C.H. Robinson and Microsoft are joining forces to digitally transform supply chains by combining the power of the former’s Navisphere, Microsoft Azure and Azure IoT to meet the changing demands of evolving global supply chains.
Through this partnership, the two companies aim to enable real-time visibility for C.H. Robinson customers.
“Given the complexity of supply chains connecting Asia and the world, shippers are increasingly looking for greater efficiency and real time visibility while digitally transforming their logistics networks,” said John Chen, VP Asia at C.H. Robinson. “We want to accelerate the pace of transformation across the sector, tapping into the benefits of advanced cloud technologies and our Navisphere platform.”
Chris O’Brien, chief commercial officer of C.H. Robinson, said that through Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, they gain more scalability, premier data security and increased application speed, which benefit their customers and carriers around the world.
Through this collaboration, Navisphere — C.H. Robinson’s global multimodal transportation management platform — will now leverage Azure IoT Central to integrate IoT device monitoring that measures factors such as temperature, shock, tilt, humidity, light and pressure in shipments to give customers an even more detailed level of intelligence about goods as they move through the supply chain.
Navisphere is currently used across Microsoft’s global supply chain, giving the company real-time visibility into inventory, at rest or in motion anywhere in the world. In addition, in collaboration with Microsoft, C.H. Robinson built Navisphere Vision, a global real-time visibility product that leverages Azure IoT solutions, machine learning and predictive analytics to assess potential disruptions across supply chains.
In addition to C.H. Robinson’s innovation on Azure, the company is also leveraging Dynamics 365 and Power BI to streamline its customer relationship management (CRM) platform, supporting C.H. Robinson’s commitment to customer centricity from small business to the world’s largest shippers.
As part of its relationship with Microsoft, C.H. Robinson will integrate its real-time pricing, execution and transportation management tools into Dynamics 365, making these digitally-driven logistics capabilities available to Microsoft customers.
