Why Value Matters More Than Price in Transportation 

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar on why value matters more than price in transportation. My name is Aubrey Eyer, and I’m thrilled to be your host today. Today’s program is a conversation between Origami Risk experts Trish Kelley and Rosie O’Neil, moderated by Mindi Zissman. We’ll have a live Q and A at the end. If you’d like to ask our speakers anything, please submit those questions through the q and a function on the Zoom toolbar, and we’ll address those questions after the presentation. So let’s start that conversation now. Hello, and welcome to the Origami Risk webinar. I’m Mindi Zissman, and I’m excited to be moderating today’s webinar focusing on the transportation sector, an industry that’s currently operating on thin margins while facing climbing risks, workforce shortages, increasing operational complexity across land, air, and marine. I’m joined today by Rosie O’Neil and Trish Kelley, both from Origami’s team, who’ve worked closely with the transportation organizations for decades navigating these exact challenges and more. Love everyone to introduce themselves. Rosie. Hi. Yeah. I’m Rosie O’Neil. I’m a senior sales executive from Origami Risk. I have been with Origami for almost twelve years now, and I have been in this space for about thirty seven years. So Wow. Amazing experience. We’re looking forward to hearing some of those stories and all about that. Thanks, Rosie. Trish? Awesome. Thanks, Mindy. I am Trish Kelley, also with Origami. I am part of the marketing team at Origami. Specifically, I’m a product marketer. I specialize in the Rimus, our Rimus product suite, and then also some of our verticals, so transportation being one of those. I’ve been with Origami for I think coming up in five years, so happy to be here. Amazing experience. Okay. Looking forward to tapping into it, ladies. Let’s get started. The first question, what are some of the best practices that you hear from transportation organizations when it comes to risk and safety in twenty twenty six and beyond? Rosie, hand it over to you. Thank you. So what we’re hearing from some of our prospects and clients is really that, one of the things that is needed, and is a best practice is having safety and claims in one system. A lot of transportation companies have claims maybe in a spreadsheet or a separate system, and then safety is using a separate system and the data is not connected. And they’re really seeing a value in having that information in one place. Another best practice is just the similar thing. They use multiple systems, you know, different systems, an HR system, you know, a transportation management software, telematics software, safety systems, risk systems, like all kinds of systems. They, you know, I think on average, it’s about five systems that most safety clients use. So consolidating all that data so it’s, like, in one place and becomes like a one stop shop so they’re not having to try to find all that information everywhere. Another best practice is really simplifying the intake process. A lot of transportation companies get that data either, you know, through their call center or sometimes it’s actually an email or a phone call directly to the to the safety or the claims team. So making that process a little bit easier for them so that they’re, again, not having to go look for that information also is a best practice. And then also from the safety perspective, really looking at more than just the bad severe accidents, but, like, doing safety observations, looking at near miss, doing root cause analysis and corrective actions to see basically what’s happening, so that they can prevent, future injuries down the road. And looking to the future, CCTV, has become a big thing, and it also now has the ability to have some AI functionality. So particularly in, like, a warehouse, they can actually, you know, have a video that points out any hazardous conditions that might exist. And in general, improving efficiency through workflows and automation is also a best practice we’re seeing. Wow. Trish. Yeah. I mean, I just Rosie covered a lot there. I think just to to add on to that a little bit in terms of the collection of data, you know, it’s not just about, like, collecting the data and having it, but actually doing something with it. And then also making it a consistent practice across teams and locations and hubs so that everybody is doing you know, using kind of the same process and pulling in the same information and data so that you can then, you know, do something with it. So, you know, as Rosie was alluding to looking at near misses and safety observations and, you know, treating those as leading indicators that you have visibility into that data, you can go do something proactive with it and, you know, put certain programs in place so that you’re being more preventative and proactive than versus, like, having to react to things that are happening. Okay. Amazing. Many transportation companies, as you just said, Rosie, rely on tons of back end systems. You said, like, around five or so. Some of them probably even more. Right? Telematics, dis dispatch, HR, you need a few claims, and they’re all operating independently. So what’s the result of that fragmentation that folks have going on in the inside of their organizations, and what kind of visibility are they missing, internally as a result? Yeah. As I mentioned, it really results in them kind of having to go find information. So an accident happens, they gotta get the telematics video. This happens. They gotta look here. I need to check on the vehicle maintenance. Like, they’re going all over the place looking for the information. And, really, and truthfully, that results in some, like, inefficiency, more or less. And there’s a lot of manual processes. So when they do go get to the get the information, they have to rekey that information from one system into another system, and that also leads to data inaccuracy. And all of it leads to a lack of visibility, so they really can’t actually tell everything that’s happening or or seeing trends as well because all of that data is not connected to each other. So, it really does make the whole visibility into what the trends are, really difficult for them to see. Yeah. And I would just add, like, with the visibility kind of what you were just alluding to, Rosie, like, getting to the why. So, like, why things are happening, being able to look at those trends, you know, if there’s, like, a certain location or a certain hub that are having a lot of similar type accidents. Why are they why is that happening? Are they missing some kind of training or something like that? Why do certain incidents turn into claims versus others or versus other locations? And, you know, looking at costs, all of that. So I think, like, you know, you wanna have the visibility, but you wanna use that to get to kind of the why. I love that. And and the truth is that the why is so important for things like compliance. That right? Everyone has to pull that data in together and be able to give it out to not only improve their own operations internally, but even externally when you are having to kind of give a view into what you do as an organization. So if data’s in all the million separate systems, how are transportation systems pulling everything together to be able to manage the compliance requirements that they have and do those reports? I mean, you know, internal, operational efficiency is one thing, but, like, how do you do the things that you absolutely have to do externally like compliance? Yeah. Compliance reporting is critical for transportation companies, and, really, a lot of them are having to do it manually. So, you know, if they need to work with their OSHA log, they’re having to go get that from their payroll or HR system. And then they’re having to combine that with incident data that maybe lives in a different system, and then lost time details are sometimes tracked by HR, sometimes tracked by claims teams. So all that information lives in different places, and they’re literally having to manually connect those pieces together. And most of them do it through an Excel spreadsheet, but all of that leads to inaccuracy because, you know, it’s just human error when you start rekeying information all over the place. That can happen, which, of course, clients could result in fines or other issues. Right. Right. Right. And reputational risk, right, that they would, you know, be published that, you know, they they don’t have these things going on in order. And then I’m sure affects workforce and, you know, who wants to partner with you both internally and externally as as customers. Trish. Yeah. And I I think, like, with that, you know, when it just becomes, like, it’s just part of the process. It’s more of, a checkbox type exercise. Like, you’re not really getting anything out of the compliance reports, like, where you can learn from them. So I think, like, going back to the, you know, the point around visibility and being able to see everything, compliance, like, no longer is, like, a checkbox type exercise. It’s actually just, you know, a byproduct. Like, you can just use it as a byproduct of, like, the good processes that you have in place instead of, like, scrambling to pull together the data that’s needed for these reports, if that makes sense. Yeah. Wow. Well, let’s give it a little bit to talk about probably one specific system or one aspect of a larger system. Let’s talk about claims for a second. Where where do claims live? They might live, like you guys were saying, independently, you know, in one channel. But how can how can transportation companies deal with this is probably one of the biggest pieces that they deal with on an ongoing basis. So how are they dealing with claims, and how are they able to, you know, improve improve their losses and kinda, like, work to, you know, make things better, let’s say, this year moving forward? Yeah. So I’ll go ahead and start. And, basically, like I mentioned, I think a lot of times that data is living, like, in an Excel spreadsheet. And, you know, transportation companies have different types of claims. Cargo claims, that’s sometimes one group. They have claims from accidents. They have injury claims. Sometimes multiple spreadsheets that they’re maintaining for the different types of claims that they have. We are also seeing a lot from both our clients and, our clients before they used Origami, that they use a separate system, that they just figure out a way to maybe take their transportation management system and add claims in it, or, you know, a safety system with a little bit of claims added to it. So sometimes they’re doing it that way as well. But a lot of times what ends up happening is that accident and the injury intake is really not connected to the claim or to the claim cost. So, again, it kinda goes back to that visibility. So they can know, you know, from maybe if they have a safety system, but they don’t have place for the claims, they can basically see, you know, okay. What what are we having what’s causing the most frequency for us? But then they don’t have any ideas about severity. And so maybe they’re focusing on, you know, accidents that are happening a lot, maybe backing, but that’s not where the severity is happening. And so maybe more of that is coming from, you know, the brakes not working the way they want. Like so really having that data all over the place is impacting their ability to control the claim cost because the sooner you know about something happening and you start taking action on it, you can reduce the overall cost of the claim. Oh, it’s such a good point about the difference between frequency and severity. We very often, like, pull those together, which and a lot of times they do. But the truth is when you’re tracking things internally and you’re actually trying to prevent them in the future, it’s actually important to separate those and think about, like, the you know, some one of them could be, I don’t know, from the routes that folks are taking that drivers are taking. One could be from, you know, is it that everyone’s speeding or hard stopping on this one route? Or I mean, there’s so many ways to kind of, like, pull it apart. That’s actually such a really good point. Trish? Yeah. I mean, I I have stuck in all of that just, you know, again, in terms of having visibility and being able to see trends and where you can take action to be more proactive. But then also having everything in one system allows you to just be more efficient. So you’re not having to spend time, you know, like, rekeying and trying to hunt down information to go through all the steps to close a claim. The faster you close a claim, like, the less it’s gonna cost. And so just that efficiency component, having everything right there, and then, again, like, tying into the visibility just makes the process so much better in so many different ways. Right. Well, in this and, you know, to kind of pull this all together and sum up, obviously, one of the biggest themes that we’ve heard today is, you know, being able to take disparate data, pull it together, and being able to use it moving forward for any kind of transportation operations. What would you guys recommend each of you, like, as a first step? Right? Sometimes it looks like a mountain that we’re looking at as a transportation organization to, like, pull all of this together into one system. So what would be what would be like a low hanging fruit, a first step that someone could take that isn’t as scary, you know, as as total total digital transformation yet? You know, what would be what would be a first step? So I started off my career on the service side and actually implementing systems for clients. And and, really, the way we start, the way I would recommend they start is really looking at where all their data lives today, like, kind of putting it down on a piece of paper. We’ve got this in tenth Street. We’ve got this in Samsara. We’ve got this in our TMS. We have this in the HR system. So where where where does everything live? And then who’s using that data and for what purpose? And where does it cross over? Where does the d the data need to pass back and forth? And really kind of just almost like taking inventory of what you’ve got. Right. Like a map. Like a map of, like, where is your data? Exactly. Almost like a process map of, like, okay. This is what happens. And then you can actually look at the processes and even with the systems you have today, kind of figure out, are there things we can do to streamline this process, to make it easier to share information back and forth? And then, ideally, really, I I recommend looking for a system that can solve multiple problems. Because what it seems like is in transportation, the reason they have six to ten systems is because they’re solving a problem with one system, then they’re solving another problem with a different system and another problem with a different system. But taking a more holistic approach to that and seeing if they can find one system or less systems that solve multiple problems. Yeah. That’s great. And I think I think just the important thing is, like, Mindy, you kind of mentioned this in the question, but, like, it’s not something that you have to look at as a full, like, rip and replace. You know? If you can just, like, figure out, like, to Rosie’s point where you can figure out where your data lives and then just sort of reduce the complexity, find something, like consolidating systems like Rosie was talking about, working with systems that can talk to each other so you’re having a better data connection. And then, you know, once you have that holistic picture, then you’re able to start making better decisions around, you know, all of your insurance and risk processes. Amazing. Okay. Great. Thank you, everybody. This was really productive. I think our biggest takeaway is for transportation organizations to gain that visibility and kind of control their total cost of risk and support their workforce, which is, of course, changing and hopefully growing. You know, they have to be able to operate and, you know, compete and and think about about pulling data together to be able to to handle what’s next, like, in twenty twenty six and even beyond. So thank you so much, Rosie. Thank you so much, Trish, for being here and joining me today. We hope everybody gained from this conversation. Okay. Thank you. That was a great conversation. So we’re gonna open up the program for q and a now. You could type those questions in the q and a section at the bottom of the Zoom toolbar, And we’ll start with some of our first questions now. Trish, if you wanna go ahead. Yeah. Sure. Thanks, Aubrey. So our first question, this is actually a good segue to kind of the last topic that we were just touching on around the many different systems that you guys are using. So, Rosie, I’ll pitch this one to you. So how easy is it to consolidate or change systems? I think particularly with these companies that have a lot of different systems that are doing different things. Yeah. It really does vary a little bit from what system to what system you’re using and where it’s all going. But but it’s actually probably easier than most people think. And sometimes people even worry about the impact, like, on, you know, their employees and drivers and different people. Like, how is this all gonna work? And surprisingly, especially in this day and age, we’re all used to technology. We’re all used to technology changing. So the it actually works out a little bit better than than you would think. And that data that lives in Excel, most systems can get that into their system as well. So it’s really just, you know, gonna vary a little bit, but I think the overall message would be it’s easier than you think to get that information consolidated. Awesome. Good stuff. We’ve got a couple more here. How does visibility so we talked a lot about visibility in this conversation. How does visibility impact our bottom lines and maybe, like, some practical ways to look at that? Yeah. Well, the thing about visibility is it’s you know, the the there’s the sometimes there’s the big one accidents that happen, and everybody’s kind of aware of those. But you start realizing that some of those smaller accidents are really making a huge impact on your bottom line and addressing those and doing preventative measures to maybe prevent some of those through training or, you know, audits and inspections because maybe you discovered brakes are sometimes an issue. Those things actually can make a bigger impact sometimes than even some of the big fish, but you cannot fix a problem you don’t know about. And so that visibility is really gonna give you that that ability to to make a difference. But that’s also true on the claim side too. So if you have a claim and you really don’t have all of the information related to it, it’s very hard to make an impact on, like, reducing that overall claim cost as well. And the sooner you know, the sooner you take action, it all ends up working out better. So that’s what I would say. Awesome. I think we’ve got time for one more here, and this is kind of related to what we were just talking about. But the question is, how do you see technology making the most impact for transportation risk in general over the next few years? Yeah. You’re right. I kinda just talked about that a little bit as well, but technology is just constantly changing. I mean, AI, like, you know, it changes every time I turn around the, you know, AI opportunities and things that it can do. But even something for transportation like telematics, I mean, that was, like, started in the nineteen eighties, which I still actually don’t believe. What it did then and what it does now, it’s not the same at all. So what it’s gonna do in six months or a year or two years, it’s it’s probably all gonna be very different. Like, you know, back to the last question about visibility, that’s becoming the way of our life. Like, there’s CCTV, like, you know, all over the place. And so they can actually put together a clear picture of what happened accident or what happened in a particular situation or who broke into the cargo. So I think it’s gonna really up that visibility game. And through AI, then it’ll also be able to even maybe predict some things that are gonna happen just, you know, as well. Yeah. I agree with all of that. Alright. Well, I think that is the last of the questions that we had come through, so we’ll get you guys out a little bit early. Aubrey, I’ll hand it back to you. Okay. Well, yeah, thank you again for joining us today, and I’d like to extend a special thank you to our speakers, Trish, Rosie, and Mindi. So thank you all again for your participation, and have a wonderful day, everyone.