Chainalytics

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How Bright Minds and Better Methods Lead to the Best Outcomes at Chainalytics

From supply chain design and operations to packaging optimization and transportation, Chainalytics has proven to be many top companies' choice for industry expertise. The Atlanta-based company assists some of the largest businesses in the world to enable fact-based transformation within highly complex supply chains.

Chainalytics brings years of advanced decision sciences and supply chain knowledge to an ever-changing market that's becoming increasingly fragmented. Its consulting arm of the brand operates across all core supply chain competencies and its market intelligence division provides supply chain intelligence and industry benchmarks collected from multiple participating companies and industries.

One of the driving factors in the company's success with so many big client companies—including 18 of Gartner's top 25 supply chains and 91 of the Fortune 500—is what CEO Mike Kilgore explained as the company's "confident humility."

"We've invested in becoming the best in the world at what we do," he explained, "so we know what we are good at. We know what we know, but we also know what we don't know, and are willing to admit when something is out of our scope."

But with proprietary tools and methods proven by years of success and a culture with strong core values like integrity and innovation, very little in supply chain management (SCM) is outside of Chainalytics' scope.

Unique Solutions for Unique Challenges

The top talent at Chainalytics is passionate and dedicated to providing clients with the best solutions and outcomes for their business. Each situation clients bring to the company is different, but a strong foundation for an optimal solution is established through Chainalytics' robust and proven tools and methodologies. Chainalytics' sees its job as first understanding what makes each client's business unique, and crafting an approach to fit each appropriate market and strategy.

There are several components that can work against finding the perfect solution, which is why a trusted partner like Chainalytics can be so valuable.

"Our mission is to overcome challenges and unleash opportunities," Kilgore said. "We live at the intersection of change and complexity. Companies have to maximize the value of their supply chain while dealing with real-world operational, financial, and resource constraints. We leverage leading talent, technologies, and methods to deliver best-in-class insights."

Chainalytics accommodates each company's unique situation into its customized solutions to produce the best outcome for each organization.

"Our team is dependent on our client's team's ability and willingness to share information. With collaboration and transparency, we can work towards accomplishing that shared objective improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their supply chain," Kilgore said.

Our mission is to overcome challenges and unleash opportunities. We live at the intersection of change and complexity. Companies have to maximize the value of their supply chain while dealing with real-world operational, financial, and resource constraints. We leverage leading talent, technologies, and methods to deliver best-in-class insights. - CEO Mike Kilgore

One of the overarching challenges inherent in just about any project Chainalytics works on is constant need of clean data. The company runs on the notion of transforming supply chains through fact-based decisions and not opinions, and this can only be determined with the right data. Although many of the company's clients have invested millions in enterprise applications, fragmented or incomplete data sets are still prevalent and something Chainalytics deals with and overcomes daily.

Freight Market Intelligence Consortium

The company is working to accelerate the time it takes to turn transactional-level data into actionable insights, ultimately empowering business users to make data-driven decisions faster than ever before. Its innovative flagship offering, the Freight Market Intelligence Consortium (FMIC), founded over a decade ago, includes a members-only private forum that provides a slew of transportation analytics, benchmarks, and other helpful information as well as a well-attended annual Freight Market Intelligence Summit.

Chainalytics' FMIC is categorized by modes, including truckload—for both shippers and logistics service providers—less-than-truckload, and ocean. A model-based benchmarking approach helps members understand current and future freight market dynamics through a normalization of overall cost impactors like performance conditions, geography, movement type, equipment variances, and accessorial charges.

"All participants have access to these industry insights through a data-visualization dashboard," Kilgore shared. "One of the most valuable tools we've developed is our online rate estimator, which gives a company a greater understanding of a lane or market it is not yet operating in without having to call down a list of carriers."

The FMIC has seen success in North America, where Chainalytics is currently building on the expanded modes besides truckload. The consortium has recently been launched in Western Europe and Russia and is currently being launched in Brazil and Australia. The company also has the intent of bringing the FMIC to India and China.

Always Investing

Chainalytics' ability to provide successful fact-based transformations wouldn't be possible without the company's commitment to constantly understanding new technologies and their value proposition in the supply chain.

Talent is another area of the business that benefits from constant investment. Finding people with both engineering and specific supply chain expertise can be challenging, so Chainalytics invests in growing talent through the hiring of people at all levels, mentoring, and partnering with top-notch universities. Specialists with specific analytical skills, business acumen, and a passion and desire to hone his or her craft to be the best at what they do are the preferred type of employee.

With these continuing investments and commitment to providing the best SCM services possible, Chainalytics is able to function on a global scale while providing corporation-sized solutions to a wide array of clients while maintaining their granular attention to detail.