Our investment in ZenCargo
We’re delighted to announce that LocalGlobe have invested in Zencargo’s seed round, completed earlier this year alongside our friends alongside our friends Samos and Picus Capital. The announcement coincides with the 1st anniversary of the launch of the Zencargo platform. It’s great to be working with co-founders Alex, Richard and Jan who have rapidly set about achieving their task of modernizing the logistics industry.
An industry built on paper
The international shipping business has changed little in the last century — it’s still slow and opaque, with many processes carried out manually and on paper and Zencargo saw a chance to change that. Most supply chain teams still rely on phone calls and emails to do their job. This reliance on one-to-one communication slows down processes, is cumbersome and prone to issues — the average shipper spends the equivalent of 7 working days just chasing all the various parties along their supply chain for information.
Zencargo understood that these problems are really the tip of the iceberg — masking the real issue at hand. Supply Chain data and information takes too long to filter down and often gets stuck in silos, on spreadsheets or in unconnected systems, necessitating human intervention to funnel data to the places and people who need it. Addressing this problem, Zencargo has built a logistics business centred around a web based dashboard that organises all of your supply chain data in one central hub.
This is a game changer in an industry which has traditionally provided little visibility. This lack of visibility creates enormous pressures on businesses as they have to react to problems as they happen and are forced to run large procurement teams to be able to manage a global strategy. With Zencargo’s end to end visibility, shippers can use the tracking information to forewarn where production issues will delay arrival in their home country and impact customers.
Zencargo’s digital platform creates a central workspace where information can be shared across all parties in an international transaction. Across their range of features they enable customers to gain real-time visibility into the progress of their goods from production all the way through to delivery to destination. In-app chat and cloud-based document storage means that all communication happens through the platform, making it quick and easy for any member of a team to jump into a shipment and be fully in context. Teams can collaborate with complete visibility into the latest developments and focus on unpicking those problems that are blocking their supply chain.
Collaborating in the Cloud
Zencargo’s digital platform creates a central workspace where information can be shared across all parties in an international transaction. Across their range of features they enable customers to gain real-time visibility into the progress of their goods from production all the way through to delivery to destination. In-app chat and cloud-based document storage means that all communication happens through the platform, making it quick and easy for any member of a team to jump into a shipment and be fully in context. Teams can collaborate with complete visibility into the latest developments and focus on unpicking those problems that are blocking their supply chain.
Supercharged Supply Chain Teams
Zencargo was built to modernise the Freight Forwarding industry and streamline the workflow for supply chain professionals. The platform includes an Instant Quotes and Bookings service, which reduces the time it takes to make a booking from days to a matter of seconds. All shipments are tracked in real-time with email notifications flagging issues as they arise.
Local and Global
Recently they released a Purchase Order Management feature which uses Virtual Local Offices to track the progress of manufactured goods around the world all from the moment the purchase order is raised, through production to delivery. Zencargo’s systems interface with factories and warehouses in multiple languages in order to deliver the up to date supply chain data customers need. This information is then transformed into searchable dashboards that give customers SKU level visibility into the status of their entire supply chain. With ZenCargo, shippers can use the tracking information to forewarn where production issues will delay arrival in their home country and impact customers, managing their most important relationships better. Companies can get a level of global connectedness and data accuracy across their supply chain that would usually require a huge procurement team with a physical presence around the world.
Improving Productivity
The UK’s productivity has stagnated since the 2008 financial crisis. Economists call this the “productivity puzzle” and are divided about why the UK’s productivity has not recovered. It now lags c. 15% below the average of other G7 countries.
The reasons for this are unclear. Some is due to the UK’s culture of long working hours for full time workers, with diminishing returns for marginal hours worked. Other factors mooted are a lack of infrastructure investment, low interest rates keeping “zombie-companies” on life support, and a high proportion of school leavers without crucial literacy and numeracy skills.
What we DO know is that the UK is a mixed bag. On the one hand, our most dynamic firms are the most productive in Europe, but on the other hand, we have a long tail of less productive firms.
And while some believe that productivity (GDP/number of hours worked) doesn’t fully capture the contribution of digital technologies, it’s clear that the technology industry, and firms like ZenCargo, have a role to play in boosting the efficiency of the UK.
Zencargo estimates that UK businesses are losing over £500m per year due to inefficient communications — 4 million working days in the shipping industry alone. A company switching to ZenCargo can save over 40hrs a month — a full working week — of admin and chasing time as shippers go between their suppliers, freight forwarders and customs agents, leaving their employees to focus on more valuable tasks.
Supply Chain Intelligence
Zencargo break out the cause of any delays, and enables shippers to run analytics to reveal systematic issues that are hindering their supply chain. Shippers can use the data to optimise beyond the simple metric of price looking at the reliability of individual manufacturers as well as the impact of transit time variability on stock levels and working capital requirements.
An enormous and evolving market
The international shipping industry is responsible for the carriage of around 90% of world trade. It’s the lifeblood of the global economy. There is a growing demand for transparent logistics, changing industry mindsets, big data-technology and flexible supply chains. There are also more and more cross-border e-commerce transactions happening, which increases increasing. The businesses competing online will be looking to optimise their entire value chain and better tools to manage their logistics will help them to achieve this.
Zencargo brings more trust and transparency to this process. Becoming the ultimate platform for international trade is a bold ambition — we’re thrilled to have backed this team and be along for ride. Happy 1st birthday, Zencargo!