite go to's in terms of getting out and taking in the sights and the nature sounds and secondly what's your prediction for Seahawks football in the 2027

[Jason Murray]

year one if I can get up to Mount Rainier, I just, I love it up there. I told my wife, you know, probably, probably just want, when I, when I do pass, I want my ashes sprinkled on that thing. So I, I love it. I absolutely, I think it's the most beautiful place on the planet. So Seahawks, I think my head says man the Rams look tough this year. They got Miles Garrett now seems like everything's lining up but my heart says we're going to get a repeat. It's time to go back to back. So I'm, I'm going all in on that. That's my prediction.

[Scott Lewton]

Jason, I love that and what an impressive year last year was. What a resilient and dynamic Seahawks team. All right, really quick Marty on the Seahawks prediction, does your sports analysis and supercomputer does it, does it back up Jason's prediction?

[Marty Parker]

Sadly, I don't think with my brain, I think with my heart and I'm a perpetual Falcons fan wins. My son in law works at the Falcons. I think this is the year I, I, I make that prediction every single year. And let's just say I've, I've not won a lot but this, this next year is the year new coach got a new approach and I, I, I think it's going to make a difference.

[Scott Lewton]

Love it.

[Jason Murray]

Well, you got your heart broken by the, by the Patriots just like us back in 2014. But we had a revenge last year so anything's possible. Marty, you do?

[Marty Parker]

Yeah, I may need to go take a pill right now. That, that was hard.

[Jason Murray]

Jason went there, he went there, I went through it. It's all. Okay.

[Scott Lewton]

Fair enough.

[Supply Chain Now Announcer]

All right.

[Scott Lewton]

So as I mentioned a minute ago, Tim, you and you and Jason have some things in common. You also are a big outdoors passionista, getting outside and taking in a breath, breath of fresh air there in Wisconsin and you but you are a big original football fan which is soccer some of the states call it. Of course we got the World cup going on right now. Tim, two questions for you. Where's your go to for getting outdoors and and we're recording this, this podcast in late June. Who is going to win the World Cup? Tim, first of all, I'm a fellow

[Tim Meester]

bird nerd too so getting outdoors, we've got woods right behind our house. If I'm having a stressful day because of Jason or somebody else I work with, then I walk back out to the woods. Uh, but, and I just saw my first western tanager out in Portland when we were out at Multnomah Falls out there. Um, so honestly, anywhere there are birds, there are great state parks and in hiking areas in Wisconsin, and it's fantastic. Um, I, I'd say for the World cup, the USA looks really strong. And I know it, it seems weird to say that, but it would great be great to see the men catch up with the USA women's team and actually win this. So I don't know otherwise. I'm a huge Netherlands fan too. So, you know, the, the orange or the red, white and blue.

[Scott Lewton]

I like it, Tim. And it's good to have a couple of horses in the race. All right, so Marty, I tell you, you know, Tim's in Wisconsin, Jason's in Seattle. Great places in the world. Of course, we're here in the Atlanta area and the World cup has just taken over and it's been so cool to see the passion and the camaraderie and the kindred in the competitive spirits too, but it's really brought so many countries together. Your quick thoughts there, Marty?

[Marty Parker]

Yeah, very proud of my son in law. He, he got tickets and he gave two of the tickets for last night's match with Haiti to naturalized citizen and a friend of his daughter. And those were Haiti's first two goals in the World Cup. And to see on social media them just going crazy at the beginning in the middle of the game. They didn't win, but I don't know. To me it was the story of sports where you give up your tickets to someone else that really, you know, cared a lot about it.

[Scott Lewton]

Love that. Gosh, I'd love to talk more about that, but we got a great story to get into here today. Talking about one of my favorite topics. No, not birds, but thank you, Tim. Supply chain. And better yet, how we can, we can take, you know, move industry to a much better, more innovative approach when it comes to certainly shipping a better managing our supply chain performance. And we're going to get into that now. But Jason, first, you know, I shared just a nugget or two didn't do you justice because you've done a lot in your career. But if you would, for our audience, we're going to level set a little bit on your journey as well as your current role as CEO. There at shipping.

[Jason Murray]

Yeah. So, you know, 20 years at Amazon. I'm a technologist by trade. My career was really defined by kind of the combination of logistics and technology and applying that, both data and technology to this space. I ran the supply chain optimization Tech Group from 2010 to 2016 and the things I'm most, you know, that was kind of right when prime was starting to take off. And the thing that I'm the most proud of is the are kind of what we did with machine learning and data science and that kind of first version of AI and how we applied it to that space. And then you fast forward to Shipium, we're really trying to democratize or bring that technology the rest of the market. And what I like to say is we obviously started with something that looked a lot like what we were trying to do at Amazon, but we're also now going through this AI revolution, this generative AI revolution. And so I have the exciting prospect of actually figuring out how do we apply now generative AI to the space. Right. And I would say it's even more exciting. So I, I feel very blessed that I've been a. Able to kind of do this and in two different locations with a similar, similar effect. And it's, I'm excited to talk about that today.

[Scott Lewton]

Hey, we are too. And the industry is better off for it. So I'm excited about what you are doing. I love the democratization that we're seeing in so many different levels and layers and we're going to talk more about all that. Tim, really quick on level set two on your journey as well as your role here at Shipium.

[Tim Meester]

Yes. I've got 30 years in supply chain, mostly in retail, you know, Best Buy, Toys R Us, when they were, you know, thriving, some in manufacturing with Kohler and so forth. My roles have been across logistics, supplier management, overarching supply chain transformation. Spent a lot of time in procurement, which most people don't desire to end up in procurement. But once I got there, I loved it. Right. And so was able to do that with Best Buy and got deep, deep exposure to the parcel space and retail as things were shifting to shift from store and getting more complex and speed and, and so it's, it's just been a fascinating set of puzzles that, you know, for 15 or 20 years people have not been able to solve. And now we've got some amazing tools and capabilities that you can see solutions like now, which is really exciting.

[Scott Lewton]

It really is. And Marty, between Jason and Tim's perspective, you just heard in a minute or two of their responses and Jason pointed out that intersection of technology and logistics. I think the impression I get with Jason and Tim is they're not asking, hey, how have we always done it? They're asking why are we, have we always done it this way? And offering a better way. But Marty, what'd you hear?

[Marty Parker]

Yeah, so you know, I speak with folks in the C suite a lot and for a while they were talking about AI and tariffs and now they're talking about AI and what a great opportunity for essentially low hanging fruit. They know there's an efficiency there, it's a safe way to do it within their existing systems. And they're all under pressure if you read the Wall Street Journal every day to do something with it. And now they can. There's technology like Shipium available that they can apply. So having the kind of backgrounds that Jason and Tim do, it just gives strength and credence to the ability to make that application.

[Scott Lewton]

I like it. Strength and credence. That's a great phrase, Marty. You make me sound smarter when I hang out with you. All right, so Jason and Tim dive in deep and Tim, we're going to focus on a lot of your perspective on the front end and then we're going to circle around to Jason's perspective and the vision he sees for shipping kind of on the second half. So Tim, starting with you, you know, there's a entire industry built out there focused on auditing, freight and parcel bills. And the crazy thing is it keeps growing year after year, yet operators keep losing money to billing errors. What the heck is actually going on here, Tim?

[Tim Meester]

Yeah, as an operator I've always believed that auditing is a non value add function. It's necessary. But reconciling bills, chasing after the money you're owed, I've always called a reconciliation. Hell, like you're just stuck in this and it's not adding value to your business. And surprisingly the industry is growing. So the freight audit industry has grown at a 14.2% CAGR over the last five years and still we have 2 to 6% billing errors on all invoices in the parcel space in particular. So it's not improving. Auditors are growing and making a lot of money out of it. And yes, contracts are getting more complex, the pricing mechanisms are getting more difficult and those errors are just perpetuating. But the industry is growing and it's not being solved. So you know, are our team talks about it like what we're building is like the GLP one for the audit industry. Right. Like finally we have a diet pill that can help solve this issue and we can apply the technology that's available today to it. And hopefully we can make audit a non issue just by our monitoring capabilities and the corrective actions that we can turn into agentic corrective actions in the future.

[Scott Lewton]

So, Tim, I love it. We're going to come back to that diet. The GLP1 analogy. But really quick. Marty, when he was talking about the multiplication of errors, reminds me of the Tribbles. Remember the Tribbles episode from Star Trek?

[Jason Murray]

Right.

[Scott Lewton]

This kept multiplying, getting bigger and bigger. Right, Marty, what'd you hear there from Tim?

[Marty Parker]

No, I teach this. So companies that I go into to help are in firefighting mode. And Edwards Deming said, you never made a company better by putting out a fire. You've got to go back to the root cause. And in my manufacturing world, you'll go in with inspectors and auditors and that tells you automatically they're not a high quality company because high quality companies do it before it ever gets to that point. And so, you know, I think the diet analogy is perfect. You know, if you're eating wrong and you're not working out and you're not doing the preventive maintenance kinds of things, you know, things aren't going to go well. And then after the fact, you're desperate to do something about it. Let's be proactive with these things.

[Scott Lewton]

I'm with you. I'm with you. So I'm going to and Jason, circle back to you in just a second. I want to stick with this diet industry theme because I think it's a. It's an intriguing one.

[Oregon Lottery Announcer]

Oregon parks make an Oregon summer. But what makes an Oregon park? Well, Oregon Lottery gameplay helps no matter the game Megabucks video lottery or keno funds from lottery games help support parks projects across the state, ensuring they stay safe, accessible and open for all. In fact, Discover State park scratches are in stores now. It's the perfect way to put a little bit of Oregon's parks in your pocket. The Oregon Lottery. Together we do good things. Must be 18 or older to play Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment only.

[Scott Lewton]

So Tim, you've just like it a moment ago. And I know as I've been watching out sharing your perspective across industry, you've likened all of this to the diet industry. And of course in this industry it's been a category that continues to thrive precisely, kind of to Marty's point, because it never gets solved, right? Never. We never resolve the underlying problem. So a few more thoughts there, Tim.

[Tim Meester]

Yeah, you know, and I think, and not to knock other auditors because there are great auditors out there doing their job the way they've prescribed their job to happen. Right. And you've got a lot of freight audit and payment companies that will, you know, do a surface level review of the billing and detect issues and go chase them and get the money back and then collect their percent of that money. But the root cause is never addressed. And so that issue isn't detected in the carrier's pricing system. It perpetuates and they catch it again, they get the money back, they collect their percent again. So they continue to do that off a gain share model. You do have other auditors that do try to fix the root cause and they're great at it at fixing that root cause. They're also incredibly expensive because it's labor intensive. And you know, one of the issues is it's after the fact. The invoice comes in, you re engineer the costs, you try to find where that's at, you reconcile with the carrier and then you talk with the shipper who endured that and it's a month after the issue happened. Right. So that has happened for four or five weeks since then. And now we understand it. So there are just better ways to use live data and do validation and things to detect it through the execution process and take corrective actions early and automate conversations with the carrier. So it's sent immediately to them that there's an issue. So that's, that's how we're focused on the vision of this, Tim.

[Scott Lewton]

I like it. And, and it kind of goes to your vision, Jason, when it comes to the diet industry analogy. And, and also the real time, you know, because you know, when you're sneaking in completely regular potato chips. Right. It doesn't catch up to you later. I need like a buzzer that goes off as I, as I eat more than one portion or something. But Jason, speak to this analogy that I think will resonate with folks out there.

[Jason Murray]

Yeah. I think, you know, we, we've kind of cleverly called the product always on audit.

[Supply Chain Now Announcer]

Right.

[Jason Murray]

And I, I think the, the thing to note here is just that it, we're, we're going to build this in an AI native fashion. And I, you know, I alluded to the fact that we're, we're getting into AI and we've, we've made, you know, we've made changes to some of our other products. But I think the, the auditing thing was so interesting because anytime you have an introduction of new technology, the, the real benefit of that new technology doesn't happen until the processes themselves start to get transformed around the new technology. Right. I, I personally love the story about how when, you know, cameras came out to make movies, film filming, video equipment came out to make movies, what they did at first is they just filmed plays, right. And then it took them another 10 years before they realized that you can film scenes and clip them together. And that happens over multiple days and you have multiple sets and, and you end up with a much better kind of finished product than you did of just filming a play. Right. But I think audit is interesting because if you think about what was audit before, it was a human driven process. Right. And they maybe had tools that they used, but it was ultimately, if I had a million transactions to get through, I needed enough people to work through those transactions and some level of productivity. And I think why AI is so interesting is because we're basically pushing forward an entirely autonomous product. Right. And by doing so you kind of introduce, you know, you start to think, well, like what can you do? If someone can look at this all the time, what could happen? Right. And I, I think honestly we're still figuring out where, where all the benefits live. Like anytime you're in this kind of unpredictable experimental phase. But it means that why not look at every transaction five times a day?

[Marty Parker]

Right?

[Jason Murray]

Right. We don't, we're not limited by humans. It doesn't matter. Let's keep looking and looking and looking. Right. And also then I can take action immediately. Right. And, and take action before the invoice even arrives as opposed to, as opposed to waiting until that's done. Right. And so I think the, you know, the important takeaway from all this is just that we're, we're trying to kind of upend how we think about this. And I actually have been starting to talk about this more as a monitoring system as opposed to an auditing system. Right. And it's, it's a, it's kind of a reframing around the point that you should expect it to just work. And we're really just looking for mistakes as opposed to expecting that there's going to be mistakes and working back from that. Right. So it's really going to be, it's really interesting. But it's been the first thing that we found within our space that just is so applicable to this can. This is going to be a, a, a total rethink of this process given this new technology that's available to us with this generative AI.

[Scott Lewton]

Outstanding. We're going to touch on the always on thing in second half the conversation too. So good stuff there, Jason. Marty, whether it's a diet analogy or I love Jason's, you know, early film industry analogy too. You know, you've been in industry for quite some time as an operating practitioner. All that squares with you.

[Marty Parker]

Yeah. Think of the lag times involved. Think about I'm a CEO trying to make decisions on bad data that gets to me late that I can't trust, and then I make a decision and make an implementation, and then there's another lag time on that. So at the end of the day, I'm months into making changes and decisions. And, you know, let's be honest, this is a commodity and I want it to deliver to my product, to the customer as fast as possible at the lowest cost possible as an optimization. Now, suddenly, as a coo, I can focus on innovations, I can focus on improvements to customers, I can focus on new products, I can focus on better packaging, I can focus on the things that customers really care about. And I think folks worry about the elimination of tasks and jobs, but this is one that's thankless, that nobody wants to do. You know, let's be proactive on it so that we can focus on the things that matter in our business.

[Scott Lewton]

Well said, Marty. Okay.

[Supply Chain Now Announcer]

All right.

[Scott Lewton]

So, Tim, I got some questions for you. This next section, I'm going to stick with you for a minute and don't judge my lack of mathematical prowess. Okay? Tim, don't do it. My middle name is not math, I can promise you. But I want to ask you, Tim, I've seen you frame this as a margin tax, you know, not leakage or loss spend. Why does the, the word, the MW margin really matter here, Tim?

[Tim Meester]

Yeah, I mean, the leakage and loss spend are. Those are weak terms, right? The margin taxes. So I don't know if you watch Monty Python at all, if you've seen a knight get his arm chopped off and it's merely a flesh wound. Like, it's the same kind of thing with leakage and loss spend. Like, let's call it what it is. You miss a dollar in your billing and the billing errors, you do not recover that dollar. It goes directly to your bottom line. Right. And your entire company is working to preserve that bottom line. So, like, let's not gloss over, you know, contract leakage and things. It is that, but it's critically important. And I think people underestimate the value of a dollar on the bottom line and what that means, but it's like I just, I just don't like the weak terms.

[Scott Lewton]

Right. I can tell you keep it real and I appreciate that we need more folks to keep it real in industry and in our world. So. So you mentioned that bottom line.

[Marty Parker]

Right.

[Scott Lewton]

I think I was reading either a blog or maybe another podcast, your own, where you made the point that a dollar lost on the bottom line can take roughly 19 to 20 new revenue dollars to earn back. That's a serious bird expound on that, Tim.

[Tim Meester]

Yeah, so, I mean, I really grew up in retail so that those figures are specific to retail. And I just, on the top of my head, I don't have the manufacturing information, but typical retail operating margin is around 4 and a half to 5 and a half percent, some lower, some higher. But generally the retail industry at least recently, has been around that 5% mark. That means the operating expense taken to. And every $100, you know, you get $5 of margin, $95 spent trying to, you know, drive revenue to get that margin. So every dollar that you can just add directly to that bottom line, directly to your margin, alleviates the need for $19 to be spent. And it's people in organizations. I mean, I led procurement for years and, and savings isn't a sexy thing to go after. Right. People where I'm not driving profitability, I'm not driving growth. But the impact of that and reframing the perspective about bottom line versus top line and what it takes helped people to understand just the critical importance of managing your business effectively, having the appropriate controls in place so you don't lose money and then negotiating effectively and getting the right suppliers and carriers and so forth in the mix to optimize that.

[Scott Lewton]

All right, so, Marty, I saw you nodding your head, as we were. I mean, that's, that is, that's an interesting perspective as Tim kind of framed it up. Your thoughts, Marty?

[Marty Parker]

No, I teach my students the same thing. I think it's relevant with manufacturing where I was because manufacturers run under tremendous margin pressure as well and with fierce competition. And if they do begin to beat that net income, they start reinvesting it because they've got competitors coming after them. So. Absolutely true. And with my students, I'm like, hey, save the company money. You're going to affect that margin in a substantial way. And I think it's absolutely right. And every study I've seen on it is in that range.

[Scott Lewton]

And Jason, just really quick check in with you. We got to protect the bottom line. Because of these immense repercussions that Tim and Marty are speaking to. I know it may sound obvious for a lot of folks out there, but when we, when we, when we get it down to the dollars, the specific dollars and cents proven by research out there, it sure is costly. Your quick thoughts here, Jason?

[Jason Murray]

Yeah, I mean, I think people totally underestimate the, the, the, you know, the work about being cost efficient. You have to, I think people tend to kind of go rail to rail on either side of this. And it's important to, while you grow, make sure you maintain that, that same margin discipline. Right. And if there's one thing Amazon I felt, you know, was beaten into me over the years, is that grow, but also do it efficiently. Right. And that's, that's very important to run a company effectively because of what these guys are talking about.

[Tim Meester]

Yep.

[Scott Lewton]

Good stuff, Jason. All right. So, Tim, where the heck does the money actually leak? Invoice errors, unclaimed refunds, surcharges, misapplied rates, all that and others. Give us the real world. Keep it real picture there, Tim.

[Tim Meester]

Well, you just gave the answer.

[Jason Murray]

Oh, all of them.

[Tim Meester]

All.

[Scott Lewton]

You mean, you mean I was onto something there, Tim?

[Tim Meester]

Yeah, I think at the, at the highest level. So we operate in the parcel industry primarily, and it's an incredibly complex industry, and especially with the national carriers, the pricing mechanisms, the levers, how things get applied differently, how a fuel surcharge gets applied to different elements within the package details or the delivery. I consider it a labyrinth. It's almost impossible to navigate and know how not to go around the wrong corner, how to figure that out. So I just think the level of complexity has, with that level of complexity, growth. There's growth in the opportunity for issues. And carriers, frankly, are their own worst enemy. They make it complex and then their own pricing teams can't figure it out when they're doing the billing. I've seen that multiple times where you have to clarify to them you made this change. Here's how it actually affects the pricing, here's how the contract shows up. You need to correct your pricing system to build this correctly. And not saying they're doing anything wrong, they are doing something wrong, but it's just a complex space and they become their own worst enemy. I think the primary drivers are where we see the rate increases coming most frequently and it's typically in parcel. It's the packages that they don't want, the delivery areas that they don't want. So delivery area surcharges, weights and dimensions, and the Pressure around size and weight in the shipment, where they put dim divisors on it and so forth. Residential versus commercial deliveries. And understanding what that address is, was it a residence, was it commercial? Like, what's the difference? What does a dorm count as at a college? It actually counts as a commercial address because of the density of the deliveries going into it.

[Jason Murray]

So

[Tim Meester]

those things, the interpretation of them between the carrier and the shipper and how the contract is written is important so that the understanding is aligned. And then, like within our platform, doing rate shopping and carrier selection, we codify all of that within there and verify. So within milliseconds, we can make the right carrier selection and ensure that the rating is accurate. So it's. Yeah, it's a little bit all over. So there are billing errors. There are also undetected errors. Right. And there are eligible recovery dollars sitting out there. And one fact that I saw that I could not get validated was that the national carriers have $2 billion worth of unclaimed returns. So it's not returns in packages, but. But returns on invoice issues. So I don't know if that's true, but I could see it. I could see people not going after it.

[Jason Murray]

One thing to add too, though, is we do a lot of what you find in audit is. Is things that the shipper themselves has, you know, brought in incorrect data. Right. So you might have incorrect item dimensions or something else. Right. And so it's not all about. It's not all about reconciling between kind of what you think you should have paid and what you actually paid sometimes. Oh, I actually should have, you know, they were correct. But I need to fix this upstream decision or this upstream data point because that will ultimately go lead to a different decision that I wasn't making. Right. So it's a. It's an important distinction because it is. It's one of the fundamental things. And I think Marty talked about delay. Right. And you can see how a whole season could go by if you've got this long delay where I'm shipping this, this, this item in a wrong, like a wrong package. And then by the time I figured out that I had the wrong dimension on this item, like, the season's over, it's too late. Right. So you know that being able to do that in real time is so important.

[Scott Lewton]

That delay you speak of makes the labyrinth, Marty, even more complex. Right, Marty. I think Tim and Jason both are keeping it real. I love some of the examples. You know, what does it look like on the distribution floor? A month in or during an early morning finance close. I think they're keeping it real like that. But what'd you hear there, Marty?

[Marty Parker]

One, I'm suffering a bit from PTSD because I've lived all of the stuff we're describing. I'm just thinking back to RFPs that took months to put together were wrong because we didn't have good visibility. And then we implemented the. The with the particular provider and it didn't match up because, I don't know, six months had gone by. We're. Our business was running differently and then we. It was like a cat chasing its tail and no one could figure it out. I mean, I'd have teams working on the things that they mentioned, working with the vendor. The vendor couldn't figure it out. We couldn't figure it out. Imagine a world where, you know, you're doing that real time and you're fixing those problems real time instead of months and months later. Everything from RFPs to, you know, real world decision making gets faster and easier.

[Scott Lewton]

The debt, deadly delay. Right, that deadly delay. And I'll tell you what, I'm gonna sign up for Shipium and see if I can't claim a stake of that $2 billion is out there. Tim. And disclaimer. We're not sure. We're still figuring out, making sure if that's quantified or not, but still. All right, so Jason and Tim and Marty, I want to shift gears a bit here and Jason, I want to kind of lead with your perspective through this next section. You know, traditional audit is fundamentally, as we've established after the fact. Right. You catch air, an error months later and then you got to go chase after a refund. And that's if you're aware, if you catch it in the first place. So you touched on earlier something that, that your team is launching. But let's talk about the concept first. Always on that real time audit change or real time audit, what does that change from how it, you know, this industry has always been done.

[Jason Murray]

Yeah, I mean, I kind of went into it a little bit before, but I think the, you know, the exciting thing is there's actually lots of data points happening along the whole cycle. Right. We're, when we go to plan a ship, we're actually, we're actually calculating out what we think this is going to cost. We have feedback on did they measure and weigh this item from the conveyor once we will manifest or send it to the carrier, we get feedback on what they think it should cost. With the ability to call out to another system and say, you know, what, what is the, what's the current state of your contract? Like, we can do kind of audit in place and then we finally kind of get the invoice at the end and then tie it all out. Right. But the point there is that there are multiple touch points along this process. And as I was talking about a minute ago, traditionally you just kind of let it ride, let the invoice get mailed in, and then you check and see what worked or didn't work after the fact. But we're now entering a world with kind of AI where we can, as these things are coming in, we're constantly comparing and updating and then also have the ability then to like, try to take action as soon as possible. So I alluded to, I alluded to that a minute ago. You know, if I'm identifying that there's something, there seems to be something wrong with a certain item, I should be telling the erp, like, you have a, you, you. Something's wrong with this data source. Right. And that, that could be as early as. Right. Right. Before that item ships. I mean, you know, theoretically, you kind of run a Toyota protection system, Toyota production system, type play and pull the damn thing off the line and say like, well, let me get this right before we actually do it. Right. But, but I mean, at the very least, you're constantly monitoring all the signals. You're constantly updating data sources, you're constantly talking to the carrier about what their perspective is. Right. And it's just kind of to eliminate that in real time. And I, I think this is just emblematic of a situation where an existing old, old process needs to be totally rethought for this technology that we have entering into the picture. And that's what I'm honestly the most excited about.

[Scott Lewton]

Me too. And Marty, I always use the word paradigm wrong, but I think Jason and Tim are. You are making the case that we got to change the paradigm when it comes to freight audit and beyond. Your thoughts, Marty?

[Marty Parker]

No. TPS is perfect because in manufacturing, when you go in and you see inspectors and auditors, you automatically know it's a poor quality system. You know, they're, they're not proactive. They're doing reactive maintenance, they're doing reactive inspection and quality control and audits. And even the best audit can't get every data point. So if you, if you could take. And then a second point I would think would be all the different disparate systems that you just described. Yeah, all the acronyms. Right. TMS and WMS and ERP and CRM and I think just goes on and on and on. If now through APIs and AI you can do a coordination there and reconcile, you can stop it before it ever starts and you can fix it like you said, in a really short period of time and it propagates, right. If there's five a day and maybe you're starting a new product and Suddenly it's selling 10 times as much now you got 250 a day, you know, 50 a day or 250 a day or whatever. So you, you, those problems just explode. And in growing companies that are selling more and growing their customer base, massive opportunity.

[Scott Lewton]

All right, so I'm going to pose one more question to Jason and then I'll circle back to Tim and get your some of your thoughts here on this change, on this transformation, on this transition. Because there's lots of good news. I think you mentioned it earlier, Jason.

[Jason Murray]

Yeah.

[Scott Lewton]

Shipium is launching, always on audit in I think Q3 of 2026. That is really cool. It's going to be able to serve this massive opportunity and, and, and break the debt, the diet cycles that we were referencing earlier. But Jason, and maybe circling back because you've touched on some of this stuff, I like sharpening the, the point on the pencil here. In the plainest terms possible, Jason, how would, is this going to be different from all the audit tools and the third party services that so many operators out there are already paying for?

[Jason Murray]

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple points, right. And I think I'll just start with the, the kind of AI first approach. And I, I've, I've covered that a couple times. Right. But by virtue of the fact that we are going for a fully autonomous system, right, meaning that this is going to be running by agents, you know, meaning AI agents, not humans. And there, there will obviously be exception workflows and everything else as we continue to feed data into this and train these models up. Right. But not too long. These are going to be running autonomously and that opens all the doors for the stuff we're talking about. We can be constantly monitoring, constantly looking, constantly taking action 24 hours a day. Whereas you think about a traditional audit firm, they're limited by humans. Humans have to sleep, humans have to do all these things and these are systems that are going to be able to watch all the time and make sure that you're staying up speed. I think the second piece though kind of comes back to the fact that we are positioning shipium as an end to end platform. From the delivery promise, you tell the customer all the way to what you pay the vendor, right. To pay the carrier. And you think about a shipment through that entire life cycle, which is promise, routing, rating, you know, manifesting, invoicing, billing, payment, et cetera, you know, those different stages, tying those all together. And because we're involved in all those decision points, we understand a lot more about what the intent of a retailer was in the first place. So we understand when were they trying to get it to the customer, how much did they expect to pay, what was the margin through the whole cycle? Right. And so we are feel we're very uniquely positioned to have data sets that, that we have a data set that is not going to be available to someone who is entirely looking at invoices. Right. We've got all of this intent data that goes through the entire life cycle of that shipment. And then thirdly, I think it just kind of leans into what's possible. Right. I think that by going autonomous, we're mostly talking about replacing something. But technology doesn't get exciting until you start building on top of it. Right. And the ability to take actions, whether that's claims, whether that's fixing an upstream system that I alluded to, that's where, you know, the good stuff happens, right? Where you're now, you're now doing things that weren't possible. Right. And so we fully expect to match what's there and that's fine. We're going to be able to do it at a lower marginal cost because we're doing it with, with a hyper efficient system compared to what was happening before. But really the, the, the bang comes when we start adding the stuff on top that we're really excited about.

[Scott Lewton]

All right, so hold that thought on your second point on data because I'm a circle. Back to you, Jason, on that. But Tim, two part question here. Number one in your supply chain labyrinth is David Bowie in that supply chain labyrinth? Tim, like, like the famed 1980s movie. Do you see that? Sorry, folks, I had to. I don't think we've ever had the word labyrinth in one of our Pod 1600 podcast episodes.

[Tim Meester]

It's fair. I brought up the Flesh Moon, right?

[Jason Murray]

That's right.

[Scott Lewton]

That got me thinking. But Tim, more seriously, I want to circle back and get your take. You know, I was asking Jason, the, the in the plainest of terms, you know, why it's different than what's already out there. I want to get you to weigh into Tim.

[Marty Parker]

Yeah.

[Tim Meester]

I think the biggest Thing for me is the immediacy of everything and the actions can be prompted that day. And kind of back to Jason's earlier point, it's not always a carrier's issue when there's a billing problem or something that went wrong. So we just last week had a prospect talk to us about the fact that they had made a change in how they were routing shipments and which carrier they were going to within their existing platform. And that choice that they made and how they pulled that lever within the system generated delivery area surcharges because it was going to a more remote location with a carrier that had a $6 fee on every single package for delivery area surcharge. Like that added up very quickly. The auditor looked at it, it was audited correctly because that's how they shipped it. They got charged the correct amount. So it didn't go through or I mean, so it went through in the reporting five weeks later, like they see the delivery area surcharges spiked incredibly. It's five weeks later. The, the carrier didn't do anything wrong. They, there were no dollars to recover in that situation. They just spent tens of thousands of dollars too much because of a decision they made. Right. So if we're detecting those things, if we can pin within our platform what's appropriate, we can detect that very quickly. Hey, today we've seen a spike in this, you know, what did you do? Or, or if they're operating on our platform now, we can program the platform to say you've made the wrong selection in this case. And actually our platform would resolve that beforehand anyway. But, you know, those are, those are the interesting things within the audit space. The other thing that gets really powerful. I'll just give you a second example. Being in the procurement world, Marty brought it up earlier, it takes months to get data together, and by the time you get it together, your data's stale and you're like working from a different playbook than your suppliers. In our case, we've got simulation capabilities that can operate on live data. Today we can execute a three stage RFP within a week or two. The carriers can't turn around that fast, but we can identify the opportunities and drive the scenarios and simulations and things over a couple weeks. And the fun thing about that is we just did that with a company a couple months ago and they had assumptions going into their rfp. We leveraged the data and we were guided by the data and it told a completely different story than what they were going in with. Right. So if you're guided by Data like they changed in round two, they changed their direction, which carriers they were considering how these carriers supported their ultimate objectives as a company. Just the power of being guided by real live data, being able to simulate it, being able to then plug that into the platform to execute and monitor from that point forward is just powerful. I've never seen anything like it in my 30 years in supply chain. It's fun stuff.

[Scott Lewton]

That's a big statement. Big statement there, Marty, really quick comment. If we can't see it, we certainly can't manage it. We can't take advantage of it, we can't correct it. And there's so much data of course, in a modern day supply chain. Your quick thoughts, Marty?

[Marty Parker]

When both Jason and Tim were talking, I was thinking about what the C suite cares about, which is adding value. And value is what a customer will pay for. A customer is not going to pay you for a bunch of errors and mistakes. And you know, whether you're B2C or B2B, you look kind of like the Keystone Cops. You look like you don't know what you're doing when you're having all of these issues and problems. And I've been recommended to potential customers by vendors as an example. That's not going to happen if a vendor sees that you can't keep track of your information, your data, your processes. And so having someone that helps you do that in a proactive way adds value. And then secondly, you know, with the bot comment that Jason talked about that is coming, you know, and there's sort of this Skynet Terminator fear that people have and they're going to lose jobs. But I'm a, I'm a big believer that people are going to pivot into things that matter. Fixing mistakes that are easily fixed doesn't add value. Right?

[Scott Lewton]

Right.

[Jason Murray]

So never underestimate humans ability to create new problems.

[Marty Parker]

Well, that's a good point.

[Jason Murray]

Jason, new stuff.

[Tim Meester]

Yeah.

[Marty Parker]

You'll be able to write some more code and get some more bots to

[Jason Murray]

fix some more issues.

[Scott Lewton]

That's right.

[Jason Murray]

It's always, always there.

[Scott Lewton]

So Marty, good stuff there. Good stuff. So Jason, I want to circle back to data because you know, none of this works on bad data or certainly is a heck of a lot more challenging. Jason, talk about why the data layer has to come first and where the new compass offering from the Shipium team where this fits into the equation.

[Jason Murray]

Yeah, I mean I think in general, I think the first thing to level set on is just how you think about data. I think there's kind of this tendency to believe that I just want to get more and more and more and more data. Right. And you'll hear like, Facebook has all this data. And I, I. Facebook does have a lot of data. It's, it's. It's incredible. But the, the bigger point there is that they, the. The valuable part of what they have is actually the factory that they've built around this. Right. And that's, that's basically how do you take all of this data in? How do you then normalize it into something that can be processed? And then how do you kind of build the models that can create relationships between all these things and trends and insights and everything else that goes along with it? Right. And, and I think, I think people skip that step and they just think, if I can get data, I'll be fine. But it's, it's very hard. It's actually tricky to, to. To actually, you know, get. Draw insights from that in such a way that it's useful to you. Right. And, and so I think we've spent the, we spent the first couple of years of this platform, you know, as we built it out and we built kind of our, our rating engine and, and kind of how we ingest and how we normalize all of that, how we take when we're communicating with a customer, how we're taking intent, like when do you want this delivered by, what other restrictions do you have on this package, what's in the package, what regulations need to be? All that stuff that we figured out over the first couple years as we were building this execution platform that gave us kind of the foundation that we're working from to now build out the ability to take in this invoice data and kind of add that, add that to this, this mix and, and create the auditing product. But the other part of, of kind of what this product is, what this platform is, is kind of off gassing. Right. In terms of all the data that we're collecting and building and manufacturing and, and building up is that it also gives us all of this information about strategic, basically strategic intent. Right. And the compass. The compass launch. Really what we're trying to do is the fact that we do have all this data. Can we start to draw insights from a combination of your data set plus all of the other customers we work with in terms of benchmarking and understanding what they do to start drawing conclusions about how should you approach your larger structural decisions? Right. And I often, I kind of. One thing that I find useful in supply chain is kind of thinking about the timeline of the transaction. The original shipping platform was really all keyed in on millisecond micro decisions that have to be made right now, right? Like I need to ship this now, what carrier do I use? I need to give the customer a delivery promise. What do I give them? Right? And these decisions tend to be a little more once a quarter or once a year, once a, you know, they're the aggregation of roll up of this stuff and therefore there can be a lot more work that goes into actually sorting through them. Right. And so that's where the Compass offering is trying to do things like let me help you prepare an rfp. We know lots and lots about all these carriers on our platform. We have, we have a lot of information about what types of stuff you ship. We have the ability to simulate in our digital twin exactly what happened, what would have happened if you would have used some of these other different carrier mixes. And now we have AI to both distill your, distill what you're trying to do, distill what we get out of these simulations and come back with a result that, that is going to be frankly, you know, way more detailed than, than what you would have been able to get a year, you know, 10 years ago. Right. And so I think that's it. It's all kind of like from the same thread, but this is what we're kind of pulling towards with our, with our Compass offering.

[Scott Lewton]

I like it, I like it. All right, I'm going to circle back. Marty, I'm gonna get one more question in. I'm gonna get your, your take here. You know, we want to make it as tangible as possible and really Jason and Tim, I really, I really like how frank and direct you've been with the vision, why it matters, how it's different. But I'm gonna circle back. I love good use cases and, and operator examples. Jason, when it comes to your favorite use case or two, where continuous audit and machine learning, they surface money that traditional audit misses, what comes to mind.

[Jason Murray]

Jason, I really love, I really love the root cause stuff, right? And, and I, I, I said this a couple times and it seems like it should be a fairly simple thing, but the, the simple act of just fixing a root like an item property data, immediately as this comes through the system is so intriguing to me because I, we have seen so many retailers that struggle with this, right. And I think it's a culmination of detecting it early. That's where kind of the machine learning comes in and pulling this together. But then Also these new agent workforces that we're starting to deploy, the ability of them to go off and with some level of intelligence go try and address that root cause. Right. And so I'm really excited by these types of things. I think the other parts, the other kind of secondary pieces of that taking on the agent thread is more even the automation of the claims process, which is going to kind of be a next layer to our auditoring offering where you're going out and saying, why does a human need to go contact all these carriers? If there's a problem, I should be able to have a system go effectively send the email or talk to the host system or whatever else needs to happen. And so that like, to me that pulls it all together. The actual like taking action and addressing root cause in an automated way is really fresh and new and really exciting.

[Scott Lewton]

I like it. Jason and Tim, we've, we've talked. You are helping folks get over and overcome that deadly delay we're talking about. You're helping folks break out of one of y'. All called it reconciliation. Hell. I'm not sure if that was you, Tim, or you, Jason. That really paints quite a. Yeah, that paints quite a visual. But Tim, what are some of your, what's one or two of your favorite operator examples? I know you've shared a couple, but what else comes to mind?

[Tim Meester]

Yeah, I think I also love the root causes, but the thing I love even more is epiphanies.

[Marty Parker]

Right.

[Tim Meester]

And I talked about being guided by data. So we were helping a customer recently just evaluate they were shifting from a two day promise to their customers to a one day promise to their customers. And they're using a reputable carrier. And so we weren't questioning the carrier they were using. We just evaluated the different service levels and prices and rate cards for that carrier. And we ran their network through our simulation and we used our machine learning, modeling about time and transit and what's possible. And the simulation came back with a recommendation to bump up the service level to the next tier of service level. And like that made no sense to me. I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. And you save two and a half million dollars by doing so. I'm like, well that can't be right. Turns out certain cells in the rate card were priced differently for the premium service tier. So they could shift essentially 40% of their business roughly to a premium service and save millions of dollars. It was an epiphany thing, right? And so I think those are just fascinating when you just try to set. I mean my team's experts in the industry. So when we're working on the compass stuff, like we know what to look for, we know what questions to ask, we know how to run the simulations. But then when we start it, we just have to step back and say, okay, what's it telling us and what's weird? And let's drill into that. You know, where are the anomalies are at? The anomalies oftentimes are the, the success points. Like, like you can, you can find things in that. So like, like we're, we're just like every week we're just like, oh my gosh, look what I found.

[Marty Parker]

Right?

[Scott Lewton]

Oh, I love it. Eureka moments. Yeah, eureka moments. Those epiphanies, Marty, really quick between Jason and Tim, some of their favorite use cases and elements at play here. What'd you hear, Marty?

[Marty Parker]

So Scott, you and I have talked a lot, a lot about this. I go into companies that are still in sticky notes and spread and I'll talk about just simulations, which is 10 year old technology and they just have no idea what I'm even talking about. The idea of being able to do simulations real time and optimizations real time and get that savings now I think is profound. And I used to sit in meetings and we'd have a one hour meeting trying to make a decision. And at the end I would say we just spent $19,112 in this meeting not making a decision. And so again, back to lag time. If I run a simulation, I implement it six months later, I've lost six months of savings. And so I think the sort of, the net present value opportunity, the getting it out of people's heads, that's another thing that's implied here. I love humans, they're my favorite. But if I'm in a business and it's all in a single person or a group of people's heads and they leave, I'm in a, in a lot of trouble. And that is, and stuff in people's heads is not an optimization.

[Scott Lewton]

Decisions have repercussions. Not making decisions have repercussions. To your point, Marty, I love that board meeting example, $19,000 for an hour of not making a decision. All right, we're coming down the home stretch. And Jason, I feel like your crystal ball is working so well, not just with what you are building at Shipium, but with, with what I'm going to be asking you. And you know, I know we don't want to badmouth competition at all. That's not anyone's style here. But when we want to appreciate the holistic competitive differentiation, you know, what is something we haven't touched on that you believe genuinely sets ship him's approach apart, especially for that enterprise operator out there?

[Jason Murray]

Well, I mean I think we are right now in a moment in time that probably hasn't happened since the railroads, to be honest with you. And I don't say that lightly. I, I, I didn't believe this with VR glasses. I didn't believe this was crypto. I didn't even really believe this was clouds or phones. Right. I mean it was, those were great technologies and they moved. But I, this AI thing is, is, is real. I think everyone knows it's real and it's going to fundamentally change every industry. And I think if you think about what it's really, really good at, it is these like data heavy human labor back office type tasks, right. That it just seems to be just perfectly suited for. Right. And I think what we've worked really hard with at shipium is to stay ahead of that curve. And I have no doubt that there will be people that will come and compete with us. But I think the question you got to ask yourself is are these guys leaning in and really AI native, are they not? And we are. And I think if they're not, I think they're going to be in big trouble. I think this is universally true across every company in the world. And this is a particularly sensitive space. And so I think that's at a high level what we're bringing to the table.

[Scott Lewton]

I like it, Jason. I like it. All right, so Marty, in a second I got two more questions for Jason and then you're going to give us your patent key takeaway. And then I'm going to make sure folks know how to connect with Tim and Jason when they're not outdoors, you know, hopefully getting in fresh air after all the, the mountains they've been moving at the office. But first, Jason, as we come down home stretch, where does this entire category go over the next 24 months and what should operators be getting ready for right now? Jason?

[Jason Murray]

I mean I think you're going to see massive disruption over the next two years. And I think I, I don't think we're going to be the only one by any means that, that are approaching it this way. But you're going to start to see real cost pressure on these processes for what we do now. Right. And then that what, what is considered audit and now is going to get, continue to get compressed and then you're going to see if you can't do these new things that start emerging. That's going to become a real problem. Right. So if you're stuck in the past, you're going to have a hard time competing on price and you're going to have a hard time competing on features. Right. And I, I think, I think we're going to see that really and, and start to take effect right there. There always are laggards. People in this space are not traditionally super fast bleeding edge movers.

[Scott Lewton]

Right.

[Jason Murray]

But the fringes start to eat away. I've seen this, I've seen this play before. Right. And it starts to affect everything as, as the, the cost pressure comes in, I think in terms of getting ready. I mean it's just, it's pretty, pretty canned advice. Right. But it's, it's like we have to, you have to start culturally moving your organization towards a data first organization. And that's, that's probably small steps in terms of, you know, shifting your workforce more towards technologists. Right. And, and data first people and thinking about culturally what needs to change in your organization to approach it that way. Obviously we're, there are vendors like us that are trying to help with that process, but I think you have to at least be moving in that direction or your industry itself is going to start compressing around the fringes. Right. I tend to agree with Marty that this is all very positive in the end, I don't mean to sound like this is not me sounding like a doom and gloomer. I mean more companies are going to have the ability to service much larger surface areas as a result of this and the net need is going, the demand is going to increase overall, but it's just not going to look like it did today. So it's time to change.

[Scott Lewton]

Yes, we've seen this play before, as you said. I think we captured it on the film somewhere. Going back to your film analogy, Tim, really quick before I give Jason the final question here, does your crystal ball see the same that Jason sees, Tim?

[Tim Meester]

Yeah, definitely. What really resonates for me and something like I'm not just kissing up. Like one thing I admire about Jason is he challenged our organization to leverage AI tools internally as well.

[Oregon Lottery Announcer]

Right.

[Tim Meester]

Like we are not going to win if we're not leveraging Claude to help refine our processes and rethink, you know, what we do. We've got non engineers within our company that are developing almost entirely new operating systems for their job where it can be predictive and tell them where risks are at and tell them how to do their job most effectively to get things out of it. And it's just, I'm amazed, right? Like every day I'm like oh my gosh, I didn't know you could do that. And I'll tell you, I was slow to get into it just because I didn't know what to expect. And once I got in it's, it's amazing. So I think and our clients are kind of in the same kind of mindset, right? They're a little bit hesitant. They know they need to do it, they don't know how to do it. So when they look at our building the open model for how we're elevating our sophistication and how we're, you know, exposing what we're trying and what we're doing, they love that. And so they want to tag along, they want us to help guide their, their AI strategy. And, and that's really fun because then like my team and the Compass team can harvest use cases from them and use that to, you know, fuel the platform even more. And yes. So I would love to say yeah, I see that's where we're going. But every day I'm surprised and just amazed. So like I trust Jason to and what his view is of the market because he's talking with a lot of really, really insightful people. It's fantastic.

[Scott Lewton]

It is, it's like every hour a new, maybe new disruptions on one hand but new unlocks on the other hand. So it's really fascinating. Okay, really quick Jason, big, big billion dollar question here. What's next for shipium? And easier question folks that want to learn more about anything we've touched on here today. Of course you are coming back this fall we're going to have a live webinar with the Shipium team which we're excited about. But what's next and where, where can folks find more information? Jason?

[Jason Murray]

Yeah, I mean I think we're really going hard into, you know, audit encompass so, so kind of this, the deeper analytics and simulations and audit like we talked about today, we're really excited about those launching through this year and in terms of the initial launch plus the, the kind of inevitable add ons like whether that be claims and everything else that goes along with it. But I think next year is going to be largely defined by kind of really starting to tackle the agentic shopping space which we also think is going to be one of those, those big changing events. Right. And so we're going to do a lot of Work next year on, on how does our system interact with with shopping systems as they start to switch to people shopping on lms and what does that mean in terms of our delivery promise product and our post order product and what we're kind of. So I'm excited about, I'm excited about what that's going to do overall to, to kind of how people think about the experience and I would say like if you push me on details and we'll be able to give it to you yet because we're still trying to figure it out. But the, but the, the the the we're heading in that direction next year.

[Scott Lewton]

Is the plan outstanding and folks you can learn more as that unfolds.

[Jason Murray]

Shipium.com Head there if you want to want to talk to us and we will be a Parcel forum here in a couple months also if you want to you want to meet up in person but always excited to have conversations on this. We're all passionate about the space and what can come from it.

[Scott Lewton]

So same and if you stop by and talk to the team at Parcel forum folks, make sure you eat your Wheaties that morning because they're going to, they're going to, they don't. They keep it real and they're going to go deep. They're changing, they're changing a big part of our industry for sure. Exciting times. All right, so Marty Parker, before we know we make sure folks know how to connect with Tim and Jason individually, so to speak. I'm gonna go ahead and get your patented multi billion dollar key takeaway and this is the toughest question of the whole hour because Tim and Jason both have brought it. So Marty, what stands stands out the most to you?

[Marty Parker]

So everyone in the C suite is talking about using AI to make processes better. And I'm sorry but playing with co pilot and automating a few tasks doesn't affect the bottom line yet and they're under shareholder pressure to do that. They know that freight is a mystery box that has lots of problems because they're paying auditors to come in and audit it and find all these problems. Why not partner with somebody like shipping that can go in, do that in a proactive way. Do that with state of the art technology and allow you to work on parts of the business that add value.

[Scott Lewton]

Outstanding.

[Marty Parker]

Marty.

[Tim Meester]

I like that guy.

[Scott Lewton]

I do too.

[Jason Murray]

I love this guy. Marty's my new favorite guy.

[Scott Lewton]

I'll tell you what. Hey Marty always wins them over. Marty always wins them over. I'm stuck. I'm stuck. Marty. Well said. Well said, my friend. Well said. Okay, so let's make sure folks. So Jason Murray, I know you've mentioned shipium.com and of course parcel form you welcome all the conversations. How else can folks connect with you, Jason?

[Jason Murray]

I think the easiest way is LinkedIn. You know, keep up to date on that and then obviously jasonppium.com is fine also.

[Scott Lewton]

Outstanding. And Tim Meester, again, I really have enjoyed your perspective. I've been tracking you for quite some time. When you talk about this is like the biggest thing you've seen like 40 years of industry leadership. I know that you don't say those things lightly. So it's great to have you here on Supply chain now. And how can folks connect with you, Tim?

[Tim Meester]

Also on LinkedIn and emails. Tim mpm.com because I think we've got three or four Tims.

[Scott Lewton]

Okay. Hey, that's a good problem to have. My is my hunch. All right, Marty Parker, what an outstanding episode here today. Always a pleasure to knock these out with you. I want to thank our our esteemed guest here today, Jason Murray, co founder and CEO at Shipium. Jason, thanks for joining us.

[Jason Murray]

Thank you.

[Scott Lewton]

And Tim Meester, vice president, operations and intelligence with Shipium. Tim, thanks so much for being here, my friend.

[Tim Meester]

Yeah, it's a pleasure, you guys. Thank you folks.

[Scott Lewton]

Go to shipium.com and learn more the innovation today and what they've got up their sleeves. Marty Parker, I'll tell you, I'm ready. I'm ready for the second hour. Are you ready to go, Marty?

[Marty Parker]

Let's do it right now.

[Scott Lewton]

Right now folks. You have to come back for that second hour. I've got to chew on everything we've uncovered in this hour spent with Jason, Tim and Marty. But Marty Parker, always a pleasure to have you join us here on supply chain now folks, to the SCN global fam out there. Hope you enjoyed the conversation. We covered a lot of ground.

[Marty Parker]

Right.

[Scott Lewton]

But you know your homework, you got to take one thing, one thing that Jason or Tim or Marty shared and do something with it.

[Jason Murray]

Right?

[Scott Lewton]

Deeds, not words. That's the name of the game. That's how we're going to continue to transform global business, certainly global supply chain and leave no one behind. With all this said Scott Luton, challenge you on behalf of our team here, do good, give forward, be the change that's needed. We'll see you next time. Right back here on supply chain now. Thanks everybody.

[Supply Chain Now Announcer]

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