Logistics is complex as it integrates a multitude of activities with many actors involved. Likewise, logistics has a great connection with the rest of the company's activities and, therefore, is affected to a great extent by decisions and situations derived from other factors that are not properly logistical, such as sudden changes in demand, new products launch or expansion to new territories, among many other examples.

The digitization is currently a key aspect for the future of companies of all sizes. However, the complexity of logistics mentioned above is also visible in the variety of types of software for logistics, or that have a direct relationship with it, for example systems for supply chain management or company management (ERP).

In addition, each type of software also has notable differences from others that are in exactly the same category. Therefore, it is necessary to go beyond the category and see the functionalities that each system offers to know exactly whether or not it adjusts to the needs of each company.

This article has compiled the most relevant type of systems that exist in the market, highlighting in some cases the functionalities that, in some cases, we can find integrated into other systems or as standalone products.

Global software

Here you can find a list of global systems for any company that are somehow related to logistics:

• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): takes care of the internal operations of a company that can range from production to distribution. In an ERP, the processes are automated, different databases are integrated into a single program and all the information is centralized on the same platform. The most common functionalities of these systems are purchasing, sales, billing, accounting, inventory, human resources and CRM.
• E-commerce platform: with the rise of electronic commerce, this type of platform has become a very common tool to manage the online catalog of products, online sales and payments.

• Demand forecasting: software typically based on artificial intelligence that helps forecast demand and thus optimize supply. Obviously it is a fundamental aspect to design and estimate resources required for logistics operations.
• Contract management: allows you to digitally manage the creation, negotiation, signing and renewal of legal contracts. Although it is not strictly a logistics software, it is a very clear use case, since the legal documentation generated in logistics activities is very extensive.

If we focus on the supply chain, we can find the following programs:

Supply Chain software

• Supply Network Design: allow modeling all flows from manufacturing to final delivery. In general, it allows simulating variations in demand to see how the entire supply chain would behave, as well as in more advanced cases, the possibility of searching for new locations for factories or warehouses.
• Control tower: it offers a global vision of the supply chain in real time and, in turn, allows actions to be taken to modify or activate processes at the right time. The main difference with a dashboard is that in the case of a control tower, in addition to supervision, concrete actions can be taken to make changes in the operation.
• Digital Twin: this module provides a simulation of a physical asset, fully digitizing the resources and behavior of a physical process. This allows you to monitor the performance of the asset in real time and thus simulate the performance to be able to predict, for example, possible maintenance needs.
• Sales and operations planning (S&OP): solution that allows aligning sales plans with company operations. Typically for manufacturers, it allows to create a unified plan for forecasting sales and the needs derived in logistics.

Logistics software for transportation and distribution

Centrados ya en lo más esencial de la logística, vamos a ver distintas soluciones y funcionalidades para gestionar tanto el transporte de larga distancia como la distribución o reparto de última milla:

• Fleet Management (FMS): control and monitor the fleet of vehicles. In general, it allows you to track the location of each vehicle, manage documentation, fines and analyze driving efficiency.
• Tracking mobile app for drivers: complete traceability of the delivery process, incident management, digital proof of delivery and a series of functionalities that allow real-time information regarding the deliveries in progress.
• Last mile route optimizer: automatic route planning for the last mile. It helps to reduce the kilometers traveled, improve delivery capacity, reduce costs and increase margins.
• Delivery tracking for customers: allows the end customer to know the status of their delivery in real time such as the day and estimated time of delivery, check if there is any type of incident...

• Load planner and optimizer: planning of medium and long distance routes, taking into account the location of the carrier, information from the tachograph, type of vehicle and load, in order to assign each load to the most appropriate vehicle.
• Freight Forwarding: cargo management by air, sea or train. Allows you to manage legal documentation and assignments. 
• Parcel shipping management: management of the assignment of deliveries to parcel companies. Very common in e-commerce.
• GPS and digital tachograph: real-time location via GPS and remote download of tachograph information.
• Vehicle and IOT sensorization: allows collecting more advanced and specific information about vehicles: some examples may be temperature control, or door opening.

 Logistics software for warehouse management

Finally, a WMS helps manage the activities and operations of a warehouse. Here are some of the modules that can be found:

• Stock management: this module allows you to control and monitor the inventory, allowing you to know the available stocks at all times.
• Reception and dispatch: helps to manage and control the products that arrive and leave the warehouse.
• Storage location management: the use of spaces and the location of items according to their rotation and other characteristics is essential for the proper functioning of a warehouse.
• Labor management (LMS): allows collecting data on the activities carried out by operators and analyze productivity. In addition, it helps planning the necessary resources based on historical or desired productivity.
• Picking routes optimizer: this software allows you to find the best routes within your warehouse. Optimal routes are automatically generated in real time and assigned to specific warehouse operators. It allows you to compare the routes taken with the optimal ones and thus discover bottlenecks.
• Automatic assignment of activities: this module allows you to organize and optimize activities by time, distance or other existing restrictions. Avoid human planning and decision errors and predict and identify operational irregularities.

Andreu Araque

Co-Founder & CEO at Hedyla

Telecommunications Engineer with more than 10 years experience managing development teams and the B2B market, adding value to big corporates from different industries like Fintech, Travel and Logistics.

Expert in analysis and data visualization.

At the beginning everything was quite easy and funny: contacting potential clients, experienced people in the logistics sector, the development of the initial MVP… and most of the feedback and results were really positive, we had to run in order to officially create the company to start a couple of projects and sign its contracts.

We have always been conscious that a company creation without pain is not possible, but at the beginning everything was so natural and easy, and at some point we believed that maybe it was not always painful, maybe we could succeed without that pain. Mistake.

Things are never that easy. We had a clear idea in mind: we wanted to go to the market with our own resources, there was no need to look for investment because we could sell and implement, so we decided to put all the efforts on clients acquisition and product development. From my point of view, that was a good decision, but due to the complexity of the product and the targeted clients, that has been a big challenge and we have worked extremely hard under a lot of pressure. We wanted to have full control of the different areas of the company before scaling the team, and that pain has also been an extraordinary learning process in order to establish and produce the quality in all areas that we had in mind. Fortunately, hard work is not something that scares us and happy clients compensate for it. 

Another pain point is the sales cycle, we knew it could take long sometimes, but in some cases it’s even longer than we expected (If your company is at this stage right now, go ahead and start getting value from us, no need to delay it!). Also, being a start-up is not always seen as an advantage because for some companies it looks like you want to test an unfinished product with them, although the product works perfectly and makes what it is expected to do.

We are proud because we are working with big companies, adding value to them and slowly positioning Hedyla in the market as a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence platform for Logistics. Companies like Trie Logistics, Fedefarma, Vilaviniteca, Mahou – San Miguel, DIA, Campofrío and other ones we can’t reveal yet that have trusted. That’s really exciting and motivating. And last, but not least, a special mention for Taisa Logistics and the growing relationship with them.

We will avoid personal mentions, but we have had, and hope to continue having, the privilege to work and collaborate with really great people, that provide extremely valuable feedback, that we learn from everyday and that see us as partners, not just a provider. Thank you, sincerely.

Finally, big thanks to our families (in my case Vero and Emma), that fed us and gave us everything we needed to survive during long periods of hard dedication to the company.

We are here to stay and there are many great things to come, some of them already in process and that will make a big difference, stay tuned!

Andreu Araque

Co-Founder & CEO at Hedyla

Telecommunications Engineer with more than 10 years experience managing development teams and the B2B market, adding value to big corporates from different industries like Fintech, Travel and Logistics.

Expert in analysis and data visualization.

So, what did we do? Basically read a lot about the topic, have meetings with experts on sales, get all the information and create our own sales process, materials, test everything and iterate. Marc Torrens told us something we have kept in mind, he told us not to try to look like sales guys, to sell as engineers. Negotiations, when to talk about the price, and all this kind of topics are also really important, but there is a lot of information and many opinions. A conclusion we arrived at is that each sale is different, so it’s important to standardize but also to be flexible and accommodate the process to keep it natural. Also it is critical to end processes, closing the deal or losing it, but this feedback and learn is key, if you just keep it there with no progress, you have lost it and have not learnt.

As we were not experts, we focused on creating the whole process, set up some tools to help, like Hubspot or Linkedin Sales Navigator, and start contacting potential clients, also by phone. In my opinion, this is the way to go, prepare the basic material and start contacting, you can read a lot and learn, but talking to companies, to people, is the best way. I want to say thanks to all the people that help, specially Marc Monguió, Dario Lombardi, Eulalia Balañà and Salvador Muñoz.

From my point of view there are some things that make it simple for engineers, for instance you can explain in more detail what your software does. However, it is important to keep in mind that deep technical details do not help during the first contacts. If you know what it can really do and the potential of the product, you are also very motivated in order to engage clients. In addition, if you are able to create a good sales pitch and argumentation, being an engineer helps to obtain credibility, probably they expect something ugly and not so sophisticated, so the expectations are probably lower and doing a good job on it can create a good impact.

On the other hand, when you are selling what you have implemented or you will have to implement, you avoid selling impossible things. How many times the business developer sold something and you thought “really??? why? sell what we have!”. However, when you start selling, you realize that needs from every client are typically different from one to the other, it’s complex to sell exactly the same, so you need to evaluate which functionalities make sense to include in your product, which ones are just customizations or the ones that does not fit your company goals, so you have to decline.

The most exciting part of selling software as an engineer for your own startup is that the roadmap of the product is alive, you can adapt very quickly and react to the market demand. Talking directly with potential clients provides you with a better vision of the companies needs, so you can implement exactly what is needed and that will scale, which is not typically the same they think they need, but this is a topic for another article…

Andreu Araque

Co-Founder & CEO at Hedyla

Telecommunications Engineer with more than 10 years experience managing development teams and the B2B market, adding value to big corporates from different industries like Fintech, Travel and Logistics.

Expert in analysis and data visualization.

We are happy to announce that Marc Torrens joins Hedyla as an external advisor to help us with his knowledge on applying Artificial Intelligence to solve real-world problems.

Marc Torrens, Academic Director MSc in Business Analytics at ESADE Business School, is a computer science engineer from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Barcelona. He holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

Marc spent more than 20 years creating startups around Artificial Intelligence. He cofounded Strands, Inc. in 2004, an established and recognized global Fintech company working for top tier banks worldwide including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, BBVA, ING, Bank of Montreal, BNP Paribas, Santander, Discount Bank, just to mention a few. From 2004 to 2018, Marc has been working at Strands as Chief Innovation and Product Officer and currently serves the company as member of the Board of Directors. One of the most remarkable achievements of the company was to build a portfolio of 20+ patents around recommendation technology that was acquired by Apple, Inc.

His genuine motivation is to bridge the gap between the outputs of scientific research and the inputs needed by real-world AI systems. Marc enjoys overcoming new business challenges with state-of-the-art technology in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Usability, Data Visualization, and Product Design.

For further information, you can visit: https://marctorrens.net/biography/

Andreu Araque

Co-Founder & CEO at Hedyla

Telecommunications Engineer with more than 10 years experience managing development teams and the B2B market, adding value to big corporates from different industries like Fintech, Travel and Logistics.

Expert in analysis and data visualization.

The first one was related to Red Innpulso, a network of city halls that support innovation projects on their cities. As part of the Viladecans Business Hub, Hedyla pitched with the Mayor of Viladecans, Carles Ruiz, representing the city this year 2019. It was a great experience to discover projects from other cities and gave us the opportunity to explain what Hedyla is doing and share experiences with the Mayor and the Viladecans team. We met entrepreneurs from many different places and shared our vision and experiences.

Hedyla also participated pitching at the South Summit 2019, as part of the selected startups at the Data Market Services program from the European Union H2020. It was a great opportunity to talk to other entrepreneurs.

Andreu Araque

Co-Founder & CEO at Hedyla

Telecommunications Engineer with more than 10 years experience managing development teams and the B2B market, adding value to big corporates from different industries like Fintech, Travel and Logistics.

Expert in analysis and data visualization.

“Why Hedyla?”, “It sounds weird”, “What does it mean?”, “Does it mean anything?”… these are just some comments we have received regarding the name of the company, we knew it was not a typical and simple name, but when the name and story of it appeared, we felt in love and chose it instantly.

Back in time, when we decided to create a company in order to optimize logistic processes, we were already developing the MVP and we had the feeling that a name for the project / company would make it simpler in order to contact experts from different areas to validate the idea. We started with the typical combination of data, smart, logistics and trending suffixes “ify”, “er”, “.io”… but all of them felt too impersonal and forced. Someone said, what about using the name of a scientist? We started saying names and most of them were too famous, someone else suggested, what about a scientist that made something important but not so recognized? The name of Hedy Lamarr appeared, we knew what she achieved as a scientist, but nothing else about her life. We reviewed her biography and it was impressive, so we move ahead and chose “Hedyla” from the multiple combinations of her name that we tried, and the .com domain was not in use!

The origin of the name and interesting info about it

Hedy Lamarr was born in Austria. She was a famous actress in Hollywood during the 30s and 40s that participated in many movies, being the first woman to appear nude in a movie. She was considered the most beautiful woman at that time. What was not public and not recognized for many years, is that Hedy Lamarr was also a brilliant scientist and inventor.

During the Second World War, Hedy Lamarr and her neighbour and friend George Anthiel developed the idea and the first implementation of a secret communications systems through radio frequencies. Their invention formed a kind of unbreakable code which prevented classified information and message transmissions from being intercepted by the enemy. This invention is the base of current common technologies like GPS and WiFi.

If you want to know more about Hedy Lamarr, you can start by reading her entry on famousscientiests.org, there is also an interesting documentary named Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr story.

Andreu Araque

Co-Founder & CEO at Hedyla

Telecommunications Engineer with more than 10 years experience managing development teams and the B2B market, adding value to big corporates from different industries like Fintech, Travel and Logistics.

Expert in analysis and data visualization.