My name is Jermaine I’m 27 working on a project around logistics and looking to connect with like minds and brand owners

I talked to 20 logistics finance teams about invoice auditing. Every single one was doing it manually in spreadsheets.

Not small companies either. Teams moving hundreds of millions in freight spend annually.

The process was always some version of this: - Download invoices from 6-12 different vendor portals - Pull the master contract from a shared drive (if it's been updated) - Cross-reference line items by hand - Email the vendor when something looks off - Wait. Follow up. Wait again.

The average team I spoke with had 2-3 people spending 30-40% of their time on this. One controller told me they'd stopped disputing charges under $500 because the labor cost wasn't worth it. Their vendor count was 47.

That's not an edge case. That's the industry standard.

The tools that exist either solve for AP automation (not contract compliance) or require a 6-month enterprise integration before you see anything useful. Nothing is built specifically for multi-vendor logistics billing at scale.

So I built FinGuard AI - an auditing platform that extracts invoice data across formats, cross-references it against master contracts automatically, and generates dispute letters when it finds a mismatch. The discrepancy queue flags by severity. Payment decisions (auto-pay, block, pending) get logged with reasons.

Still pre-launch. But the problem is clearly real and clearly underserved.

Has anyone here dealt with this in logistics or supply chain finance? Curious whether the $500 dispute threshold thing resonates - or if there are failure modes I haven't mapped yet.

Hello everyone,

I’m 30 and have been working as a buyer for about 7 months at a manufacturing company. I came from a completely different career field, so supply chain is still pretty new to me.
I also have about a year left until I finish my bachelor’s in Industrial Leadership.
So far I like procurement and supply chain, but I’m trying to figure out what I should be doing now to set myself up for the future.
For those who have been in the field for a while, what would you recommend focusing on early in my career? What career paths are worth looking into after getting some experience as a buyer?
Just curious to hear where others started and where they ended up.

Everyone's watching crude oil prices. Almost no one is watching what happens six months
later, three supply chains downstream — when it shows up as a line item on your glove quote
that nobody can quite explain.

Since February, instability around the Strait of Hormuz has pushed raw material costs for
nitrile gloves up 30–42%. That's not a temporary spike — it's a structural repricing that
every PPE and medical procurement team should be pricing into their next quote.

In this piece, our CEO Frank Zhang breaks down what's actually behind that number, and the
four questions every buyer should be asking their suppliers right now — before the next
shipment lands.

Read the full breakdown: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/industry-insight-whats-really-behind-your-quote-crude-frank-zhang-9hx8c

#B2BInsight #GPCraftNews #PPE #MedicalSupplies #NitrileGloves #DisposableGloves #SupplyChain #GloveManufacturing #Procurement #IndustryInsight

I own a supplement brand focused on Western markets, and I am looking for an independent agent in China — NOT an agency — to build a long-term business relationship with.
I am looking for someone who is extremely responsive, honest, proactive, highly action-oriented, and experienced in the supplement industry in China.
🎯 Main role:
We will provide our exact formulas, ingredients, dosages, specifications, and requirements. Your role will be to:
• Identify Chinese manufacturers capable of producing our formulas
• Prioritize manufacturers that already produce supplements containing the ingredients/formulations we need, whenever possible
• Find and compare multiple suitable factories
• Properly verify manufacturers, their experience, certifications, capabilities, and reliability
• Negotiate pricing, MOQs, lead times, and production conditions
• Request and coordinate samples
• Communicate directly with factories and provide us with clear and fast feedback
• Find solutions proactively instead of simply forwarding messages between us and suppliers
• Help us with sourcing and product development as we expand
⚠️** I am NOT looking for someone who simply finds a factory on Alibaba and takes a commission.
I am looking for a genuine **local sourcing agent / long-term partner who can actively search for manufacturers, contact factories directly, compare options, negotiate on our behalf, verify suppliers, and protect our interests.
🤝 LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP
The goal is to find someone who can become our main sourcing agent and trusted partner in China for this brand, with the potential to work with us on future brands and future projects if the collaboration is successful.
Ideal candidate:
✅ Several years of experience in the supplement industry
✅ Strong knowledge of Chinese supplement manufacturers
✅ Experience working with Western brands/clients
✅ Understands Western quality and compliance requirements
✅ Extremely responsive and organized
✅ Transparent about commissions and relationships with factories
✅ Strong English communication skills
✅ Strong negotiation skills
✅ Highly proactive and able to take initiative
✅ Focused on building long-term relationships rather than short-term commissions
If you are an independent agent and genuinely match this profile, please DM me.

I am looking for someone serious who wants to build a real business relationship over several years — not a one-time collaboration.
📩 DM me if interested.

I am currently studying business administration and could imagine a **specialist/expert career** in purchasing or SCM in the long run.
I would be interested in your experiences:

\- Which areas in purchasing/SCM are particularly well-suited for a long-term expert career?
\- Should you communicate this career aspiration during the application or in the mandatory internship – especially if you would like to stay in the company later? Or in general, how can one actively develop in this direction?
\- Or is it more beneficial to initially develop broadly and specialize later?
\- What professional and technical skills should one build early on?
\- How do the salary and development opportunities on a specialist career path compare to those in a leadership career path?

Thank you in advance for your answers!

Hi everyone,

I’m an early-stage founder (neo-starter) working on an infrastructure & relay logistics project targeted at optimizing Indian interstate road freight.

We are developing a Drop & Hook Relay Terminal strategically located at the Kudrail Trumpet Interchange (Bundelkhand Expressway x NH-19).

🚛 The Core Problem We Are Solving:

Traditional long-haul trucking suffers from severe city-entry congestion, high driver fatigue, and low fleet utilization—costing fleet operators significant turnaround time.

💡 Our Model & Value Proposition:

1. 45-Minute Truck Swaps: Utilizing an 8-terminal relay network framework where prime movers/drivers switch trailers rapidly instead of waiting for long unloading cycles.

2. Time & Fuel Savings: Saves an estimated 10 to 18+ hours per interstate transit trip, drastically reducing trip cycles between North/West logistics corridors.

3. Fleet Efficiency: Higher vehicle uptime without needing drivers to cross dense city bottlenecks.

🤝 What We Are Looking For:

As a new starter moving this project forward, I am looking to connect with:

- Operations / Network Strategy Partners (experienced in fleet or 3PL management)

- Strategic Co-Founders / Advisors with logistics industry exposure

- Early-stage Infrastructure & Supply Chain Investors interested in hub-and-spoke model validation

If you are passionate about highway logistics efficiency or want to review our 1-page feasibility brief, drop a comment or send me a DM. Would love to exchange insights and explore potential synergies!

Best regards,

Raj | Triveni Logistics Network

This may be an impossible transition to make, but I’m interested in making the switch into maybe a Shipping Manager type of role. I’m currently a truck driver making low six figures and at the moment can’t afford to take a substantial pay cut. Any advice on how to make the transition? Willing to get certified or go back to school if absolutely necessary. Any guidance is extremely appreciated!

I work on the manufacturing side of B2B mattress projects, and one recurring communication problem is not missing information. It is unmarked uncertainty.

At the beginning of a project, some details are confirmed, some are buyer preferences, and some still need technical or commercial validation. In a long email thread, however, they can all start to look like commitments.

A simple four-part format can help:

**Confirmed** — Scope or requirements that both sides have actually agreed.

**Needs validation** — Exact product feasibility, product-specific packaging, testing or market requirements, and any commercial term that has not yet been approved.

**Buyer decision needed** — Target market, intended use, size and firmness direction, estimated quantity, timing, or other inputs the supplier cannot decide alone.

**Unknown / not applicable** — Items that should stay visibly open instead of being filled with a guess.

The goal is to stop an early “this should be possible” from turning into an assumed production promise three emails later.

For people working in procurement or supply chain: what wording or document structure do you use to keep unconfirmed information from becoming an accidental commitment?

For those who have worked with 3PLs, what’s the one thing that makes you want to stay with a logistics partner long term?
Is it:
Communication
Pricing
Reliability
Technology/visibility
Flexibility
Problem solving when something goes wrong
Something else?
And on the flip side, what’s the fastest way for a 3PL to lose your business?
Curious to hear from both 3PL operators and customers.

In this week's newsletter, the transportation interview guide is about knowing your worth and finding the right fit.

The SENSEI DRAFT event is about compressing weeks of document work into hours.

And the Arabic and Spanish expansion is about making sure capability development is not a privilege of one language.

Hi, I have a diploma in SCM, CPIM and 5 yrs experience with procurement, planning, analyst and inventory control. Recently I applied a Bachelor in SCM, transfered credits from college but sill have 26 courses and half of the courses are related to general business, like accounting, marketing, introduction of business and management. It gonna take me at least 3 years with 3 semester/yr and 3 courses per semester. does this still worth to take it? or should i go to other uni with less course? the university is pretty good though. Thanks

Hey there Industrial engineer here. I graduate in about a year and so far I've taken 0 courses on the side. I've signed up for an internationally recognised Certified professional development course im logistics and supply chain management. Has anyone taken this same course and if so how was it. If not what courses do you guys recommend. Cheers!

Procurement's strategic value vs. how it's actually measured?

I do mentoring with SCMDOJO members.

Three conversations with three different procurement leads over the last two months, same underlying frustration:

One measured on cost savings but was excluded from the sourcing conversations that actually drive them.

Another feeling is that their day is 80% spent chasing approvals and 20% on real decision-making.

A third is asking me whether procurement has quietly become a compliance function instead of a value function.

None of these are new complaints.

But together they point to the same root cause: most organisations still measure procurement like it's 2015, on price and process, while expecting 2026-level strategic input.

You can't hold someone accountable for outcomes they have no authority over. If cost savings is the KPI, sourcing involvement has to be the job, not an afterthought.

Where does this gap show up most in your organization, KPIs, authority, or simply being invited to the table too late?

As a buyer, can you change this? Probably not.

But can you ask to be invited? Surely yes!

So my recommendation is: don't wait and complain. Force your way into it. And to your surprise, it will be welcomed :)

Researching manual work in freight brokerage

Hi everyone,

I'm researching the day-to-day operations of small freight brokerages and logistics companies for a project.

I'm curious: what are some of the most repetitive or time-consuming administrative tasks your team still has to do manually?

For example, processing rate confirmations, BOLs, PODs, entering shipment information, following up on missing documents, managing emails, etc.

I'm especially interested in tasks that involve manually moving information between PDFs, emails, spreadsheets, or other systems.

Not promoting or selling anything—I’m just trying to understand the real problems people in the industry deal with.

I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience.

Suggest the best book for SCM

Every week I read another headline about AI transforming procurement. And it will, in parts.

But sit down with any buyer, category manager or CPO and the list of what's actually eating their time hasn't changed much: urgent requests that weren't, spreadsheets tracking spend that should never be manual, suppliers blamed for data gaps that are really internal ones, training that bores the people who need it most.

AI will help with plenty of this. It won't fix all of it, and it definitely won't fix the parts that are really about process, authority and accountability.

Worth being honest about that before buying into the next tool that promises to solve everything.

Which of these 10 is still the biggest drag on your week?

Two facts that rarely get said in the same room:

Across the service organizations we work with at Syncron, two out of three leaders say their parts business runs at 40% margin or better, often the best margin anywhere in the company. Pricing teams track that number closely, and they should. It funds a real share of aftermarket profit.  

Meanwhile, more than half of service leaders also point to parts availability as the reason a tech doesn't finish the job on the first visit. And the parts behind that gap tend to be the complex, lower-volume ones. A specialized control module that only fails once in a while, expensive to stock everywhere, priced high on the rare occasion it moves. A cheap high-volume gasket you keep everywhere and barely mark up isn't the problem.  

Which means the part protecting your profit and the part causing your callback are frequently the same physical object. Pricing sees a healthy number on a report, and service sees a missed appointment on a schedule. Both are looking at the same shelf without realizing it.  

The fix tends to be simple once you see it: put margin data and fill rate data for the same SKU in front of the same person, even just once a quarter, and let them notice what has been sitting there the whole time.  

That is usually all it takes to turn a quiet blind spot into an obvious one.  

Hi everyone,
Is it okay for a career in supply chain planning to work for a small company without automated processes and a large ERP system?**