The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals every summer issues a report about the health of the logistics industry and holds a panel discussion with industry experts who underscore the results with real-world perspectives. It’s supposed to provide the definitive post-mortem on how well the freight sector performed in the prior year and look at market trends shaping the future. But few are paying attention anymore.
For years the event, held at the National Press Club in Washington, was packed with industry analysts as well as journalists from places like The Wall Street Journal. This year, most seats were empty and there were only two bona fide news reporters in attendance. The Journal highlighted the report’s main statistic in a bullet point for its daily logistics newsletter, with a link to a story by trade publication DC Velocity but hasn’t written its own story about the report in two years.
There are several explanations for this.
First, CSCMP conducted a pre-briefing for journalists by videoconference the week before the live press conference. It was valuable, but if reporters get their questions answered in advance, they aren’t going to waste time attending the event a second time — in person or via streaming. Getting an advance copy of the report is helpful for reporters on deadline, but CSCMP should make up its mind on whether to have a pre-briefing or live event instead of doing both. And the association should reconsider how it promotes the report because the press conference to explain the findings has lost its luster. Without many news professionals asking interesting questions, we got canned ones from a moderator who seemed to have instructions to keep going regardless of whether the discussion had reached its natural end state. So, the event meandered for two hours when it could have been completed much sooner.
The report may be getting less attention, too, because it is easier these days with new data analytics providers, visibility technology and quality coverage from a variety of news outlets for industry watchers to understand the transportation and warehousing markets as they evolve on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis. Also, increased awareness of macro-level statistics, such as for-hire trucking revenue or producer price indexes, directly available from the U.S. Census Bureau allows analysts and others to assess the market on a more current basis.
We even get the Logistics Managers’ Index, a collaboration among several university supply chain programs, each month. The LMI, which is supported by CSCMP, provides detailed survey data about inventory costs, warehouse and transportation utilization, pricing, and capacity.
The “State of Logistics Report” doesn’t shed additional light on the market’s condition; it simply confirms what we already know.
To be fair, the report has become much more professional ever since CSCMP took it over and brought in Kearney to conduct the analysis. Previous authors tended to use a fair amount of guesswork and incomplete data to draw conclusions about the market. But if CSCMP wants to be more relevant, then it needs to change its approach — perhaps defer to the LMI report, or do quarterly or twice-yearly briefings. And if you’re going to shell out big dollars to rent pricey space at the National Press Club, then you should do more to make sure the press shows up.
CSCMP’s promotional pen fails on engineering
The Council for Supply Chain Management Professionals had some customized pens with the trade association’s logo spread on tables at last Tuesday’s unveiling of the annual logistics report. I can always use a good pen, so I picked one up. But I had a devil of a time figuring out how to extend the cartridge into writing mode. I tried to push the squishy button on top. Nope. I tried twisting the bottom nozzle. Nothing. I tried turning the section with the clip. Still stuck. Perhaps I’m an idiot. So I showed the pen to two well-known logistics experts and asked if they could open it. Both of them struggled as I had. No luck. I finally figured it out — you had to push down the clip piece to extend the head.
Logistics professionals are engineers at their core. Their job is to organize complex supply chains and make them function as seamlessly as possible. It’s amusing — or amazing — that the logisticians at CSCMP picked a pen design that was so complicated no one could use it.
Click here for more FreightWaves stories by Eric Kulisch.
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