GlobalEdgeTalk

From Tariffs to Checkout: Navigating Trade, Logistics, E‑commerce, and AI

• Alex Romanovich

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Prices climb, promises hold, and the rules keep shifting—so how do we still deliver value? We bring together a tariff and compliance leader, a logistics operator, an e-commerce veteran, and an AI strategist to decode a market where volatility is normal and optionality wins.

The discussion starts with the real pain points: retaliatory tariffs that wreck forecasts, currency swings that distort landed costs, and audit-ready compliance that separates resilient operators from the rest. Then we follow the ripple through the supply chain—fuel spikes, chokepoint surcharges, and labor strain pushing shippers to regionalize, slow down where it saves money, and invest in visibility from factory to shelf.

On the e-commerce front, customer acquisition costs rise and privacy rules tighten while shoppers expect both value and speed. We explore data as a strategic asset: how a strong product information backbone drives discovery, reduces returns, enables cross-border readiness, and lets B2B deliver consumer-grade experiences.

Finally, we get candid about AI. It’s not a magic bullet, but when used with care, it becomes the connective tissue—powering demand sensing, delay alerts, dynamic routing, governance monitoring, and smarter catalog operations. We share why AI POCs fail, how to design for measurable ROI, and where human judgment must stay in the loop.

By the end, you’ll have a clear playbook: treat compliance as competitive, build redundancy into sourcing and routing, clean and structure your data for speed, and deploy AI where the signal is strong and the stakes are high. We close with a call for price transparency and a fresh look at the customer journey—because trust and clarity still convert, even when costs rise.

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Alex Romanovich:

Okay, hi. This is Alex Romanovich, and welcome to Global Edge Markets roundtable discussion on tariffs, trade, logistics, e-commerce, and AI. Today I'm welcoming our guest panel, Ala Sims, representing tariffs and trade, Pavlo Kobzar, representing logistics and distribution, John Bancroft, representing e-commerce and retail, and Ankit Shah, representing AI technologies, integration of all these different components. And I'm gonna go first through the introduction of our panelists, and then we will start a discussion, which is extremely important, very timely, and very strategic at the moment. Just a few words about global edge markets. We work at the intersection of innovation and growth globally. And if um a few years, past few years have taught us uh taught us anything, is that uh global trade and global commerce is not just about moving goods across the border or across the state lines and what have you. The environment is becoming so complex, especially when it is being complicated by uh changing shifts in tariffs, in regulation, in international relations, and a few other components like that. The e-commerce, the trade is being reshaped, and the consumer expectations and consumer loyalties are making it even more complex, especially when we're dealing with direct-to-consumer type of uh relationships. Of course, on top of it, we also have business-to-business relationships, and this is how all those pieces get interconnected. So, today, our challenge is to unpack all of these complexities, our challenge is to demystify these complexities, and we have an amazing panel of experts to help us do that. Let me go through some few introductions. Let me start with John Bancroft. John spent his entire career helping retailers and brands go on global and also expanding, growing, and optimizing their operations. He's worked with for companies in executive roles such as Toys R Us, eBay, and then um later on with his company, Go Global Retail and JCAS, he's guided a number of different private equity firms and e-commerce and retail organizations globally, from the boardroom all the way down to the shop floor to inventory management systems, integrations, and so forth. John, welcome to our studio.

John Bancroft:

Thanks, Alex. It's great to be here.

Alex Romanovich:

Continuing with Pavlo Kobzar, who is a logistics and distribution expert through and through. He not only leads, he's now uh not only a partner in the uh multi-hundred million dollar operation called Logity, where he is helping multiple companies moving goods across the borders. He's also in charge of their technology uh space and built a number of different platforms in logistics, distribution, and trade. And he will absolutely help us with challenges and pressures that are taking place in global uh global chains, global supply chains. Of course, he's very intimately involved with trucking. As we know, trucking is the bone, is the fiber of the American and Canadian and Mexican trade operations and the logistics operations. So uh John will weigh in on logistics and distribution. Welcome, uh I'm sorry, not John, Pablo will uh weigh in on logistics distribution. Pavlo, welcome to our studio. Thank you, Alex, for having me. Ala Sims is now representing uh tariffs and compliance. She not only is doing this for Kamatsu, a multi-billion dollar global manufacturer of mining equipment, infrastructure, manufacturing equipment, and so forth. She's also an expert and certified expert in a number of different export-import regulations. And, you know, there's no margin for error when you're moving billions of dollars of machinery across borders. So Ala is going to talk to us more about tariffs, the impact of tariffs, excuse me, on um a supply chain, on um the last mile of trade, if you will, e-commerce and retail. Welcome, Ala, to our studio.

Ala Sims:

Yeah, thank you for the invitation, Alex, and uh happy to share the knowledge with the audience.

Alex Romanovich:

Awesome. And last but not least, Ankit Shah is been on the forefront of artificial intelligence and digital transformation for the past 20 years. Clearly, we can argue that AI maybe did not exist in its form today, 20 years ago, but Ankit will probably even argue about that point as well. Onkit runs the growth uh organization of network software, one of the fastest growing software and product development companies doing business globally. And Ankit will weigh in on how technology and digital transformation and AI transformation is impacting all of the things that we're going to be talking about. Ankit, welcome to our studio.

Ankit Shah:

Thank you, Alex. Good morning, all.

Alex Romanovich:

So as you can see, we have an amazing lineup. And I suggest that we dive in into a number of different challenges and we begin our conversation. Why don't we start with Ala first? Ala, the uh the challenges of tariffs, and let's call them tariff regimes, right? United States, European Union, China, they constantly create and plan uncertainty, right? As we know, the Trump administration has been on the forefront, latest forefront of tariffs and tariff um uh frameworks, if you will. On top of it, we're beginning to sort of understand better the compliance frameworks that increase the costs for logistics operators, for manufacturers, for e-commerce providers, retail providers. And on top of it, there's a volatility in currency, uh, eroding margins, and complications when it comes to landed costs, forecasting, planning, optimization, and so forth. What is the biggest challenge today that a company, not necessarily Kamatsu, but a company maybe of a smaller size that is doing business in the United States, what are the challenges that they're experiencing right now when it comes to tariffs and trade in general?

Ala Sims:

Yes, there's multiple of challenges. They're kind of interconnected. First, disruption of supply chains, of course, uh, and inability to forecast and plan your supplies around the world, uh, which are impacted by tariffs. And not only the United States, but there is also retaliatory tariffs that other countries place on the US and um and so on, which affect also exports out of the US. So challenges are in forecasting, challenges are in um going and trying to see where you stand with your uh supply chain if you should make any decisions on moving your supply chain between countries depending on the current tariff uh landscape that um US has with a certain country. Um and also there's disruptions in logistics because once, for example, the tariffs go down uh or are negotiated uh to be a lower rate, the demand for logistics goes up and there's capacity issues, which Pavel will talk about later. So and so challenges are multiple, also compliance challenges and risk mitigating challenges. In such a fast moving uh change in tariff landscape, uh you have to make sure you are compliant, uh, which means you're uh, you know, all the documentation and all the little um, you know, um legislative, are you complying with the legislative uh current landscape uh in the US for importing uh as well as and you're ready to face all the possible audits from either customs or any other um Bureau of Industry and Security, for example, um that that uh are within jurisdiction of um imports or exports out of the US?

Alex Romanovich:

Sounds very complex. Um the the I guess the question is before we tie all the pieces together and we look at tariffs right now individually, what can a company do to sort of institute or even consider what you and I call tariff engineering, if you will? Maybe you could say a few words about that. It's a fancy, fancy name. I love it very much. First of all, can they do something about it? Can they do something about this very complex environment? Maybe uh hiring people like yourself, or uh maybe diving too you know uh deeper into it, or maybe building compliance and those types of uh tariff uncertainties into their business model and so forth. What could they do at the moment before we get to the logistics, the movement of goods and so forth and so on?

Ala Sims:

Yes, what what they can do is of course, well, compliance should be a part of business, any business, either small or big or multinational or any other. It is it is kind of your competitive advantage too, because you're compliant with other regulations. Uh but what they can do is always have a plan B. In this environment is important to understand all your supply chain and somewhat forecast what about if a plan A doesn't work? Do we have a plan B? Do we have a plan C? And so on. And plan B and C also can be variously profitable to you, but they should also be um kind of within your business strategy. And tariff engineering is a fancy word, as you mentioned, and it involves complex expertise uh from tariff experts, um, and it involves uh getting your product up to such uh a level of tariff treatment that it would be favorable to be imported either from a certain location or it can contain different materials that enjoy lower tariff treatment when they are imported to the US. So tariff engineering is is an option, of course, um at this time.

Alex Romanovich:

Excellent. Okay, let's move on down the or next to the next point in the chain, if you will. So great. The company decided that they may re-optimize or optimize their um uh their purchasing uh capabilities or their options and so forth and so on. And now they decided to purchase the product or continue to do business with the same suppliers and so forth. However, now it needs to deliver those products to through the chain. So let's enter the world of logistics. Pavel, we're gonna now talk to you about that. Some of the challenges that we're seeing in the industry is uh constant supply chain volatility. We're seeing changing fuel pricing, especially when it comes to trucking, especially when it comes to land uh type of operations. But we're also seeing some port costs also caused by tariffs and so forth. Uh new regulations for the drivers, maybe even driver shortages, maybe some labor disputes, uh customer demands, uh, global disruptions, you know, in localized areas. Tell us more what you're seeing from where you sit in terms of logistics change and how what's happening right now is impacting logistics.

Pavlo Kobzar:

Well, we can we can say that uh volatility is a new normal. As every day something is happening, new tariffs coming, crisis geopolitical crisis is happening, and uh regulations uh changing pretty often recently. So logistics is kind of shaping uh its uh new form from being conservative and a pretty stable industry to something resilient and something uh that can uh deal with daily changes, changes. Uh speaking of uh fuel costs, like with all the wars happening in the world, uh in in our and in Ukraine, in uh Middle East, uh the crises between China and US and uh all this, like we'll keep seeing uh fuel prices rising and going down, mostly rising, I think. It will affect trucking like the most, and uh every dollar increase in our delivery costs will affect uh customers almost immediately. I believe John will share uh insights on that on that part as well. So speaking of crises like Red Sea crisis uh led to 20-30 percent uh cost increase for delivery overnight, which is like impacted heavily. Uh at the same time, if you re uh if you are the uh customer of uh such roads and you wrote your chip uh shipments like for 30% at least, uh you decrease your risk for like 50-50%. So not worse scenario, but everything uh leads to simple solution in most cases. Like you wanna uh less disruptions uh with uh shipping costs, you should be near shore, you should uh regionalize your supply chain, you wanna uh save money on uh transportations on the on your whole supply chain, you can choose slower mode of transportation, cheaper service, you save a lot. And uh that's what we we can see uh happening on the market. Shippers are choosing uh slower modes of transportation, like rails instead of trucking, and they uh save a lot of money in this way. At the same time, in order to fight these disruptions, you should invest heavily in tech. With all the AI tools, you can automate many processes in your company and uh predict most of your risks, analyze it and uh try to fight beho before they happen. At the same time, we can say uh that we are already in an era of visibility in logistics. I can see on the market that most of players are using global tools for tracking their freight from the manufacturer in China or uh any other country in Asia till it's being delivered to the shelves in the in the distribution centers or in markets. And uh it helps uh to track your um stocks in real time. You can see your inventory, you can see what is current demand on particular geography, and you can uh improve your cash flow, you can improve uh moving your inventories across the geo, and it also will save you a lot of resources. There is many changes in our industry. Uh, speaking of uh driver shortages, I believe this year we have like 80,000 driver shortage, and uh with all these immigrations, new regulations issued by new administration, we're seeing uh real crisis in speaking of labor side. Because yesterday I I've seen uh video from one of the ICE uh locations showing like hundreds of trucks being detained there along with their drivers that are being detained and probably deported, I'm not sure. Uh and it's like a massive thing right now. Like hundreds of people are being detained, and uh probably uh the trucks are gonna stay there for like a long time until company will rehire someone and uh recover it. And if it will it will affect uh industry heavily. At the same time, demand on the market is decreased for almost 20% if you compare with the previous years. So someone can say that the market is self-regulated altogether, demand is decreasing, and providers are on the market reducing. So I don't believe in self-regular self-regulation of the market. I can consider it more like a struggle for companies on the market, I can consider it as challenges for us. As uh every year we are like, okay, we're at the bottom. Finally, we reached the bottom last three years, and uh every year we can see it's it's not bottom yet, and we can go deeper, speaking of pricing, speaking of uh damage on the market, and uh I think uh as I said at the beginning, it is new normal, and if you wanna be successful in the market, you need to be ready face new challenges every day and uh be ready to have solutions for almost anything.

Alex Romanovich:

It's more it's just a small task, right, for everybody. Let's continue. This is very uh this is very insightful, uh Pavel. I didn't even know that so many truckers and trucking companies are experiencing uh now detentions from ice. And I know I know, for example, that some of the regulations, uh the burdens have been put on the companies to make sure that their drivers speak English properly and they have to take the tests and you know, and so forth and so on. And it's um you know it's incredible to see how how much that impacts, you know, how fragile this component of the uh of the trade is. Now let's move on to John. John, as we're seeing from Alan, we're seeing from Pavel, the demand is going to decrease. Demand is decreasing, right? The volatility is increasing. The uh expectations on deliveries uh for e-commerce companies are now being challenged, if you will. And the consumers need to sort of curb their expectations as well. Mr. Trump recently said, listen, you don't need uh $10, you don't need $15. You can do with do away with two, right? So does that mean the consumer, and we'll talk about B2B, we'll talk about businesses in general, but let's talk about consumers, right? The rising tariffs, the compliance burden, the burdens obviously raise costs. We're seeing the cost being raised on almost every category of product, the shifting consumer expectations, cross-border complexities, and so forth. Where's the future? What is the immediate future of e-commerce and the retail?

John Bancroft:

Well, I think Pavel um mentioned it well is that every year, uh, you know, many folks think, oh, we're at the bottom. And then the following year it gets even more interesting. And I I think, you know, the glass is half full, it's half empty, depending on how you look at it, Alex. It is, yes, I agree with Pavel. It's a more challenging time than we've ever seen within e-commerce. But at the same time, that glass is half full. We also have the most interesting of times in e-commerce because of all these new challenges and the shifting earth beneath us. In terms of the challenges that we will see um additional opportunities arising out of, there's about a half a dozen of them. And I think you guys have touched on some of them, but I'd like to just clarify some more, specifically related to e-commerce. Consumer acquisition cost, CAC, they're rising. It's more and more expensive to find the same consumer than it has ever been. Whereas um years ago you could easily get an X return for your marketing spend. Then we've gone down to around X. Now we're going down even below 5x into 3X. I'm seeing more companies, not less, willing to take um a loss on their first uh customer order in order to capture a new customer, which means it extends out their um their cut their lifetime value of their break-even. So rising consumer costs are also making this uh environment more challenging, if not more interesting. The supply chain disruption, of course, is just all over the place. Freight costs are going up. We just heard freight uh is being disrupted in ways that were not um anticipated previously, and that that will ripple into e-commerce. We saw uh a lot of that during COVID, but we're seeing a new form of that through iced detentions in in the US and other supply chain disruptions elsewhere outside of the US market. Another very interesting fast-moving uh place was privacy and data restrictions. Before privacy was important, it always has been, but with the rise of the European privacy requirements and the evolving California privacy requirements, it's it's even more important than it ever has been, which means we need to retool much of our data and our internal processes to adhere to the privacy expectations that are either imposed on us as operators or expected of us from our customers. Data restriction two is now bleeding into AI, and we need to adopt to the new um risks that are involved with exposing our data to very large open data sets and figuring out how to govern our data so it's more secure than it ever was. So, you know, very interesting yet challenging times. What does this mean? This means people are looking for more value now than ever before. It's more expensive simply to live, regardless of what market you're in. Things are just more expensive. They're harder to get, they're more expensive, and this intensified competition means our customers are looking for more value. They're still looking for great unique products, but they want more value as part of the proposition, more than ever before. I think customers also still do expect that speed. They've become accustomed to nominated date and time delivery in Asia markets, to fast overnight delivery in uh Western markets. And so the challenge is to continue with that excellent service, but to navigate the speed bumps and twists and turns that are in the modern market. Our cross-border complexities are also pretty difficult. And I think getting more so with uh the new rules and barriers artificially they're going up amongst governments. We do need to navigate that better. Testing requirements are uh now higher than ever across countries. We need to be better testers, we need to be better planners for our business, for tax purposes. We need to understand shipping and logistics better. And then finally, with AI, I think innovation is it's always been important, but I think it's accelerated to a point of uh speed now that we haven't seen, Alex, before with AI and this absolute watershed moment with um the dawn of AI being widely available to people. Um, we have to start figuring that out. And I hope we can talk about that more today. But but innovation is also still a challenge for most companies and probably many of our listeners today. Um, I saw some data recently. One out of 10 users is still left unsatisfied with their purchase online. 89% internally of POCs, proof of concepts, they're not completed. And many POCs and AI POPCs in specific um are not actually very successful. Four out of five POCs, proof of concepts, they they never even make it to the market. So as teams and operators, I think we we all need to just recircle back and and probably do a better job about going after the art and science of innovation to factor in all these challenges that I mentioned and and others at the panel has mentioned, excuse me, dumb, and get over the innovation speed bumps and bring new innovation successfully to market.

Alex Romanovich:

John, thank you so much. Uh very insightful. I know that we only touched more on the consumer side of things, but quickly, can you just touch? You've deployed a number of different systems, you know, many of them that are at the heart of the relationship between the e-commerce providers and also their suppliers, inventory management providers, and so forth, very complex systems that need to be integrated and so forth. Can you touch on the maybe the B2B components and some of those relationships that are um at the crux of the sort of a back-end systems that consumers don't even see? They they kind of assume, you know, things will get shipped, things that will get purchased, everything is going to be great. My credit cards are not going to be compromised, everything is going to be cool. But there's so much complexity in the back. So much complexity in the back. Can you sort of tell us in a few words how that entire relationship, B2B relationship, how is that impacted by what's going on?

John Bancroft:

Well, that's such a great question. And you know, B2B is so important within e-commerce. It's fast moving because of the um the evolution of tech and whatnot. And what I'm seeing is a couple of really key important trends. One trend is that B2B now more than ever needs to catch up because of the fast-moving changes in technology, the consumer experience, uh, and data. You mentioned the PIM and setting up back-end systems. And you know, years ago, data was useful, then it became important. And now good, clean data is essential because it forms the backbone of efficiency and transparency and successful conversion ultimately for your business. And so, whereas before many B2B companies didn't even have a PIM, a product information management database that carefully manages all the bits and bytes of information about a product. Now it's absolutely critical because it feeds all of your primary systems, your ERP, your back office systems, but it also supports all of your demand generation because that good quality data gets piped into the marketing world and acquires new companies and it enables visibility, enables conversion. It helps people find you. In its best case, it helps not only people find you, but now with AI, you need great data and great data presence for the LLMs to really do what they do best. And if you don't have a great data strategy and you're not operating efficiently enough, you probably do, and most B2B companies, I'd say, particularly in the mid-market, most B2B companies probably at this point do need outside expertise to navigate the updated modern world so they can have better data in the places that they need to do their business.

Alex Romanovich:

Thank you. Thank you so much. What a wonderful segue into the next conversation with Ankit, who's going to tell us a little bit more about the connective tissue, or what we can call it a connective tissue, between the tariffs, logistics, and e-commerce strategies, and that's artificial intelligence, and that's obviously data and uh the integrity of this data. And before I let you talk, Ankit, I want to say a few words about some of the uh risks in terms of AI, because obviously we're like anything else, we have a lot of hype about artificial intelligence. The companies are still learning how to deploy AI, if you will, within the enterprise, within even uh you know, mid and uh small uh size companies. And not only that, we don't forget the legacy systems. Don't forget the systems that have been built for the past 20, 30, 40 years, the companies are still using. I mean, I was amazed that the companies are still using in the retail space, it's still using AS400 from IBM. My goodness, green screens, right? I mean, I remember them, you know, 30, 40 years ago, right? So as much as we want to get excited about the connective tissue between the tariffs, logistics, and e-commerce, as much as we want to jump into AI immediately, as much as we want to let AI handle all of these complexities, we have to be absolutely prudent and careful and um um you know have the right skills and the right uh capabilities. Ankit, uh tell us a few words about that.

Ankit Shah:

Sure, thank you, Alex, and very great insights from everyone, right? Uh Paul mentioned that uh volatility is the new normal. And uh at the risk of sounding cliche, AI is also the new normal, right? Uh uh, but you rightly said how you utilize how enterprises use AI, how it is implemented is the key to kind of success or failure. John very rightly gave some examples of POCs failing for multiple reasons, right? Uh typically I look at AI in two ways, right? There are ways where enterprises can use AI for low-hanging fruits, you know, uh for immediate benefits, where we don't need to, you know, use your own foundational models or use a lot of data. So there are low-hanging fruits that help uh you know increase efficiency or increase accuracy, uh, whatever some operational pain points that you have. A lot of the other challenges that we talk about, right? Uh changes to tariffs, price fluctuations, geopolitical situations. Unfortunately, I don't think AI is intelligent enough to kind of take all of that into uh, you know, and it's not a magic bullet that would help. But utilizing AI in the right way would help enterprises navigate the the challenges around that to make decisions faster, right? Because you there uh unlike uh you know a few years ago, there are different parameters, there are different uh criteria, there are different impacts that are that are posing a challenge to making decisions for a business, right? So it is impractically very difficult for the decision makers to make decisions with so many different uh dynamics coming in. With the help of AI, if implemented right, some of those things can relatively easily be handled, right? Uh dynamic pricing, you know, how do you easily calculate the landed costs if if there are so many uh different variations, if the tariff changes, or if some regulation changes. Ala, you mentioned about governance. Alex, we had done a recent conversation on AI and regulated uh industries and governance. So governance is one uh area where AI can certainly help. There are a lot of changes in governance, but you can help uh AI can help uh in in ensuring that you are following the regulations and so on. So so various different aspects of how you utilize AI, what challenges you want to really take care of with all these volatility and and dynamics. And if you implement it right, you would certainly get the benefit. That's how I look at uh obviously there are challenges, but uh, you know, one of the key challenges uh which unlike conventional applications that enterprises implement, it's a proof of confidence. Concepts. You would typically see immediate ROI. You know, if you if you implement ERT, if you implement CRM, you will see some immediate uh RYs. AI is one technology where there is a lag in the RY, right? Uh depending on how big, how complex AI, what solution you're trying to what problem you're trying to solve. And that is the ROI lag is what the business does not take into account, right? You don't always get immediate ROI after the POC is done. You need some time to kind of have the AI give its benefits. And that's where a lot of the POCs also fail. So these are uh you know, implementing AI itself, it has its own playbook, it has its own challenges and has to be done in the right way.

Alex Romanovich:

Excellent. Excellent sort of a summarization of of these different um challenges, if you will, and how AI can either increase the complexity or can actually relieve that complexity. But certainly we definitely think that uh we all think that we, you know, we can't just jump right into it and put everything into AI and trust it and so forth, and trust the data. There's a word hallucination that comes to mind on the regular basis. I was talking to a um to a friend recently who is uh one of the executives in a very large organization, and um, you know, some folks are still trying to understand what hallucination means, right? And what is the difference between uh agentic AI, generative AI, and sort of AI that's based on real data. Those are the very important distinctions. And sometimes uh, you know, those are those are very important ways to uh to understand and to distinguish them. So let's connect all the dots together. I think we've we've reached a point where we have um, you know, it's almost like uh an amazing game that we're playing here of connecting the dots, right? So, Allah, you talked about tariffs that increase costs, and actually now they require logistics to optimize the different logistics flows and maybe even reconfiguration of those logistics flows. You need to optimize, you need to reconfigure, if you will. Then you need to uh go back to John, you need to look at e-commerce and retail and rethink the pricing strategies. And you need to worry about the cost optimization, you need to worry about the cost of acquisition of the customer, you need to worry about the loyalties, you need to worry about all of these things that will continue for that customer or B2B partner to continue to buy from you. And that uh puts more pressure on the marketers, that puts more pressure on the designers of the product, on in the product engineering and product management and so forth and so on. And then finally, on top of it, to put the icing on the cake, you have AI as the enabler or as a destroyer if not implemented correctly. So let's put all these pieces together. Um, and um, you know, how can the company, it is a question for you, how can a company differentiate itself today? And should the company immediately assess its capabilities, um, sort of uh, you know, assess where it is right now in terms of systems, in terms of people, in terms of skills, in terms of customer loyalties, in terms of all the other things, what should be the uh remedy, if you will, or what should be the plan? Don't be shy, jump in, anybody.

John Bancroft:

Well, Alex, I'm happy to jump in. I I think we can all agree that the market is not the same today as it was in the past. And I think it's pretty clear that the customer is not the same today as it was in the past. And so given those two sort of foundational uh realities here, that the things are just different, I think it's a good time for most people on this call to revisit their customer journey, to get out there again and understand what has changed within the customer's journey, that evolving journey. It's probably a great time to get out there and again talk to your customers, understand their new pain points and what's changed, understand their new issues and opportunities. It's probably a great time to check out the innovation that's going on with your competitors or in adjacent industries. And it's probably a great time to more formally, um, you know, to onkit's point, more formally look at an AI strategy where it was, it was probably on the watch list for a year or two or more. Um, certainly it was on the watch list with um robotic process automation years before AI came out. Now I think it needs to be on the list of actions. And I think if we can, if we as advisors and professionals can help our operating companies revisit their total value proposition and their customer experience, then strategies and opportunities are going to become more aware. And from that awareness, then you can build out your action plan and your timeline and and go execute and update your playbook to win.

Alex Romanovich:

Anyone else plus jump please jump in and help us uh sort of um unravel this even more.

Pavlo Kobzar:

Well, nowadays uh maybe a good strategy to try to help your customers be more successful, more efficient. And uh since uh we're at logistics where uh most cases are vendors uh for large businesses, and we help them with their operations and uh their operations efficiency. So if we can bring some extra value that will help them be more efficient, save more dollars on each mile, uh we move goods for them. It will be a good strategy uh anytime and now especially when everybody is struggling with extra costs, with raised fuel costs and tariffs and everything. First of all, if you can help your customers be more efficient, it's already uh one of the opportunities for you to differentiate. And uh as Ankit mentioned, if you have a clear AI strategy in your company and and you know how to implement it, the way uh you got ROI, you should do it. There's a there's thought that uh you either implement AI in your processes everywhere, or you are gonna be behind very soon. And I believe in that.

Alex Romanovich:

Now let me ask maybe I'll start with Ala with this question. So it sounds like, and obviously the industries and the AI vendors are telling us uh on a regular basis, listen, this is it. This is the this is the end of the this is the end, this is the end stop. AI is the answer for everything, right? But in reality, uh AI is not gonna necessarily, at least at this stage, is not going to necessarily replace the experts, is it? Ala, for example, in in the tariffs, in uh trade, in export import, in regulations and so forth, can we easily say that uh listen, all you need right now is an agentic, you know, you need an AI buddy, so to speak, and uh that's it. All my tariff uh cost optimization is done. Is that true?

Ala Sims:

Yeah, so uh technology at this point can be a helper for sure, but at this point it cannot do offer you full classifications of your product, cannot predict and help you, of course, build BI dashboards or any others to help you forecast or help you kind of navigate. So technology is a helper for sure, but uh you you should probably trust it uh with a dose of um kind of verification or um you you should also you know have different options out there. But uh at this at this point, technology is you should invest for sure um in in various platforms that would help you. Uh but experts are there and um they they remain experts at this at this time in the time of right.

Alex Romanovich:

I mean, another example we used is that you know what, uh you know, let's use AI to, I mean, I've heard this from a couple other folks in the logistics space. Let's use AI to reconfigure our complete the logistics change, right? Uh, if we were shipping from China, now we can ship from uh you know, quickly plug in all the classification tables and see if we can find some some logistics companies that can now instead of China take us through Vietnam or Canada or Mexico or whatever. And in the end, uh when you think about it, it's it's not that simple. Pavel, go ahead.

Pavlo Kobzar:

Well, uh just to clarify, I'm not uh saying that uh you need to implement AI everywhere and replace all your stuff with AI. No, I'm not even uh uh saying that we need to replace someone with AI. AI can help us uh to do some simple tasks easier, faster, more uh bring more autonomity to some process like tracking, like notifying customers on the delays, like predicting if there is like delay happening on the route, and so on, as well as uh it can be heavily uh involved in matchmaking between uh freight and uh vendors with all the predictions and scoring. This is uh where should you look when you're in logistics or uh in supply chain industry. Yeah, very cool.

Ankit Shah:

I absolutely agree. AI is an enabler, it's not something that replaces anyone, right? Maybe some functions are something which is very specific, which is very repetitive. But that has happened uh across uh you know all the years, right? I mean, uh a few years ago we used to see uh uh people, cameramans and helicopters and taking shoots, and now we have drones, right? Uh and and so so there'll be some functions or some aspects that can easily be done by AI, but AI is not something that would replace the experts. It is there to help the experts take better and faster decisions, right? It allows experts to give options that took time earlier. Like so you talk about rerouting, right? So to do it manually, whether to do it uh to route it through Vietnam or to route it through somewhere else, those options can now be available very fast. So you have the ability to make decisions faster, right? You have the ability to find out how you can hyperpersonalize, how you can add value, and and what are the things needed to be done there. And that's where AI or any technology would would make a difference. It's certainly not a replacement to any experts. That that's my opinion.

Alex Romanovich:

And John, the last mile of all of this is obviously e-commerce and interface with the consumer and so forth. I remember in the early days of tariffs, Amazon came out and said, you know, we're actually going to publish prices before and after tariffs. And there was an immediate reaction from the White House saying, Are you crazy? What are you doing? You know, that you can't do that, Walmart. You can't do this, you know, and so forth and so on. But in reality, the prices are increasing, right? Uh, we're seeing the demise of some of the cheaper suppliers like Timu and some of the other ones, right? I'm not sure what's going to happen with the TikTok shop because that's uh, you know, where that deal is on the table right now. But you know, it's incredible as to what's happening literally overnight. A few words about that, maybe.

John Bancroft:

I must say, I mean, I respect our administration, but in my opinion, price transparency is is very important. It's a bedrock of American commerce. And I'll take as an example, California. To pump gas in your car, you will you will see at the at the pump what the gas costs and and what parts your dollar is paying for. Is it is it a national tax? Are you saving the environment? Are you paying for the actual gas? Is it a state tax? And that's I think consumers value that. I think that's an important piece of information for people. So although perhaps the market hasn't embraced that concept, I actually think if you're thinking customer first, that that's a valuable piece of information for customers and they they they have a right to that, they should see that. So that last mile is important. Again, though, it starts with just a revisit of the customer experience. Like, how is she or he in B2C or B2B getting through their day-to-day work? And where can we add more value? Where can we make it easier? Like Pavel said, um, Allah mentioned, you know, that AI can't do it all. No, we need to make some judgment calls and modify our value propositions to most, you know, uh resonate with our target consumer. And so a lot of that is done in the last mile, in the customer experience, out front doing marketing and adjusting and tweaking our playbook so we can be as relevant as possible for our customers.

Alex Romanovich:

What an amazing discussion. It's coming to an end, unfortunately. I mean, we could talk for hours and hours about this. I'm fascinated by this, but I am so happy that we were able to demystify and sort of uh pick apart this very complex relationship between trade, delivery, logistics, uh, the last mile e-commerce, if you will, and the tech that sits on top of all of this and is is very much throughout throughout all of this. I want to thank you, our panel of experts. It's been a fascinating discussion. The uh word to the wise, the word to uh the companies that are watching this and the people are watching this, assess yourself immediately. Assess your capabilities. As John said, assess your customer relationship, your journey, the journey of your customer. Look at the costs, look at the ways that you acquire products and how those products work through the chain, if you will. Talk to people like Onkit about the role of technology and AI in all of these, right? Because you do have legacy systems out there. You're gonna have to integrate them. You're gonna have to clean the data, or you have to deal with clean data, hopefully, because AI is gonna produce even more data for you. And uh, you're gonna have to learn and and worry about whether this data is based on hallucinations or it's gonna be based on reality. Okay. So I want to thank you all for making this very complex environment or very complex topic a simpler one. Thank you so much.

John Bancroft:

Thank you, Alex. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.