Solving the Fleet Software Adoption Problem

Eric Rodriguez: You could say, Hey, the buck stops with the driver. They should not have picked up the phone. Understood, fine. But why is dispatch setting 'em up for failure? By calling them while they're driving if they're not supposed to pick up?

Andrew Verboncouer: Hey everyone. Welcome back to this side where we dig deep into the minds of founders, builders, and operators, reshaping the future of logistics and supply chain.

Today's guest is Eric Rodriguez, CEO of Vendor Flow, a communications platform that's purpose built for the transportation industry. So with over a decade in venture backed tech and experience, it's good to take a peek behind the curtain of what Eric's found to make successful teams build successful products and actually build things that move the needle.

Today. What we're gonna learn in this episode is how you avoid the adoption trap. So why driver facing apps often fail and really why any, uh, application fails and that it fails to change behavior. Big part of that is getting people to adopt it. The other thing we'll talk about is meeting people where they are.

How do you leverage existing tools, existing infrastructure, to really think about delivering value in a different way? We'll also talk about how do you scale without reinventing the wheel through partnerships and through existing infrastructure. Let's dig in.

Eric Rodriguez: I've been in, uh, venture backed tech for about, uh, 12 years or probably more.

Uh, by now. Uh, but the most recent experience that's relevant to the industry was that, uh, I was at Next Trucking as well as the vast majority of the vendor flow team. We were ex next trucking, uh, software developers and product managers, uh, there. And, uh, yeah, we, we made some observations, uh, there that, uh, that led, uh, to vendor flow, certainly.

Um, one of those things was we helped to build a TMS as, as one often does, um, but also a, uh, mobile app for truck drivers, uh, to install. And these mobile apps sound wonderfully, uh, compelling 'cause Yeah. One easy place to, uh, find your loads and share the proof of delivery. All these good things. Well, the adoption was poor.

Uh, maybe 20% of drivers would use these apps, especially when it came to communicating with dispatch, communicating with operations. We found they would find their own way. SMS, WhatsApp, telegram, Facebook Messenger, uh, they were using to communicate with the operation. Uh, so that was the observation we made to say, Hey, there's an opportunity here to provide, uh, communication software for fleets, uh, that reaches, uh, drivers where they are over SMS, uh, over some, sorry messages without making them install or log into extra software.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's key. And um, for those listening, I met Eric maybe last June, I think, at a freight waves event in, in Atlanta, and Yep. For the first time. And obviously just being in the industry, it's small. So we've chatted a few times and I, I think the thing that's always really, uh, remarkable and, or, you know, things that seem obvious at first are not obvious to everybody, like.

Not needing an app. Going through SMS, going through messages and meeting people where, where they are. I guess, you know, I think a lot of founders struggle with this kind of like sunk cost fallacy, right? They built an app initially. How do you backtrack that and say, well we're gonna, we're gonna deliver it in a different way.

And then like, how was that kind of rollout, you know? Did you do that at Next or was it when you became the vendor flow that you were like, Hey, at Vendor Flow we're starting with SMS only and that's kind of gonna be the beachhead of how we're gonna serve end customers. Talk about that journey of adoption, because that's a big one that some founders don't recognize and they fail to pivot.

And then, you know, that 20% onboarding kind of kills every pilot, every deal that they have is, well, we're not getting an adoption we need, and so we don't feel like this is the right fit. Like talk through that from a, from a mindset approach.

Eric Rodriguez: Yeah, I mean our, our learnings come from past, uh, environments. I mean, not necessarily just next trucking, but, um, we, we've certainly interacted in environments where leadership says, uh, you know, make them use this thing that they're not using and, and add more features to it.

Then they'll start using it. And, you know, the adoption goes from tiny to like tiny plus 1%, and it's still just forcing something that's not there. Um, so, so yeah. For, for vendor flow, uh, yes. Um, for the driver experience, it's just SMS. Our philosophy is the drivers shouldn't know that we exist. Uh, because if they don't know we exist, then they don't need to be trained on anything.

Don't need to install anything, none of it. Um, so really the adoption, therefore is on the operations side for dispatchers to use our software to communicate with drivers well, one way to make that easy is to make it be not fundamentally profoundly different than what dispatch is used to. Uh, we don't need to reinvent everything.

Um, dispatch is used to using Google Voice, RingCentral, Dialpad, these generic telephony solutions. So if we. Uh, we're able to at least have that baseline there. Dispatch only needs a 30 minute training, and they're, they're good. They're running. So, um, that's our, our belief. We have not really had, not, not saying we haven't had problems as a business, but adoption has not been really one of the problems.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah, that's great. I mean, and, and for that to not be a problem, right? Like, uh. That's great. Right. It's kind of like iterating on, you know, the biggest point of pain, which is no one's using it. I mean, it's very hard as a, as a fleet manager, communications manager, uh, you know, in dispatch to say, yeah, we're gonna double down on vendor flow.

No one's using it yet, but they will in a couple years. Like, sure. It's hard to continue to investing in that path, so That's good. So I guess what has that kind of led you to of like, Hey, we've solved, um, activation of our customers by giving dispatch the tools they need, giving the drivers the tools that.

Really frictionless. Like what do you think that has done to allow, you know, vendor flow to lock in some really great partnerships like Samsara and some other ones that really start to, you know, build distribution for you guys?

Eric Rodriguez: Well, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a fundamental, uh, buttress to make sure that we, you know, we have that adoption.

When you have adoption, you have users, and those users have passionate feedback. And the passionate feedback was, Hey, can you integrate with Samsara, with Motive? With Geotab? That's the feedback that we got. To be honest with you, when we started Vendor Flow, if you said, Hey Eric, how do telematics, uh, systems integrate with communications?

I would've given you a blank stare. And that's, that's my whole job. Um, I, I only learned this through our customers and they've identified ways to say, Hey, if you tie in, uh, texting and calling and samsara messages into the telematics and ELD, then it can, uh, provide, uh, safety benefits, compliance benefits, productivity benefits, uh, for the fleet in, in, in great, uh, detail, which I'm happy to get into when the, when the time's right.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah. No, I, I, I think that makes a lot of sense. And obviously, like you spoke about something, we talked about pivoting one delivery mechanism, whether that was the initial idea of vendor flow, but also two, like, you know, really taking to heart customer feedback and pressing into that, you know, you have a background in product management, right?

Which is really the key of a product manager. Managers, like, is the business problem we're solving, also solving the user problem and vice versa, and what's the value there? Like, maybe talk a little bit about, I don't know how close you are to product development day to day, but. Talk a little bit about, you know, how your teams are structured around acting fast on customer data and feedback and like, how do you think about prioritizing a roadmap in this world where everything, you know, uh, we kind of talked a little bit before the show, like logistics for the most part is like a core business for all of your customers.

Like that is what they do. So it's very, you know, hair on fire problem. How do you structure your teams and your processes and your thoughts to, um, act on that feedback and, you know, move forward and make, make vendor flow better?

Eric Rodriguez: Yeah, well, well, well, thankfully we're pretty nimble bunch still. Uh, so we don't need anything terribly profound.

But one element of our philosophy is, and my philosophy is that engineering should be directly involved with the voice of the customer. Um, absolutely. So engineering is involved in onboarding. Engineering is involved in usually about two weeks after onboarding. We have that first, what we call office hours, uh, where, where our customers can, uh, let us have it, whatever feedback they have, good, bad, and the ugly.

We want to hear it and. The good news is at least in 2025, uh, people come with pretty thoughtful feedback. I was, I've been a product manager for a long time where I've heard a lot of silly things over the years. Yeah. But lately it's been like pretty, like very reasonable, very fair, very on point, and very doable.

Um, so usually we can turn these, these, uh, bits around for them based on the nature of their feedback. And what we love are passionate customers who have lots of ideas of, cool. You did that with Samsara. What if you could also do that? Ah, that's an interesting point. Just yesterday, just give people a quick example.

Yeah. Um, I got a, a new one. It's not rocket science, but hey, as a dispatcher, when I'm communicating with my driver, I, it would be nice to be able to pull in their truck ID and their, uh, chassis id. Uh, so I would have a little more context on like what they're hauling, where they're going. It's like, oh yeah.

True. That's actually pretty straightforward. Uh, we just hadn't crossed our mind yet, so thank you. And that's some kind of thing we can add in a, in a week or less. So, yeah. Uh, yeah, it's been fantastic, uh, getting their kind of feedback. And we do go on site from time to time as well. We're in the neighborhood.

We try to, to drop by, you know, maybe bring some donuts or lunch or something. And it's been a good, good practice as well.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. As you know, like the, the key to solving any problem well is like the context and the edges, right? Even like in the world of AI today, in the world of software and anything is like the more you know.

The more you can generate insights from if you know where to look. Right? And so even changes as far as that, like I'm not super familiar with vendor flows like architecture and sure, you know, integrations and stuff, but a change like that where you're, you know, displaying their data, you likely already have an integration to the system that holds that data, right?

So surfacing it up and, you know, figuring out how to iterate with that.

Eric Rodriguez: Yeah. I mean, and one design decision of our own was to say we're not trying to redundantly be kind of a TMS or kind of a telematics system. No, we have a clear lane. It's communications. We occupy the space that a phone system does 'cause we are a phone system.

Um, yeah. But we want to, we regard the TMS and the, the telematics or ELD is the brains. Uh, we pull the context in from there rather than redundantly. Having ddu duplicate data where they're updating the driver status here, but also it's something else in Samsara. No. Uh, we wanna pull it from, uh, what our customer believe the source of truth is.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yep. Yeah, that's big. Awesome. So let's, let's talk a little bit about, you know, your path. You were at, uh, a couple VC backed companies, right? And not every. Great tech company is VC backed. Maybe it's more common these days when you think about, you know, all of the big transportation companies that have venture arms and, you know, they're investing in offshoots and stuff like that.

I guess how, how do you think that has impacted your team? Obviously you mentioned a lot of the engineers come from net, you know, have come from next trucking or other folks from your team kind of in that transition. Um, I guess talk more about the culture of how you think about building products in, in this world.

Eric Rodriguez: Yeah, I mean, uh, the extent to which we're sort of VC-backed ha has been somewhat influential. Well, fun fact, I mean, uh, one of our early backers, uh, led to an intro to, to a wonderful guy named Chris Torrance at Optima Dynamics. Shout out, um, who made an intro to our first big customer, so that's helpful. Uh, but yeah, but also, yeah, just, just being in this universe, it, it helps, uh, to kind of.

Uh, keep a nice pressure on to, to keep, uh, building quickly, delivering quickly, uh, for our customers. And yeah, I mean, what's nice is the whole vendor flow team. We've been around the block, had a handful of other startups, good, bad, and ugly, and I'd like to believe we'd learn a thing or two, uh, about what to do and what not to do, uh, from some of our past, uh, employees, for sure.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah, I would imagine a lot of that is, uh, building the wrong thing is, is pretty bad. Maybe talk about like, hey, top three lessons and you know, things Sure. Is that. You know, burning too hot is that, you know, building too many things at once, like maybe share some of those insights.

Eric Rodriguez: Yeah, I mean, no, for sure.

One issue is in our early days we were barking up the wrong tree from a, uh, target audience perspective. Uh, we thought we knew our target audience. We sincerely believe we thought we did. Uh, 'cause we would book demos, um, with often three pls and freight brokers to be a little more specific. And we get a lot of pats on the head of, oh, you're onto something.

Looks good, uh, blahdi blah. Well, if you're getting 10 pats on the head and zero customers, uh, in a row, yeah, then that's a, a good sign. That sums off. And, uh, had we done our, our deeper homework, um, we, I, let's take proper responsibility, uh, would have. Uh, researched the fleet market a lot more. We had assumed, oh, surely the fleet market already has this problem solved.

And no, uh, they, they don't, uh, by a pretty hefty degree. So, um, we found our fit in the fleet market, uh, by a little bit of luck and a little bit of hustle, I suppose. Uh, so we're thankful for that.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah. So obviously like serving the right customer is important. Yeah. Um, were there any, any learnings? 'cause obviously you've been doing vendor flow now for I think five years.

Is it just about. Just about five years. Um, so like, obviously serving the wrong customer is gonna lead you to build some of the wrong things, right? Like, well, thankfully,

Eric Rodriguez: thankfully we were building the, the right thing, just talking to the wrong audience. It turned out that it actually applied quite well, uh, to, to fleet.

So the, a fair bit of luck there as well.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah. Kind of a different zooming or volume model, right. Directly at fleets versus, you know, three pls and brokers that maybe just have the same problem but amplified but need different at scale solutions that. You know, are probably, I'm imagining like how this is architected, like multi permission layers between them and their end customers and all, you know, their drivers and all that stuff.

But yeah. Um, so you, you mentioned the team is small and nimble, um, by design. Right. Which is, which is great. I guess talk about, do you have a normal like EPD pair, like engineering, product design? Like how do you guys typically think about approaching teams? And like, how have you built, how have you built vendor flow from a team model?

You know, is it traditional engineers, traditional product managers and strategists and traditional designers? Or is in going lean and, and kind of really being more nimble? Are you blending some of those roles together?

Eric Rodriguez: Ah, sorry, I, I, I get you now. Um, so yeah, I mean, um. There, it's mostly engineering, uh, but our, our CTO also plays a significant product management role as well.

Uh, and thus is also involved with voice of the customer, getting involved with the customer onboarding, customer success, and, uh, not all of support, but a great deal of support as well, because it's not just about getting the support done, but understanding like, where are these support issues coming from?

You know, are, are there ways to nip these in the buds? You know, the customer doesn't have an issue at all to begin with. Right? Yeah. Um, so, so that's of course been an area of focus, um, as well. Uh, but it's been fairly straightforward for us as a relatively small team.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah. Yeah. Just kinda like in, in the culture, right.

In the DNA of, of the team is, which is kind of juxtapose that with, you know, I had a call with a a, I'm not gonna drop any names here, but a large company that's in the, that's in the space that also has a broker division that also has their own fleet and all, you know, right. And uh. It's very hard to change that culture over time.

Right. If you don't start with it, it's very hard to go in and be like, now we're a tech company that cares about customers and it's everyone's job to deliver. That's different than pull a ticket from the backlog. Right? Sure, sure. Like, have you ever had to face that, I mean, obviously maybe not at next, but in your career of like, Hey, how do we, how do we change this culture of, I, I would say like culture of caring about the end user and actually solving a, you know, solving the problem fully.

Have you faced that in your journey at all, or has it always kind of been ground up teams where that's just part of how you're building?

Eric Rodriguez: I mean, the biggest challenges I've seen at, at, at prior employers that don't need to be enumerated per se, uh, have been, usually the story is they raised a lot of venture capital in, in my opinion, a lot is like 50, 80, a hundred million dollars in my book.

That's a lot. Uh, but like. Uh, frequently, you know, then it's all about hyperscale. So they hire a ton of people and they have a ton of initiatives. Every VP seems to have to have their own special initiative that's totally different than everyone else's initiatives, and it's a miss. And then you have a, a, an organization going in 18 different directions.

You have a CEO who says, our top priority is. You know, revenue, but also customer service, but also tech debt, but also, and it's like, well, okay, we don't have a top priority. Yeah. You're just saying all the things and hoping they'll happen. Um, that's super common when, uh, kind of doing that, for lack of a better word, dealing with the devil of this massive venture round.

Um, so this is a large degree why. We vendor flow, have wanted to stay lean. Um, I think one of the best decisions we made was getting more, more, more focused on our target markets. Uh, where before I think we needed the validation of, oh, well we could sell to this market and that market. And that market's very reaffirming.

Investors love it 'cause the possibilities are endless. Yeah. Um, but for now, maybe they are endless big picture, long term. But for now. We need to focus and oh boy, does that help to have credibility of, you know, I got a story right now where we, we recently signed a, you know, 80 truck fleet in St. Louis, and guess what?

Down the street. Now we're talking to a different 80 truck, uh, fleet in St. Louis, and they know each other. So the owners are talking to each other for references and the references went well, and so on and so forth. Well, when you have a consistent market, you can have all kinds of little benefits of, of the way the credibility develops.

The, the type of feedback you're getting is gonna be more tight. Oh so much. Yeah, that would be my feedback too. Uh, ostensible entrepreneur, you probably think you have your target market. Well target it even further. I would say focus on the bullseye and And you'll be in the spot.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah. I mean, even as you think about, you know, if you were trying to serve fleets and three pls and brokers like.

Each one of 'em has a vastly different flavor where problems are similar, but you're not gonna use the same language. You're not gonna understand the exact nuances of running a three PL versus having a fleet, right? There are those edge cases where that establishes credibility or changes the product in some way, or, you know what I mean?

Those sorts of things that really multiply, um, the go to market effort, right? In sales and marketing. It's like if you're speaking to all these messages and all these problems. Someone looks at it and be like, well, I think they're more for brokers. I'm not sure. Sure. If you're only for fleets, right? You're like the, yep, we got a fleet.

Let's go. Yep, yep. It goes a long way, and there's use case pages and persona pages and all those things that you can do over time as you think about positioning and stuff, but when you're building from the ground up. I mean, clarity wins, right? That, that, yes. That's great.

Eric Rodriguez: No, very well said. And yeah, that, that is a classic, and I was guilty of it in our, in our early years of, of conflating freight brokerage and fleet.

Not, not that they're the same thing, but having a perception that, oh, they're pretty similar. Not really. Uh, if you're building a product, you should, you should probably choose, uh, I generalize, but you should probably just pick a light.

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Andrew Verboncouer: So we talked a lot about like vendor flow's, ability to streamline all the communications. Like what are all the different things you're streamlining from? You know, is it, is it VoIP, SMS, is it email? Is it shared inbox style? Like yeah, those that aren't familiar, like paint a, paint a picture of maybe the dispatch world and what you all integrate with.

Eric Rodriguez: Right. So, uh, one technical term and then I'll stop. Uh, UCAS, I don't mind being put in a box. Uh, 'cause I like the box. Yeah. The box is ucas Unified Communications as a service. What's being unified? Voice texting and telematics. Messaging like samsara messages, mode messages. Geo tab message. Yeah. Now what's the classic story when we talk to.

Fleet, uh, of a dispatch organization. What's so often the case is that they are not practicing shared ox communication. So what do they have going on? Um, different, uh, dispatchers have different phone lines, maybe their personal phones even. Um, and one driver is texting this dispatcher who then goes on lunch, driver texts again, oh, no response.

Now the driver texts this other dispatcher who says, I don't know what you guys have been talking about. And a a common situation as well is when they shift, go from day shift to night shift. Night shift on their separate phone line just shows up, blamed to like what's been going on. And it can be helpful to have a little context.

So we're a big believer in the shared ox model where the dispatchers will share a phone line. Usually it'll be tied to like a terminal like Houston terminal would have a phone line. Has its dispatchers safety, has access, no problem. Operations has access, no problem. But from there they do their communications with the driver fundamental.

Gotta get that in place, uh, before you go any further. Um, but once you have that in place. The more ambitious fleets will then start to wonder how can I tie in my, uh, ELD and telematics? Uh, and if I can get into that for a moment. Yeah. So classic examples, right? Safety, compliance, productivity. Let's do safety.

Classic thing. You talk to a safety leader, you say, Hey, um, is your operation texting with drivers? They'll say, how, how dare you suggest that they're texting with drivers. They probably are though. Uh, so, but why are they uncomfortable with texting drivers? They have a good reason to be uncomfortable. Yeah.

Uh, they don't want to text a driver while they're driving. Reasonable. Reasonable. No problem at all. Well, if you tie in with Samsara or Geotab and Motive, um, well, you can set rules that say as dispatch who's trying to send a message, um, well have it wait until the truck is no longer driving and they go back to.

Kind of on duty in part, then deliver it. Maybe you're concerned about, uh, messaging drivers super late at night or when they're off duty when it's like not necessary. Uh, maybe you wanna set rules that say, you know what, this could wait till they're back on duty and not driving. Yeah. And, and let's go a little further.

Let's be more ambitious. It's not just about SMS, but let's say the, the tension between us, uh, app messaging like Samsara messaging and SMS is. Uh, app messaging is great 'cause it'll adhere to the rules and it can be read out as an inha alert. Beautiful. The issue though is the adoption tends to be very poor on the driver's side in terms of getting response.

So what you want, and my hot take here is that there is no one right way to communicate with a driver. It depends on the context. So in general, uh, if I dare generalize, I would say, um, if they're driving. You want that to, instead of being an SMS, it'll go out as a samsara message or a mode message. A geo type message that could be read out as an in-cab alert, safest way you could go.

Yeah. But when they're stopped or parked, well, you want that as an SMS 'cause then you'll actually get a response

Andrew Verboncouer: that, yeah. Now let me, let me stop you real quick. Now is vendor flow. Controlling that kind of routing in between those, is it recommending it, you're getting back the status of the vehicle and then you're able to like determine, hey, we're gonna send it as this approved.

Yes. Like,

Eric Rodriguez: yeah, so that, so our role is to tie in with the, the ELD telematics to understand our of service. Are they driving, are they not driving in the on-duty, off-duty? So that's all the context that we get. And then my job is to provide our fleet, uh, customers, their operations leaders, their safety leaders with levers, rules that they can set to say, under these conditions, I want it to go like this under those conditions.

I want it to go like that. If you spend a lot of time in the universe of samsara, motive, Geotab, and the rest, a lot of the product is these little levers about, you know, if a truck is going more than 20 miles an hour, then blah. You tell me. Yep. Uh, but they got a million. Different settings and, and our role is to be an extension upon, give them a few more settings and levers as it pertains to, uh, communications.

And that's just the safety one there. There's more on compliance for sure.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds, uh, obviously, I, I don't own a fleet, so I've Sure. I've not seen that product work for Sam, but I mean, it sounds, you know, it sounds exactly like what someone would want to. Make sure the message gets delivered because you're, you're most likely talking about rerouting something or a back haul or, you know, may Sure.

Maybe it's a safety alert. Um, but Yep. You know, that would come from samsara, things like that. So things that are pretty timely in that mm-hmm. Need to be seen the next moment that could be seen, you know, so. Right.

Eric Rodriguez: And a funny story, if I may, uh, I was at Samsara beyond a couple weeks ago, and, uh, I got the same story from two different fleets where here's the drama.

A dispatcher calls a driver. While they're driving, uh, the driver picks up the phone, the AI camera snitches on them, uh, for picking up the phone driver gets in trouble. Uh, driver gets very mad, and of the two, one of them rage quit. Uh, because they felt betrayed by this whole setup. Now what's interesting is you could say, Hey, the buck stops with the driver.

They should not have picked up the phone. Understood, fine. But why is dispatch setting 'em up for failure by calling them while they're driving if they're not supposed to pick up? So, um, we, vendor flow can provide those, uh, limits as well to say, Hey, dispatch you, when, when they try to dial, Hey dispatch, you, you realize they're driving right now, right?

And it's up to safety to say, should the call be absolutely blocked under all circumstances? Maybe not my, not my place to say. Yeah. Or maybe, uh, it's more like a break glass in case of emergency dispatch is gonna say, I know they're driving, but this is seriously super important. Maybe it is a, a superseding safety issue.

You're driving into a dangerous area. I don't know. Um, perhaps there should be, um, settings there to let them override it, but then safety can review. Oh, you know, uh, in January we called them, you know, 80 times while they were driving and in February now we're down to like 30 times while they were driving.

Cool. I think a reasonable person would regard that as healthy risk mitigation. Maybe they can go from 30 to 25 in March. Right. So this type of framework we wish to provide Yeah. Uh, to fleets to, to reduce that.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah, I mean, it, it, it makes absolute sense. Like, you know, in our case, like building software, you have to make rules if it's not flexible, right?

Like the, the great thing about what what you're talking about is like, it's very personalizable. It's, there's decisions that have to be made, but there's thresholds, there's limits. There's those levers that you, you can make those because it's different, right? If someone's hauling,

Eric Rodriguez: yeah.

Andrew Verboncouer: Let's say gravel to a, to a dump site right now versus, you know, hauling, you know, reefer.

Or something across the country. Right, sure. Just different scenarios, different contexts and Right. I would imagine different urgency so that Yeah, that's really, yeah. It's

Eric Rodriguez: remarkable. It's, yeah, indeed. Not only is it not my place to say exactly what the right rules are, but you talk to different safety leaders, they'll frequently, on the topic of communications, it's not a very, how do you say, it's not settled science.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, uh, it's, it's not like there's this one best practice everyone hears to, Nope. It varies wildly fleet to fleet, to fleet.

Andrew Verboncouer: It's like 80% of the rules are like general, 20% are very specific. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, what's, so you talked a little about like ELD and telematics and stuff like that.

What have you learned, obviously like being outside of those ecosystems, like integrating well into 'em, um, what have you learned? Almost like an, an observer of how those systems can be best used. You mentioned a couple things. You mentioned safety, the other one you mentioned, um. Compliance and productivity.

Yeah, compliance, productivity. Like maybe talk a little bit about productivity for the drivers, like productivity and also. Are they happier? Right? Because I mean, the guy that Ray quit, he's not happy, right? Sure. He out a job. Maybe he found another job, but yeah. Uh, yeah. You wanna speak about those other two?

Eric Rodriguez: Yeah. I'll, I'll be brief on as a intersect with vendor flow, but compliance, the classic would be, uh, either lunch breaks or hours of service, uh, violation to, uh, phase one, uh, notify dispatch. Hey, they're. Uh, about to miss their lunch break or or miss their hours so it can inform dispatch, uh, better and maybe, uh, compel them to remind the driver to take their break.

Um, but if you have repeat offenders, maybe it would be, Hey, for all drivers who missed their lunch break in the last 30 days, they get a reminder 15 minutes before lunch. Uh, the ones that don't miss their break. No need to nag people, uh, who are, are actually pretty good at taking their breaks. So that's a simple one on compliance productivity.

And that'll be the last one for this is, uh, geofencing is a classic. So, uh, uh, shout out to our friends at, uh, Kestrel Insights, if that's okay. Uh, but we've been working with them on various geofencing related, um, use cases. Um, and yeah, you know, hey, maybe you want it when a driver pierces a certain geofence, you need to give them a, a warning because they're in like a, a high risk zone.

Maybe it's like fire or this or that. That's the concept. Another more traditionally would be they pierce a geofence and you want to text them, uh, here's the available, uh, empty trailers, or empty, if it's like a drop in hook, empty trailers, empty containers, Hey, it looks like you just arrived. Please don't leave without taking an empty.

Uh, because I've talked to fleets where they lose like a couple hundred bucks every time a, a driver fails to or refuses to take. And empty. Uh, so lots of fun little, uh, things we can tie in. Even the last one is, uh, hey, welcome to the, you know, the IKEA Dropoff Center. I don't know, uh, yeah, it's, it's your first time here.

We know it's your first time here. Um, so here's the details about it. You know, there's a bathroom. Make sure all chassis are dropped there, not there. Whatever the policies are, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The driver is well prepared. And even though we know you have the shipment details on your. On your deep in your app somewhere, let's surface it up in text.

So it's like right there. All you gotta do is boop, show it to, uh, the receiver and you're good to go. Uh, so all kinds of fun things we can tie into in this world. And I encourage fleet owners, even if it's not about communications, to, to really look at the app marketplaces of these systems. 'cause there's so much.

That you can do to, uh, level up your, I don't know, your email, your CRM, your QuickBooks, your, all these things tie in wonderfully to these systems in ways we might not imagine until you learn about it. So,

Andrew Verboncouer: yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, it, unless you have that really, uh, I guess, what would you call it? Um. Like growth mindset.

We're always looking to, to improve what you're working on or like, hey, this new app's out. That right? You see that today with AI adoption? Like sure. Some people just starting to learn about it versus like a year and a half, two years ago, you know, when things were booming and really level up your business in ways you just have no clue about until you do it.

Um. So you talked a lot about like communications, how you really, I think you have strong opinions about it, which is good, right? From a, from a personalization, from a customization standpoint, it's like the rules are just gonna be variable. You can't, one size doesn't fit all. Um, are there other, is there an opinion you have about communications and logistics that you think most people don't share?

Good point.

Eric Rodriguez: Um, I mean, I think that, that, that goes back a bit to, uh, that there is no one, uh, right way, uh, to communicate with, with, uh, drivers or frontline labor. It's about reaching them by a variety of channels. So, um, kind of covered that hot take. Uh, but yeah, that is the hot take on that topic.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah, I think it, it's absolutely true.

And, and I've not heard, I know many fleet owners, I've not heard of them. Maybe they're not involved, right? Maybe dispatch is handling it. Maybe they have no problems. Um, uh, which is hard to believe, but at the same time, um, yeah, absolutely. So as you think about, you know, what's next for vendor flow, obviously like there's, I dunno how much you guys are doing now with SMS 2.0 and RCS and like, what is that unlock or maybe the future of, you know, connectivity and things like that.

What does that unlock for where you guys are going?

Eric Rodriguez: Yeah, I mean. Uh, there's a couple elements here. I do wanna engage with the RCS topic. I mean, as, as it pertains to our roadmap, though, uh, it's, it's really going deeper into our integrations with Samsara Motive and Geotab, uh, yeah, around safety, compliance, productivity, as we've covered, uh, also, uh, deeper voice integration to tie.

And when I say voices mean phone call. Don't gotta be too fancy about it, uh, but phone call, uh, VIP integration for our VIP offering as well as perhaps other VIP offerings as well for those who really love RingCentral for voice, but want to do vendor flow for messaging. Let's say. Now you make an interesting point in invoking RCS, which if I remember correctly, is rich Communication Service RCS is fancy language for SMS 2.0 and, uh, we're really excited about what's coming with that.

Um, for folks who have used like WhatsApp, um, it's that caliber of messaging. So, um, some people are already getting on their, on their personal phones, right? Yeah. So things like read receipts, uh, you can see if someone read the message and a lot of fleet dispatchers wanna know if their driver actually read the message.

'cause otherwise the driver will say, oh, I never got the message right. So it is a little thing accountability. Meaningful. Um, and RCS also affords for, uh, voice recordings to record your voice and send that back, which can be really nice when you're out in the field. You just wanna get something quick back to dispatch or vice versa.

So a lot of potential there, um, as well. And maybe finally, um, buttons. So, uh, to be able to submit. Uh, we got a request just yesterday from a fleet. Where they like to send what they call micro surveys, little tiny surveys, yes or no, or confirm really tight. Um, well, for that you could broadcast out, um, your survey to your a hundred truck drivers to say, Hey, do, do you want, you know, vanilla or chocolate, whatever it is.

Uh, but the recipients can just go tap chocolate or tap vanilla, a button not typing. And then you have structured data that you're capturing. And let's be clear. The, the recipient doesn't have to click a link to go to a web browser, to the, no, no, no, no. It's right there in the chat. There's the button. Tap it.

Um, so we think that's gonna do wonders, uh, for, uh, low friction capturing structured data, uh, motivating all kinds of workflows. Maybe you just want the driver to confirm, uh, you know, the geofence, you know how it is a geofencing. It looks like they arrived, but like, eh, like, are they in though? Not sure.

Like, okay, tap this when you're like, you're good. Yeah, like that, that'll like give dispatch some peace of mind, right? So, so many wonderful things one can do with those opportunities. So, so we're really excited about, uh, enabling that for our customers as well in time.

Andrew Verboncouer: Yeah, I mean, it really levels up the workflow tools that, you know, teams like ours.

I don't know what you guys use internally for chat if you're using vendor flow. Um, yeah. Uh, I wouldn't imagine mean internal is Slack. It's not, we're not Yeah. Slack, right? Where you get polls, you get, you know, rich tax, you get all the things of kind of. The new world in tech, but you don't have that in the real world or in, you know, so it'll be interesting to see how these systems evolve.

Um, anything else that you wanna share, Eric, just about vendor flow and, and kind of what's next for you guys?

Eric Rodriguez: Uh, no, I, I, I appreciate that. I mean, uh, no, I mean, I think we're, we're, we covered things pretty well. I. For, for fleets that are passionate about, uh, increasing their communications and, uh, you know, tying it in with their, they're curious about how to tie it in with their, uh, telematics and ELD.

You know, we'd love to meet them and learn their needs and see how it could be helpful. Uh, but other than that, I think we covered, uh, pretty well, so I

Andrew Verboncouer: appreciate it. Yeah. Awesome. Where can people, uh, find more out about you and follow you and or, uh, vendor flow?

Eric Rodriguez: Yeah, most of our action is on LinkedIn. Uh, so I recommend people find, uh, vendor flow, uh, on LinkedIn.

It should just be us. Um, and then our website is vendor flow.co. Uh, to find us and my email, if anyone wants to, uh, offer me AI services or whatever, uh, is, uh, e@vendorflow.co. Uh, eric@vendorflow.com.

Andrew Verboncouer: Awesome. Well, this was great. I really appreciate you taking the time, Eric, and sharing more about it. It's been great to learn more about just.

The mindset, right? As I mentioned, like not a lot of freight tech teams. I think you're seeing more like coming out of the VC world that are really thinking about, um, how do we structure teams around customers and problems versus. The silos you get in a lot of antiquated teams. So it's good to hear that and also just see the progress since we've met even of vendor flow, um, over the last year and a half or so.

So I, I really appreciate you taking the time. Uh, thanks again. Thanks for joining us on this side Up. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review our podcast to help others find us. If you have any questions or topics you'd like us to cover, feel free to reach out. And if you want to be a guest, let's connect.

Until next time, keep your shipments safe, your logistics smooth, and your curiosity on the move.

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