How AI is Scaled Across Global Supply Chains with Ligentia

**Boris Rabkin** (0:00)
I'm an optimist, so I say this in a positive way. From what I said, the world is permanently disrupted. It's no longer exceptional events.

**Cindi Howson** (0:17)
Welcome to The Data & AI Chief. I'm your host, Cindi Howson.
Imagine it, you're a merchandising manager in retail, and a ship carrying your inventory is stuck. Rerouted, delayed, no solid ETA.
Traditionally, figuring out your options could take weeks. You, as a data and AI leader, can come to the rescue, just like our guest today, Boris Rabkin. Boris is the Chief Information Officer at Ligentia, the leading provider of global supply chain solutions. In this episode, you'll hear from Boris why traditional BI fails in a disruptive driven world, and how to execute a data transformation that actually sticks, and what it takes to turn your data platform into a product, your customers actually use. Boris, welcome to The Data & AI Chief.

**Boris Rabkin** (1:19)
Good morning, Cindi, and thanks for having me in this podcast. I've been following the conversations you've been having here, so it's great to be part of it. Thank you.

**Cindi Howson** (1:27)
I'm thrilled to have you here after an engaging conversation, at a dinner in a swanky London restaurant, and seeing all the work you've been doing over the years. I'm excited to hear your insights. Now, Boris, you travel the world. Where in the world are you joining us from today?

**Boris Rabkin** (1:49)
Today I'm in London, although this week has been a bit of a world tour for me. I've been spending some time with the teams in Middle East, and customers in Asia. I know we talk a lot about digital supply chains and AI, but the reality is you just can't manage everything remotely. Sometimes you got to get on a plane and go see people. You have to stay close to some of the action and more importantly, close to the people and the problems that you're trying to solve. But look, this week I'm glad to be back in London. We have an amazing weather. You could say I've got blue skies behind me.
It's really great to be in London this week.

**Cindi Howson** (2:22)
Yeah, for sure. Sometimes when you are dealing with hard problems that eye contact is super important.
The Middle East, boy, when I think about supply chain disruption, of course what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz is difficult. But we also have strikes on railroads in New York this week. I understand strikes with some of the trains in London next week. Tell us what Ligentia does. How do you help customers navigate this?

**Boris Rabkin** (2:58)
Look, I think in simple terms, Ligentia, we move goods around the world.
Our customers trust us to get their products from A to B, no matter what happens in between. The reality is we sit in the middle of chaos and we make it feel controlled.
Ligentia operates at this intersection of logistics planning, execution, and technology, which is all powered by data. So we're not just moving shipments, we're helping our customers plan better, act faster, and have visibility. And so the confidence of the supply chain is actually working. And you mentioned all these other exceptions. I'm an optimist, so I say this in a positive way. From what I said, the world is permanently disrupted. Like it's no longer exceptional events, right? We've got things that work this way. We've got geopolitical shifts, we've got poor congestions, strikes with the trains, carryability, sometimes even sustainability pressures. You know, the companies that we work with, the companies that are doing really well, are the ones that can use data properly, ask the right questions, interrogate the data themselves, get answers quickly without waiting for someone to build a report, and ultimately make decisions fast enough to minimize some of those impact of those disruptions.

**Cindi Howson** (4:14)
For sure. Yeah. Of course, I believe in the power of data, but some people in supply chain, maybe they don't, or they really like the order taker process. Submit a request to a team, wait for it to come back, and I'm going to ask you, to the extent that you're allowed to share specifically, give us a scenario.
I don't know, in our house, we're soccer, AKA football fans, the World Cup is coming, there's going to be all this branded gear being transported around the world, and something goes wrong. What do you do?

**Boris Rabkin** (4:56)
We could look at something very simple. A shipment gets stuck or some of the cargo gets rerouted.
In the way it was handled before, and sometimes in some environments, this is still the status quo. It's usually a little bit of a fire drill. You've got many emails flying around, you've got different teams that are pulling together different versions of data, a lot of waiting, waiting for somebody to pull a report, validate it, send it on. By the time you actually have that information to make a decision, you lost time and then a lot of times confidence in the data. For us today, the process itself is a lot more efficient, a lot more self-service, a lot more immediate. With that example, our teams and our customers can access data that can interrogate the data themselves. They could see the issues developing, not after, and you could quickly assess options. You could ask options for rerouting cargo, expediting it, holding it maybe. You could understand the impact.