Sustainable Supply Chain
Welcome to the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, hosted by Tom Raftery, a seasoned expert at the intersection of technology and sustainability. This podcast is an evolution of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, now with a laser-focused mission: exploring and promoting tech-led sustainability solutions in supply chains across the globe.
Every Monday at 7 am CET, join us for insightful and organic conversations that blend professionalism with an informal, enjoyable tone. We don't script our episodes; instead, we delve into spontaneous, meaningful dialogues about significant topics, always with a touch of fun.
Our guests are a diverse mix of influencers in the field - from founders and CxOs of pioneering solution providers to thought leaders and supply chain executives who have successfully implemented sustainability initiatives. Their stories, insights, and experiences are shaping the future of sustainable supply chains.
While the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast addresses critical and complex issues, we aim to keep the discussions accessible, engaging, and, most importantly, actionable. It's a podcast that caters to a global audience, reflecting the universal importance of sustainability in today’s interconnected world.
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Sustainable Supply Chain
How AI and Cloud Are Shaping Sustainable Supply Chains: A Conversation with Propel Software
In this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast, I had the pleasure of chatting with Dario Ambrosini, CMO of Propel Software. Dario brings a wealth of experience in cloud software and manufacturing, making him the perfect guest to explore the intersection of my favourite topics, technology and sustainability in supply chains.
We dive deep into how manufacturers are leveraging cloud solutions to enhance visibility and responsiveness across their supply chains—a crucial capability in an era marked by disruptions, whether due to geopolitical tensions or unforeseen events. Dario shares insights from a recent survey revealing a surprising bipartisan demand for sustainable products in the U.S., highlighting the complexities companies face in navigating this landscape.
We also discuss the transformative potential of AI in manufacturing, particularly its ability to optimise operations and reduce environmental impact. However, Dario is clear-eyed about the challenges ahead, especially in ensuring AI models are trained on robust data sets. Finally, we touch on the importance of aligning technology investments with clear business outcomes, rather than jumping on the latest tech trends without a strategic plan.
Tune in for a thoughtful discussion on how manufacturers can balance sustainability with operational efficiency, and why having a nimble, data-driven supply chain is more critical than ever.
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Consumers want sustainable products. They're willing to pay more for them, they look for sustainability in the products that they buy. They look for any type of certification or any type of third party verification that the products in the supply chains and everything is being handled in an ethical way in a renewable way, if possible. And we're seeing that it goes across party lines Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast, the number one podcast focusing on sustainability and supply chains, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hi everyone. And welcome to episode 30 of the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery, and I'm excited to be here with you today sharing the latest insights and trends in supply chain sustainability. Before we kick off today's show I want to take a quick moment to express my gratitude to all of our amazing supporters. Your support has been instrumental in keeping this podcast going, and I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're not already supporter, I'd like to encourage you to consider joining our community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about sustainability and supply chains. Support in the podcast is easy and affordable. With options starting as low as just three euros or dollars a month. That's less than the cost of a cup of coffee. And your support will make a huge difference in keeping the show going strong. To become a supporter. You simply click on the support link in the show notes of this or any episode. Or visit tiny url.com/s S C pod. In today's episode. I'm talking to Dario Ambrosini, who's the CMO of Propel Software. And in upcoming episodes. I'll be talking to John Sicard, CEO of Kinaxis. Look out for that next week. The week after Chris Shrop from Model N, the week after that again Cally Edgrin from Assent, where we'll be talking about PFAS the forever chemicals, great episode. And the week after that, Kevin Frechette from Fairmarkit. So, don't touch that dial. If you're not already following this podcast, click follow in your podcast app of choice to make sure you don't miss those excellent upcoming episodes. Now without further ado. Back to today's episode. I'd like to introduce my special guest today. Dario, Dario. Welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself? Thanks, Tom. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. My name is Dario Ambrosini. For the last 15 years, I have been in cloud software businesses, and I have had the opportunity and I've been fortunate enough to work in industries that are going through massive change. So it tends to be industries as they're moving from on premise to cloud solutions. So with that, terms that tend to be overused in our industry, but are certainly applicable. I tend to work with disruptors. I tend to work with companies that are going through digital transformations, but in essence, this comes down to companies that are changing the way they fundamentally do business. Because they are adopting cloud technologies that allow them to do things that they were not able to do, whether they were offline processes or if they were using on premise cloud technologies. So for the past five years I've been doing this in the manufacturing industry. My current role is with a company called Propel Software. And we help manufacturers and product companies in the medical device, high tech and consumer goods industries that are trying to accelerate their product go to market. So what we do is we connect their product thread from their suppliers to their buyers to service organizations and all the new product development that occurs in between. And this allows them to have full visibility of their product record, full workflow automation from beginning to end. And this is what allows them to move faster. So coming back to manufacturer is going through some big changes here, as they are moving to the cloud, as they are adopting cloud technology, as they are moving away from these large siloed on premise solutions, they're finding that they can do a lot more with their data. It can, they can move a lot faster and that's in the, that's in the middle of everything that we get to do here. Okay. So you're kind of a platform for them to see all of their data. I guess one of the first questions, I need to ask because there's lots of these. We're, we're a platform to allow everyone to see all of their data. I guess the question is if I'm a manufacturer and I've got 15 different platforms to see all of my data, how does that work? Yeah, yeah, that’s, that that is the problem you’ve just mentioned when you have 15 different platforms to view all of the information, the information becomes impossible to use. It becomes difficult to find. So historically the engineers, the supply chain managers, your procurement teams, are using one system, your quality management teams who are looking at the product once it's in market and trying to track that they're using a different platform and then your sales and marketing teams are using a different platform altogether again to push that product out to their e commerce channels or if they've got distributors, what we do is we bring that all together end to end and then wherever there is another legacy system in place, we will connect to that system so that you always know that you can go to Propel Software to see that data. Now, there's other companies that do this. The category that we primarily compete in is called product lifecycle management. So you have solutions from Oracle, from SAP, from Siemens. There's plenty of large companies that do this. What we do differently is most of those solutions are intended, they're built by the engineer and product teams. For the engineer and product teams. We believe that that product information needs to come out and it needs to be shared throughout the organization. And we also do a lot on the supplier side. We have a lot of supplier collaboration tools, and the intention is for this to all be embedded in a single system so that you aren't taking your data outside of a secure environment and using email. Or Google docs or something that can be easily lost or never found again. We bring it all again in that end to end. And you mentioned one of the biggest challenges I have as a marketer. Everybody says that they do this. Everybody says that they have it. So again, a lot of what we focus on is showing customers, or showing our prospects better yet what our customers are doing and letting that speak for it and most of what our customers want to do with this. Some of them do use it as a point solution, but for the vast majority, they're looking to bring this data to the other teams within the organization. So we just try to highlight what it looks like in the real world as to differentiate from, as you mentioned, many of the claims that that are out there. And this is the Sustainable Supply Chain podcast. And one of the reasons that I was interested in talking to you on the podcast is because you guys in Propel, you did a customer survey of about 2000 customers, if I remember correctly, on the topic of sustainability, specifically around customers, customers attitudes to sustainability or sustainable goods. Can you talk to me a little bit about the, the, the outcome from that survey? Yeah. So as you can imagine, because we work with all of our customers have a supply chain. Most of our customers are looking at more sustainability and it's because their own customers in return are demanding it. So the goal of the survey, was to just see what the attitudes are like out there from those end users. So our customers, customers, and what we found was. I want to say at least to myself, that was surprising. I'm in the U S we have a very divided political spectrum going on now. You hear the Republican side feels one way, the Democratic side feels another way, but when we went out to consumers, we found surprising, just surprising consistency that consumers want sustainable products. They're willing to pay more for them, they look for sustainability in the products that they buy. They look for any type of certification or any type of third party verification that the products in the supply chains and everything is being handled in an ethical way in a renewable way, if possible. And we're seeing that it goes across party lines. So even though we do see more Democrats, one of the things that we noticed was about 70, 73, 74 percent of the respondents were Democrats mentioned that they seek sustainable products, but 50 percent of the Republicans or at least self identified Republicans also said that they mentioned it. So it's certainly a lower amount. But it's still, you don't want to alienate half of your customer base by saying that you don't care about sustainability or that it's not important. And I think if you are a company that is going to go down that realm of talking, you know, politics or making your politics a little bit more clear. It's not quite as black and white as the politicians make it seem, where one is for the sustainability side and one is not. The companies are going to have to walk a fine line because you don't want to alienate a significant portion of your customer base. So that's where I think they're struggling. We're going down a path where if you are selling to consumers in the United States, you don't have a winning formula that is going to be, it's not going to work for all customers, all consumers. It is going to have to be a little bit more segmented. You're going to have to tailor some of your messaging or you're going to have to be able to go at a high enough level where you're embracing both sides of the business. But it was clear from the survey results, the consumers are not going to walk away from this. Consumers are actively looking for sustainability. They're actively looking for ESG claims, and they're actively making purchase decisions, including the desire or the willingness. I shouldn't say desire. Nobody wants to pay more, but a willingness to pay more for products that meet their sustainability and ESG requirements. So again, very, very interesting, but not, not an easy path for companies selling to these consumers that you should do 100 percent this or 100 percent that. They are going to have to walk a fine line as they think through their claims and their product strategy and how sustainability comes into both of those. Okay, so just to kind of summarize the kind of the outcome of the survey was that customers are looking for actively looking for goods that are more sustainable in some cases, they're actually willing to pay more for goods that are sustainable. It's not just that they're looking for goods, but they are actually willing to put their money where their eyes are looking, I was going to say where their mouth is, but, and it's cross party lines, to a large extent. I mean, you, you mentioned that there's a portion on the, on the Republican side who still aren't looking for, but it's, it's still, I think you said 50 percent at least of the self identified Republicans are actively looking for goods that are more sustainable. That, that's an, that's an amazing outcome. Would, did that surprise you? It did. It did. We were expecting it to be, well, I shouldn't say we, I'm going to speak for myself. I thought it would be in the 20, 25 percent range on the Republican respondents. And that was so, so yes, it was very surprising to me, again, thinking through, we're seeing more and more companies. catering to one political party or the other with their words, with their messaging, you're seeing that as a segmentation strategy to own a certain portion of the market. And this isn't just with our customer base, or I shouldn't say it's not with our customer base. It's more on the consumer side. We are primarily a business to business. But definitely on the consumer side, I see this as a consumer myself. And again, I think that you need to be very careful if you're going after the Republican base and thinking that you're going to mirror the politicians and what they're saying about sustainability and ESG, only to land, land yourself in trouble because you've alienated 50 percent of your customer base. I think this is going to be very difficult for companies that are going down that path, at least at a global level. Global. I shouldn't say that at the domestic. But I mean, at the high level within the domestic U.S. That there is going to be an issue for them to determine how they can effectively walk this line. Okay. One thing I will add, your summary was absolutely correct, but one thing that I did not mention on the propensity or the willingness to pay more. Oddly enough, we saw a slightly higher percentage of Republicans that were willing to pay more for ESG than Democrats. So again, the percentage of Democrats looking was higher, but of those who were looking, the percentage who said they would be willing to pay more for a sustainable product or one that meets their ESG needs, that was actually higher on the Republican side. So again, just adding to the layers of complexity that come from a survey like this and how you're going to navigate it. There's, there's multiple layers that the company selling to these consumers will have to navigate in order to be effective. Alright, and as I said at the start, I think this was 2000 customers. So it is statistically significant. Is it, is it 2000 of Propel's customers or 2000 customers of Propel's customers? No, no. So we partnered with an agency who does surveys and we went out to the general market. It was U.S. Customers. So the only criteria was that they be, certain age within the United States and that they be buyers. So beyond that, it's not our customers at all. It's just a random sampling of consumers across the U.S. Okay. Fascinating. And I mean, we're in an election year, there's, You know, I don't know, I don't know how it's going to break down. What about the regulations that are in place at the moment or the regulations that are coming down the line, the SEC regulations, will they get torn up and thrown out? Yeah. So the election, it would be a lot more amusing if I didn't live here. As is, there's a lot of rhetoric that goes on with the current, the current two, presidential candidates that we have. I don't think it is going to go much beyond that beyond political election year rhetoric. In terms of policy as it relates to sustainability, as it relates to ESG. What I think you will see if Trump wins I think you'll see a little bit of a rollback on anything that is intended to throttle fossil fuels. I don't think you're going to see a change in policy towards renewables. I just don't see that happening and there's a couple of reasons for that. The first one is that there's been a huge stimulus, a couple of different stimulus packages that were passed over the past few years, about a trillion dollars each between two pieces of legislation, one called the Chips Act and one called the Inflation Reduction Act. And what those did is those provided government stimulus for private investment in things like semiconductor plants. That's what gets the big headline, but they've also spurred the construction of about 500 renewable energy plants. So wind plants, solar, geothermal, hydro, and these are multi year construction, and a lot of these are happening in states that are voting for Donald Trump. So I don't see any scenario where Trump wins. These things are on multi year cycles. I don't think there's any reason why you're going to go back and pull it away. And I certainly don't think you want to harm the, the electorate that has just brought you into power. And again, there, there, there's certain states that are smaller, that are going to have a higher percentage of their energy coming from renewables, certain stakes that are bigger, that, that, that have the same dynamic. But ultimately what it comes down to is the companies that are taking these multi year investments, coming back to the survey that we just mentioned, they know that their customers are going to demand it. They don't care if there is a short term blip of a president that is going to be more geared towards fossil fuel because he's trying to cater for votes in certain states that he needs to get to the electoral map. They care about their long term business and their long term business dictates that consumers want renewables. And I think another great example of this is a, you know, I see a lot of people who work for the fossil fuel industry who are driving Teslas and EVs. There is an embrace that this industry from the people who are making the most money off it today is going to evolve. And even Shell has created or is experimenting with hydrogen refueling stations here in California. So they found that from a consumer standpoint, they weren't able to make them work, but they're still looking from an industrial if they can get tractor trailers to use hydrogen refueling stations within the state, they think that that is a path towards more renewable. So again, there's big companies, big investments, consumer demand. This is going to be the long term trend and anything that comes with the change of administration. It's just simply not going to stop that. And they're not going to harm this because they would have to do so within the States that, that, that voted for them. So that's why I don't see this really changing very much regardless of the outcome here in November. Okay. And what about, let's say, foreign relations, because we're seeing a lot of geopolitical tensions at the moment, particularly between the U.S. and China. And China is where lots of stuff gets made. And that was actually, that, that tension, a lot of that was kicked off under the Trump administration back in 2016, 2017, he imposed the first of the, the tariffs, which Biden has doubled down on now, we've seen, how is that going to impact, you know, manufacturing supply chains? Yeah. I think you're going to see a huge impact here, over the next 5 to 10 years. As you mentioned, China is the powerhouse global manufacturing. It's about a third. I believe last year was the first time that we saw their share of global manufacturing decrease and some of that was due to the tariffs and, you know, when I talk about politicians, I tend to get cynical, but the one rule I have look at what they do, not what they say. And you pointed out exactly what people should expect. Tariffs that were started with Trump carried over to Biden, who not only didn't roll them back, but doubled down. And our CEO was recently in Washington, DC for a government business symposium, and there were members from both sides of Republican party and the Democratic party. There's bickering on the partisan level, as you would expect, as you see in, in the media, but the one thing that they were aligned on across party lines was that the United States needs to secure our supply chains. And that supply chains that go through authoritarian regimes is a risk to our national security. And of those authoritarian regimes, China is the biggest target that they have. So, I did not realize that this was beyond tariffs, which I think many times are to protect our industry. This is a little bit of a different dynamic here. We're now talking about supply chains as a security issue. We're talking about it as a national security issue. And that's where if the government is unified on that, you will see action and the action will be far broader and far more in depth then what we've seen so far. And the expectation here, at least from what we've seen, and I think this, this caught a lot of our customers by, by surprise, as we were sharing with them at our recent annual conference, what you're going to see is more and more action being taken by the U.S. Government to decouple ourselves from China. It's something that was already happening naturally because of the supply chain shocks that we saw the last few years, but it's something entirely different when it is driven by United States government policy and there is bipartisan support. The U.S. Again, we have our own issues with paralysis at the, at the government level. But when this body wants to move in a direction and there is support from both sides, they move quickly and they are quite effective. A good example of this is there's a there's a lithium mine, the Albemarle Lithium Mine, which is in North Carolina I believe. It was shut down in the 80s. All of that production was moved to China and other areas where maybe the environmental protections were a little bit more lax and it was more economically viable to extract. The Department of Defense recently gave, or awarded, better yet, a grant, and it was just under a hundred million dollars, I believe to reopen that mine because it is the United States' belief again at the government and at the Department of Defense level that you cannot have lithium mines going through China. It simply is too important to our batteries that is too important to the future of our grid of our power source of our own economy, that that can be used against us. And as you look at what China has done with the Belt and Road Initiative, where they're extending that influence out beyond China, that means that there's more and more countries where the United States is going to get uncomfortable having their supply chain go through if they believe there's undue influence from China. So our customer base and again, going back to we work with manufacturers who have global supply chains. I think a lot of them are seeing a need to come back in terms of near shoring and reshoring or at least getting their supply chain a little bit closer to home if they have that extended global supply chain. But not many of them realize that it would be pushed by the government as opposed to just general economics and that natural evolution that you see as a country like China becomes an economic powerhouse. And then that capacity isn't quite as cheap as it used to be. What used to be just more of an economic evolution is now going to be a political evolution and that evolution always happens faster when it's political. So again, I expect within, you know, five to 10 years, you're going to see close to a complete decoupling of supply chains that go through China for anything that is viewed as critical to the U S. Well, what's that going to do to prices? Well, uh, it depends who you ask and there's a couple of options from here. So I'll give you again, my personal opinion, human beings tend to have short term memories. So I do believe that in the near term, you'll probably see a little bit more nearshoring and reshoring, and that will increase prices. But you're seeing that some of that nearshoring in Mexico, for example, it's very efficient. It's become highly skilled. It's similar to what you saw decades ago in China, where it went from being the low cost option to the high tech option. And I think that you're going to see a little bit of that and that will alleviate prices. But a lot of what AI is doing with generative AI and with the ability to reduce any language barrier or remove better yet any language barrier. I think you're going to start to see other countries that have decent infrastructures that were perhaps held back by the lack of language skills or the inability to communicate effectively. It's going to allow them to do more on the manufacturing front. And you'll probably see more of these low cost centers creep up. And as I mentioned, human beings tend to have short term memory. It'll just be, you know, a couple of years between, Oh, you know, we're spending this much here, but we could reduce 10% by going to this new country that we see is coming up. One of the countries that we've talked about is, is Vietnam. So it has strong infrastructure. It has strong manufacturing, skilled manufacturing capabilities. The English language skills aren't quite what they used to be. And this is one area where generative AI is probably going to allow them to overcome that, and it's going to allow them to flourish. And I think you're going to see pockets like Vietnam and other countries that have similar infrastructures are going to grow. And again, that will alleviate a little bit, but ultimately productivity is the one thing that can offset that increase in cost and supply chain. So it'll be a question of whether or not the dream of AI becomes the reality. And if it is able to reduce or able to reduce costs by the increase in productivity, I don't have an answer if that will actually be the case. But I know that a lot of people are betting that it will at some point Okay. And I'm, I'm glad you brought up AI because I wanted to ask, are the likes of technologies like AI and cloud, are they, to your mind, going to help supply chains become more sustainable? They are. There's no doubt. And they're already doing that to a certain extent. So on the AI front, I think with manufacturing, what we're seeing right now, nobody really knows how it will impact their supply chain. Nobody knows how it will impact the operational side of their business. I'm going to go out and venture that 100 percent of manufacturing companies are using AI in some shape or form. It's embedded in their technology, whether it's HR technology or their productivity, you know, Microsoft Office, they're using it. But on the supply chain side, on the manufacturing side, you know, 90, 95 percent is not good enough. If AI can help get me 90 percent of an article drafted as a marketer, that's a great benefit. I can manage the rest of the 10%. If it only gets me 90 percent accuracy on the manufacturing front, that's horrendous because now I've got 10% quality problems that I have to deal with, or I have to issue expensive recalls, or I've got shipping issues. I've got scrapped it. So anyway, the companies from the supply chain side are taking a little bit more of a wait and see mode as it relates to AI. And most of the companies we're chatting with want to do this maybe in 2025 is when they think that they'll have a strategy that is implemented and impacting their business. But the interesting thing is that they're all, they're all going to do it. To a T. Everybody says that they are going to bring this into their supply chain in one way or another. What they're looking for now is what do those AI models need to be successful once they have identified the proper use of those AI models. And what comes back to time and time again is you need data, right? The large language models if you want to put them to work, they need a big set of data that is standardized, that is accurate, that has both depth and breadth so that you can train the models correctly. And what they're doing now is they're implementing cloud solutions, much like my own so that they can start generating that data. And then once they have it, they will feed it into the models. So if we break this down into two things, if we look at what they can do today and what they are doing today. Again, something that you couldn't do with siloed data or with siloed solutions. They're looking at demand signals and they're tying that back directly to their product teams and their procurement teams so that procurement isn't buying more quantity of something that is having slower demand in market. So what they're doing is they're reducing the amount of time and they're reducing the delay from market conditions to backend procurement to backend purchasing so that you don't have a lot of extra components that need to be scrapped, or you haven't built a lot of product that needs to go the, that, that needs to be dumped or, or worse, never get sold. So from that perspective, there are some sustainability improvements that they're already seeing now simply by moving to more of these interconnected cloud models and going to this model where they are communicating. It used to be front office, back office, your front office talks to your customers, your back office is dealing with your products. They're moving to this whole office approach. And that really, really has great implications. It's not only better for sustainability, but it's also better for their efficiency, right? It's an impact to their bottom line. So again, this is more market driven with sustainability as a secondary benefit. As you think forward to what they can do with AI, going back to now, if you have all of this data set, what you can start doing is you can start looking at a product that is in market and perhaps is failing at a higher rate. Now, if you've got all of the upstream patterns, the components, where they were sourced, when they were manufactured, the batch, who they were sold to, where they were sold to, how they were used because a lot of these products are connected, so you can detect usage patterns. The human brain, it becomes very difficult to tie all of these upstream data points to a failure point. That's where AI with a large language model can come in and begin to detect, Hey, these are the patterns that we see are going to cause you problems. And when the product is used this way, or sold in this environment where it's humid, or sold in a different environment where it is arid, your failure rate is going to go up. What you can now begin doing is you can either change the product. You can tailor it for those environments or that usage pattern, or you can begin doing preventive maintenance and saying, you know what, I'm not going to wait for something to break and have an impact and then have to overnight a part. I know on average is going to fail with these usage patterns. I can begin bringing my parts in bulk. I can ship them slower. Again, all things that are going to reduce emissions and carbon footprints. And again, the companies are being driven here because it impacts their bottom line. It's better for them from a customer standpoint. It's better to not have any type of idle machinery, but the bottom line is that it also has this wonderful impact on sustainability. Because again, instead of overnighting a part that I absolutely need, I could begin shipping it two to three months in advance with other parts that I know are going to go into this. And now we're reducing our carbon footprint because things are being shipped together. And again, there's no downtime on machinery. So the promise is certainly there. This is the vision that customers expect. What I don't know and what they don't know is where those large language models are going to come from. So for now, a lot of them are just busy building those datasets. They'll feed them into the large language models at a later date, but this is where they are going. There, there, there's no doubt that this will have a, just a much, much better impact on sustainability and improvement from the environment. Fascinating. And you mentioned you had your big customer event last week. Any interesting outcomes from that? Any surprises, anything like that? Yeah, I think the big surprise that we see are that a lot of the manufacturers that we work with, they're not trying to predict the future. Going back to China, you know, their supply chains may go out of China. I think some of them are going to get ahead of it, but some of them are also saying, you know, we we've seen this play out before. There's a lot of, you know, heavy words. There's a lot of language and then it doesn't play out. Or the politicians kiss up and make nice. So most of what they are building is visibility. and responsiveness. They want to be able to adjust quickly. So rather than trying to, again, some trends are going to get ahead of, but they're really looking at, Hey, where does this make sense for me to do now? Where do I think it's going to be 12 months from now? And just give me the responsiveness to move quickly. I don't think anybody would have predicted that a cargo ship would have taken down a bridge in Baltimore and impacted the supply chain going through all the way through the Eastern seaboard of the United States. You know, maybe some people saw that, you know, the Red Sea lanes would be closed, but but did they all see when a ship got, you know, turned sideways in the Suez Canal? These are things that I think the supply chain disruptions, whether they're politically driven, whether they are economics, or just bad luck, they're going to happen. So the vast majority of our customers are simply trying to build that visibility and that speed to make adjustments on the fly. And I think that is where the market is going. At least again, we tend to deal with fast moving manufacturers. I think they're going to continue building that speed and building that responsiveness because that's vital to the success of their models. Okay. Okay. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now, Dario. Is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had, or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of? Yeah, I think the big question is what should you do with this information? Going back to what our customers are doing. What we always recommend, companies, whether their customers, whether their prospects is to start with the business outcome that they are looking to drive. So coming back to if you're selling to one of those Democrats or Republicans who care about sustainability and ESG. Understanding what you need to deliver to them to be successful is going to be the key, right? Ultimately, you have to have a willing consumer who will buy your product. And if you do that, you can begin working yourself backwards to what does the product need to do? What does my supply chain need to look like? Who are the people who need to help me secure that supply chain? How are we going to market this? And ultimately, the last thing that you should look at is what technology do I need to make all of that work? I think where companies get in trouble is they turn around that equation, they start with the technology, they know that they need to do something, they know that they want to build more sustainability into their supply chain, they know that they want to make a difference, so they immediately go to technology. But when you don't have that endgame with all of those different pieces mapped out, you don't know how to deploy the technology. And they've become so flexible and they've become so configurable that you're going to get yourself in trouble if you don't have that end goal in mind. So that's the one thing that I would recommend anybody who is looking to build more sustainability into their supply chain. Start with the end game and work their way back to technology and that should be your last step. Makes sense. Makes sense. Great. Dario, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them? Yeah, so our company website is going to be the best. It's propelsoftware. com. and from there we have links in the resources section that goes to our articles and our research area, which is just converged. propellsoftware. com. If anybody wants to go there directly, but, that's where you can find the survey, you can find some of the other articles that we've written on these topics, as well as other articles that impact manufacturers. Great. Dario, that's been really interesting. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. Thanks, Tom. I appreciate you having me on. Okay. Thank you all for tuning into this episode of the Sustainable Supply Chain Podcast with me, Tom Raftery. Each week, thousands of supply chain professionals listen to this show. If you or your organization want to connect with this dedicated audience, consider becoming a sponsor. You can opt for exclusive episode branding where you choose the guests or a personalized 30 second ad roll. It's a unique opportunity to reach industry experts and influencers. For more details, hit me up on Twitter or LinkedIn, or drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com. Together, let's shape the future of sustainable supply chains. Thanks. Catch you all next time.