How Pitney Bowes Refines Their E-Commerce Operations with Stephanie Cannon

In this episode of Everything is Logistics, host Blythe Brumleve interviews Stephanie Cannon, SVP at Pitney Bowes, about her background in logistics and how she fell in love with the industry.

Cannon shares that she started as an industrial engineer in college and landed her first co-op job with UPS, which ultimately led to a full-time job offer and participation in their management trainee program. She discusses the importance of understanding all facets of a logistics company and the value of hands-on experience.

LINKS: 

• Pitney Bowes website
• Connect with Stephanie on Linkedin

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

The listener will learn about various topics related to logistics, including the speaker's experience working at UPS, challenges of logistics operations in different countries, Pitney Bowes' different business divisions and innovations, the use of robotics in warehouse systems, and Pitney Bowes' efforts to improve worker engagement and retention through automation.


TIMESTAMPS:

[00:01:52] UPS management trainee program. 
[00:05:27] International logistics operations. 
[00:07:23] Pitney Bowes' global e-commerce. 
[00:10:46] Workforce optimization. 
[00:14:09] Consultative parcel shipping solutions. 
[00:17:19] Flexible automation in warehouses. 
[00:20:41] Employee involvement in automation. 
[00:24:20] Monotonous jobs and robotics. 
[00:27:18] Robotics in Warehouses. 
[00:33:02] Parcel Shipping Index. 
[00:33:52] E-commerce innovation and automation.

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Transcript

Blythe Brumleve: 0:00

LinkedIn presents welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I'm your host Blythe Brumleve. And I'm happy to welcome in Stephanie cannon, she is the SVP over at Pitney Bowes in charge of operations, excellence and collaborative innovation for global e commerce. So Stephanie, welcome to the show. Thank you, I'm glad to be here. Now. Now, for folks who typically work in logistics or supply chain, it's one of those industries that you kind of just like fall into it, but you actually have history with the industry going back to your college days, can you kind of give us a background of, of how you fell in love with logistics?

Stephanie Cannon: 0:47

Yeah, so I started as an industrial engineer in college. And while I was in college, I did co ops, you had to do co ops during the summer with different companies. And I had interviewed with UPS, you know, one of the biggest logistics companies out there, and I landed my first Co Op job with them. And so every summer, I would truck down to the location that I was going to work for them, I'd stay there for the summer. And they would put me into, you know, an interesting new different area of the company in order to really learn sort of all the different pieces of their company. And then when I graduated, they offered me a full time job and put me into their management trainee program, which would they consider, you know, from a professional perspective is really rotating people around into every facet of their company, everything from transportation to their hub operations, which we would call warehousing, clear through their last mile, the brown trucks and, and really give you every experience from, you know, the industrial engineering perspective of it, because that was what my degree was in, clear through the operational parts of it. And you really got to learn sort of every aspect, and also really highly focused on leadership development within that, within that program, as well, in order to have, you know, future leaders for us or not us ups.

Blythe Brumleve: 2:11

And so when you're doing all of these different roles, was there a particular role that you really took to that you really enjoyed that you almost were like, I wish I could go back to that role next summer.

Stephanie Cannon: 2:23

You know, I think one of the one of the most fun roles I did, it was doing time studies on the package car drivers. So what you would do is, every day you got into Brown, you would sit as a person sitting in the jump seat of the package car, and you had this little handheld, and it had every little tasks that they did, and you would go through and you would follow them all through their job all day long. And you would record the time it took for them to do a certain task. You know, it was really fun about that job is not only did you get to learn a lot about the drivers and what they did on a daily basis, you also got to learn a lot about the methods and the processes of those jobs. And you know, one of the coolest things I actually think was is, every time we delivered a package, we got to interact with the people that we delivered it. So really learning how that customer service came from UPS to the consumer. And I can't remember which one it was. But I remember when we were Chagrin Falls we got to deliver like one of the Bone Thugs and harmonies, guys house and I and I remember being like, am I gonna see him? It was just his wife that showed up and we handed it it wasn't as exciting. It's

Blythe Brumleve: 3:38

totally built it up in your head a

Stephanie Cannon: 3:40

lot. Yeah, it was. It was it was a very interesting part. But you learned so much about people customer service, your actual degree, you know, and how you utilize that but also how to improve the processes within within that.

Blythe Brumleve: 3:56

That's super interesting because I am a process junkie. So I definitely had like a couple of like process optimization questions for later on to the show. But I'm curious that you know, before we get to that part, how did how did you go from UPS to Pitney Bowes?

Stephanie Cannon: 4:09

Yeah, so after, after being at UPS for a while, I got an opportunity to go into consulting at the time that consultant comm very big now western partners. At the time, when I first joined, they had this little sector they were starting up called Workforce optimization. Some of my other colleagues that have worked at UPS had went there, they were really enjoying sort of the other side of it. So instead of working for a company, they were actually going out and being subject matter experts across you know, the US and Europe. And what was intriguing intriguing as a young person and professional was I got to travel I got to see the world and I got to also learn every single different business right everything from grocery to you know, three BL you know, in transportation, it wasn't just, you know, brown boxes, it was all these different things. and you've got to manage your own project. So you've got that client interaction, which was something that wasn't always typical within just a logistics, you know, you know, industrial engineering role. And so when you Oh, go ahead, no, no, go ahead. Oh, I

Blythe Brumleve: 5:15

was gonna say with with having that kind of global exposure and early on in your career, how different I guess are the logistics operations with other countries compared to the US?

Stephanie Cannon: 5:27

You know, what the, the labor laws are very different there. You know, what, actually, I'll tell you, this is a really interesting story. So we were doing work for food industry. Well, here in the US, they deliver food to the to, to the restaurants, and when they deliver food, they deliver big cases of stuff, and they deliver cases. But we did over in Ireland, we did a company that had been bought by one of these companies. And what they really didn't understand was the difference in how that country restaurants really ran. So we went from picking cases, to where you realized over in Ireland, these restaurants have little frigerators. And so they get food more often. So deliveries not once a week, but they get deliveries like three or four times a week. And instead of buying a big case of tomatoes, they bought like two tomatoes. And it was interesting, because the company who had purchased them, and we went over to go do the same work, it was really a challenge to understand the different cultures brought different ways that business was done.

Blythe Brumleve: 6:30

That's super interesting. And so I imagine, you know, how did how did you get from from that role, where it's, you know, you traveling the world learning about all these different, you know, cultures and different optic operations. How did you go from there to Pitney Bowes,

Stephanie Cannon: 6:44

so after about three years, you know, having a family and stuff, it was really hard traveling Europe, and every single week back and forth, so it was time to get back into the corporate world. So I went to go work for new joysticks, and it just sticks was owned by private equity. And they had started on a what you would call a Smart Label returns label and they started doing the returns. But they were really based upon, you know, using the postal services through last mile. And through that within being in a few years, Pitney Bowes as they were building out their global e commerce sector of their business, past the Sentech. And the priests were they're building their global e commerce, which was really the way that they thought about how are we going to be around another 100 years. You know, they have really great technology, shipping API technology, from the other part of the business. And so part of their overall strategy to grow that business was the acquisition of new logistics, and which then created, you know, was was sort of like that last act was a major acquisition and created what we now call global ecommerce for Pitney Bowes. And there was other companies involved, you know, that they had acquired as well. But that began the journey of us really looking at how are we going to build out an end to end digital and physical e commerce company and utilizing the physical and some of the digital footprint that you just already had and and how we expanded on that to build out what we have now.

Blythe Brumleve: 8:17

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Stephanie Cannon: 9:08

So I, I would say are the one of the coolest jobs. So really, I guess, high level, what my role is really supposed to do is create a standardized, repeatable, scalable operating platform for global GC for long term profitability and growth. Right. And so that's done through multiple different, different avenues. So I have four different divisions that roll into that I have the automation and systems Innovation Group, which has built every single facility we have in GC, ground up or retrofitted with, you know, brownfield or Greenfield high speed in emerging technologies automation. So we use traditional, we use our collaborative innovation, which I can talk about a little bit later to fill in some of those pieces and actually has become a pretty big thing. In the market that we really love, so we build all the facilities. And then there's all these other practices that go around that. So it was the industrial engineering and the collaborative innovation group. So those are there in the facilities, they're really helping the day to day processes, you know, continuous improvement, really helping glue the pieces together. From an operational perspective. The collaborative innovation group is looking at emerging technologies and how we can use those to differentiate Pitney Bowes, or to, you know, get rid of monotonous jobs, but also fill in areas where, you know, automation is very capital intensive. So being able to look at ways that you can use robots as a service to still drive the unit economics you need, but it's not capital intensive. And then the third group is workforce optimization. So the people are our largest asset. So being able to understand how you plan labor, and how you use labor management systems to manage that labor and how you use performance management to make sure you're really getting people to follow methods around the automation and in the processes and in the warehouses. So that's the other group. And then last group is the operations excellence group. So that really glues everything together that says, Okay, we have training and quality assurance and making sure that our SOPs are standardized, making sure that the way that we, you know, when new technology gets rolled out that everybody's being trained and understands how to use that technology the same ways. And that's really where it's creating that principle and repeatable model that we can scale across the entire network that drives every facility to operate the same way to think about things the same way and to really be able to scale flawlessly. And then, you know, just working on a lot of strategy as well, on how to how to continue to look at how we grow the business.

Blythe Brumleve: 11:47

And I think you're talking about all of these things, and I had honestly I thought I had an idea of like what Pitney Bowes does, you know, as far as like postage machines, that was my extent, like 10 years ago, when I worked at a three PL, I distinctly remember the day that I no longer had to hand stamp envelopes, and I could put it into a machine and it would just spit them all out, and I could throw them right in the mail, Ben, but, I mean, obviously, Pitney Bowes isn't a huge company. So for folks who may not be familiar of just, you know, I guess the vastness and the areas that that are covered by Pitney Bowes, can you kind of give us like that high level of like, who is a good ecommerce customer for Pitney Bowes? Is it you know, the some smaller, you know, smaller Etsy shops? Or is it some of the larger operations? So the Walmarts and the targets of the world? Where Where does I guess? What is picking up? Like, what is it? What is give me bows? It's important, that lamest question that I could probably ask you

Stephanie Cannon: 12:44

to talk about Pitney Bowes, all of it. So then we'll talk about global GC, which log global logistics which a lot of people don't actually know as much about right, they think about the million meters. So you have the Sentech business, which traditionally would have been the meal mailing meter industry. Throughout the years, they have innovated, incredibly, and really transform that company into what they've created recently as a parcel shipping cube. So it's, it's actually bringing, you know, just like they brought the postage meters to these home businesses are now bringing the way that you can ship parcels and stuff and those systems and how to ship parcels out of there. Then you have the presort business, which is presort 18 billion pieces of mail for the post office every year. And then they induct that later into the Postal Services Network. And that's a Work Share Program. And then you have global logistics, which is what we are is is we're a parcel shipping company. So origin volume for retailers come into our facilities, or Asian Pacific, those come to our facilities, and we sort those, and we sort of have different destinations or different facilities, and we enter those and then what we do is we deliver to what you would call a DDU, but really is a post office and then the post office delivers our last mile. So we're truly a parcel shipping company on the global logistics side, really using a consultative and digital flash way of creating value for our customers versus just, you know, traditional parcel shipping.

Blythe Brumleve: 14:19

And so it sounds like your skill set from UPS is just perfect for the role over at Pitney Bowes. Is that a safe assumption?

Stephanie Cannon: 14:27

It Yeah, it's a safe assumption. But um, you know, to be clear, PT Burroughs's is very unique in the way that they operate, the way that they create design service delivery services, and the consultative approach is something that what I would say is is no other company actually does, the way that we do and that really is our differentiator.

Blythe Brumleve: 14:49

Can you can you break that down for us on how you guys approach that that deliverability

Stephanie Cannon: 14:54

design? Yeah, so design delivery, so like, every, every time we were off selling business, you know, we're Designing a parcel shipping solution for that customer specifically, it's not like, Hey, you just come on our platform and you get this, this and this. And that's all you get. And here it is, we actually go in, we learn about that customer's business, we really try to understand what their needs are. In the global logistics side of the business, too, we have, we have three different divisions. So we have our domestic shipping business, right, which is all domestic inner, inner us, we have our Canadian cross border logistics business. So we have, we have intra logistics shipping with inside Canada, we also have across the borders back and forth, we also do, you know, cross border shipping and other countries. And then we also, we also have fulfillment as well, which is the pick pack and ship. So what we're able to do is go in and really truly understand the needs of that retailer or that customer marketplace customer and put together a solution for them, that's really going to be a true and and ecommerce solution for them.

Blythe Brumleve: 15:57

And with a lot of you know, we've talked a lot, you know, so far about like automation, and you know, optimization and things like that. But with so many, I guess, complexities and also variables for each of these e commerce operations. How do you define what that automation structure optimization structure looks like, when there's so many variables involved?

Stephanie Cannon: 16:19

Yeah, so we have a pretty detailed design design process, and the way that we do it, the way that we thought about Phase One was we had, you know, 20 facilities we needed to build out. And we needed to build those out rapidly. We we like our personal profile, right, it's what fits into the Postal Service, right, because it's going to go there for the last mile. But you know, we have everything from little parcels, to big parcels, boxes, poly bags, lightly, you know, versus Slack. So the way that we really thought about our automation was really creating a strategy that could handle all those different aspects of the parcel, and building a cohesive sort of end to end solution. And, and we did that when I said through the traditional automation, but looking at our so we ended up using collaborative innovation programs. So that's where we went looked at emerging technologies, what we did was we said, okay, places where we don't have enough volume to do all the traditional automation, those high speed crossbelt sorters, or, you know, tilt trays or euro sorts that were in our very large facilities. How could we use companies like AMD robotics that could in our, in our places where we needed to be able to grow the automation as the volume grew, and also had a solution that could that could work just as fast as those high speed automations. And it also allowed us to pay for the systems as we need them versus having to put out a big capital outlay. And so we built what I would say is a cookie cutter designed for a tier one facility, which is very high volume origin destinations, and then very high outbound destinations to end consumers. And then our tier twos as either they have a lot of destination volumes and consumers or they have a lot of origin volume. tier ones have a very quick cookie cutter shape. Tier twos have cookie cutter, that way, we were able to build those very Renson, repeatable and get those build over three years. And what I'll tell you though, is is we built them to be incredibly flexible robotics allowed us to build flexibility into it, because for instance, if we have parcel sizes that get larger, we can swap out a sack versus a Gaylord with very minimal impact a cost to be able to do that, or, you know, we signed two or three year deals with them, we're able to then swap out, you know, a new technology for that, like, if you put in traditional automation, you know, it's sort of there for ever. You know, I

Blythe Brumleve: 18:51

love that you're referring to as like traditional automation, because I mean, for with so many logistics companies that I talked to even just mentioning the word automation, they kind of get like a, like, I don't know, what steps to do. It's kind of like, you know, paralysis by analysis, I think is that phrase. So how do you? How do you make it collaborative? How do you get people on board who might not be you know, really efficient, or, you know, they might not even know where to start when it comes to optimization. So how do you what does that process look like to get them to buy into it, and then be collaborative about it, and then also continuously improve on that process?

Stephanie Cannon: 19:28

Um, so there's there I'm gonna answer this in two different ways, because there's actually two ways we think about this. Getting getting our teams and our company to be able to understand it, and it's really the overdoing analysis and it doesn't work, right. You know, it's really about looking at all the different technologies and how those fit together and how those actually, you know, solve each task in the warehouse. And then how you interconnect those tasks together. It's different in a tier one versus a tier two. What I will say though, From a collaborative innovation perspective, what we did is is we went out and we said, hey, listen, we have a task to solve. And we went out found partners that were really willing to work with us to solve an actual real world problem that we had in our warehouses, and actually be able to design, you know, a solution that was going to work for us. But we as a design, that solution, we had everybody involved from our hourly employees clear through our operators, clear through our executives, clear through our, you know, directors and our facilities running them, and really keeping that open communication base, because they were able to give us feedback immediately on what we needed to fix during pilot phases, what what worked and what didn't also, like some of the best suggestions come from people working on the warehouse, like, because they're actually the ones using that technology every single day. And, and the way that we were able to get adoption on that technology was when you brought that in when in advance, and you started to really, really focus on them and how that solution was going to interact with them, but also solve the problem that you needed to get to the unit economics and scale. Their adoption of that technology was quick, and then we created what you would call robot operator jobs, right. And we gave them certifications, and we help them get training, that was what I would consider is a career value proposition that we have your opinion. And what we found that did is is not only did it, did it, get them engaged in the automation to ensure that it worked, and they they were constantly optimizing it for you, while our engineers are optimizing it while our operators are optimizing it, but the buy in your technology is only as good as the people using it. And so the biggest thing I think companies miss in the automation journey is not involving everybody from from the get go. Because it's everybody's technology. And quite frankly, when we all walk away, after we build it, the people that own it, are the people using

Blythe Brumleve: 22:02

it on the floors. And I think that you hit the nail on the head, because so many different operations will not go to the employees that are in the trenches that are making these day to day decisions, and they're the ones going to be impacted. It's typically you know, from what I've seen, it's an executive or like a vice president or something like that, that sees in shiny new piece of software, and just immediately buys it and gives it to the team and tells them to you know, figure it out. But from your your experience, it really does goes a long way in order to make everybody a part of the process. And part of that just it almost feels like it's a it's part of the job to continuous be continuously be optimizing. Is that a safe assumption?

Stephanie Cannon: 22:42

Yeah. And we still even though we've had a lot of these robotics, in our facilities forever, we have, you know, it's crazy. We have robotics, we have autonomous forklifts, which we're just now rolling out autonomous vehicles, believe it or not, that are doing our middle mile to the post office. What you learned is, is even in that, like the employees, we still no matter how long we had a role now we constantly do meetings weekly, or we have our industrial engineers on the floor asking questions, what's working, what's not what, what what is, you know, and they're constantly giving us feedback, and we're constantly fixing or improving those, we're working with our vendors to constantly fix the technology or improve the technology, it may be that this barcode doesn't scan well. So they're looking at how they use their vision technology to improve scanning rates and, and how and how it may place into a sack. So that you know, you don't have as many exceptions. It's really actually an incredible journey, the more you can collaborate with everybody the better success that you have. And then

Blythe Brumleve: 23:48

as you're as I said, there, you had mentioned a couple of different of the a couple different investments that Pitney has made ambi robot NB robotics being one of them, plus one solutions being another one. What why these investments? Is it you know, really getting that on the boots, you know, on boots on the ground feedback, and that's why you choose to make the investments or what do you hope that these investments will bring to Putney. These investments

Stephanie Cannon: 24:12

are bringing true ROIs and scale and speed to our facility. So it's driving the unit economics that we need. It's also it's helping with reducing you know, these monotonous jobs like if you think about it, sorting to a sack or or are picking and placing or everyday like plus one robotics does induction somebody picking and placing and facing every single day is the most monotonous, horrible job really soul crushing. So we're in it's the same thing with sorting to a sack like the puzzles are heavy. So the way that we think about is was actually solving and creating better jobs. We're driving unit economics within the warehouses. We also it also creates flexibility as our profile As change, there's a lot that happens with that. The other thing I said to its its preservation of cash, we're able to use robots as a service, it preserves our capital and allows us to pay monthly for these services. And it solves the same thing. So we have found that those are, those are really some of the big reasons we're investing in these not just to have cool stuff in our warehouse is actually has nothing to do with have cool stuff in our warehouses. Got it? The reason we're doing Ganic is we want to be able to scale that middle mile, you know, we go to all these post offices every day. And we have routes. And, you know, there's major driver shortages. But the other thing too is, is we want to create, like repeatable and reliable and consistent routes day in and day out so we can service our customers.

Blythe Brumleve: 25:46

And it sounds like with a lot of the approaches that that Pitney is making, especially on the robotic side and helping with those monotonous tasks is that there's it also has that I guess, side effect of it creates more buy in from the employees, instead of seeing robots as almost like the enemy that they're going to be taking my job instead of it reframes it almost to be an assistant to you.

Stephanie Cannon: 26:09

Yeah, well, and they really are. They're collaborative, right? They are assistants, they're helping the job to be easier for them, because they're still people working with the robots, it's just making it easier for them. And what you'll find out and I say this a lot, probably, and you guys have heard it. You know, we have them, they take selfies with their robots, and they name them. And they're truly engaged. And it's like, they're robots.

Blythe Brumleve: 26:35

I totally get that because I have a Roomba. And his name is Robbie, and he has a gender. It's just referred to him as, as he. Yeah, he does really great work cleaning around the house. So yeah, that's interesting that humans will, will name the robots and sort of see, you know, an affection towards them. Now, I know, you had mentioned earlier about how, you know, deliveries were different for different companies, or different countries. But is robot implementing robotics different for different countries as well?

Stephanie Cannon: 27:03

Um, I think what you'll find in Europe, what I see in Europe is is there's not a very Europe small, right, like the countries are small did warehousing space, they just don't have warehousing space, they don't have million square foot warehouses, like we have in the US. So what's different there is, is they need robotics, because they need they need the scalability, they need the flexibility, they need to be able to build vertically, they need to get as much throughput as they can out of their warehouses, when they really don't have the space. So putting in big commands everywhere doesn't doesn't really work.

Blythe Brumleve: 27:37

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Stephanie Cannon: 29:18

I think I think answering the same way we do is is it's it's the communication and engagement on the front end with everybody bringing in robots and not communicating or working with people or helping them understand what what it's going to do for them. That's what scares I think people is when you bring stuff in and you just say, Hey, this is here. I'm not gonna really show you how to use it well, and I'm not going to support you and I'm not going to get your feedback and I'm not going to certify you to use it. I'm not going to create job robot operator jobs like they're looking at these going. I am confused, right? It's just like we would be confused about anything Write that somebody didn't tell us in advance. It's like when you come home and your, your husband told your kids, they could go do something and you didn't know and you're like, wait. You know, it's the same thing with that, like, it's, it's about the communication, it's about how you deliver the messages to them. And that because because what you'll learn is, is they're not taking jobs, they're actually producing more jobs, but they're producing more upskilled jobs and better quality of life jobs.

Blythe Brumleve: 30:31

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. Because nobody wants to I mean, like you mentioned earlier that the monotony of of a certain kind of pick and pack job, or having to walk around a warehouse for miles every single day, lifting heavy objects, like that all plays a role in the quality and the health, and just overall quality of life, I think, for a lot of your workers. So if you can take care of them, and you can help them have a better quality of life, they're probably going to have, you know, a better output. And when it comes to their their work, and the longevity of how long they're actually going to stay in that job, I think is where, you know, a lot of companies, they have a lot of issues, retaining talent as well. So I imagine that Pitney doesn't have a lot of those same problems.

Stephanie Cannon: 31:10

Yeah. The more we roll out technology and automation, the more that we're seeing the engagement with or with our employees, and in the excitement, to be honest, like there's there's a ton of excitement when this stuff comes into the warehouses.

Blythe Brumleve: 31:23

And so when you're thinking about, you know, last couple questions, you're thinking about, you know, sort of innovation and where you know, how far Pitney has come from, and then all of the cool things that they're implementing today. But what what are those cool things coming down the pipeline? What in the coming months, maybe in the you know, in the next year? What does that look like? Yeah,

Stephanie Cannon: 31:42

so this is this thing. So we automated we spent three years automating our warehouses rate. If I think about our second largest spend, Pitney Bowes, other than postal costs is transportation costs, right? So if you think about what we're gonna be spending our time on, is, you know, warehouse is pennies you're solving for pennies, transportation you're solving for Dion's so we will be spending a significant amount of our time and our energy from an innovation perspective on how we look at technologies in the transportation industry, how we bring those technologies on, looking at how we optimize our transportation network, and then technologies around everything, everything transportation, because that really is, you know, the the big thing.

Blythe Brumleve: 32:33

Yeah, and it's one of those things that every retailer is probably looking at their bottom line and see the rising costs and transportation and wondering who could do something about this. So it sounds like you know, Pitney is is you know, they've solved one really big problem, and hopefully, you know, that that next problem is optimizing the transportation side of things. All right, Stephanie, it was there anything else that you think that should be talked about in this conversation? But I haven't asked already?

Stephanie Cannon: 32:59

Yeah, I mean, I think the I you know, what I think there is one interesting thing is the I don't know if you guys saw Pitney Bowes shipping index that came out it, which is just I think it's interesting to just understand the market setting a little bit. Sure. If you saw from last year, like, parcel volumes, decreased 2%. But if you look at the overall from the 2019 projections of the parcel shipping Indra index, we're 1 billion parcels ahead of that. And we're a year ahead. So even though people look at it, and they're like, Oh, we're, you know, persons are declining gives the worlds to like things are declining, I think what you see is, is we're still a year and 1 billion parcels ahead of what we thought we were going to be in 2019, which I think shows that this industry is not slowing. There's a lot of work to be done. And there's a lot of great, great things are gonna happen with technology, and a lot that's going to come in the future. Yeah, it

Blythe Brumleve: 33:57

definitely I echoed that, because I had somebody send me an article yesterday that talked about, you know, sort of the drop in in China to US exports, and it's like, well, hold on, like, it's not necessarily a drop, because it's compared to last year, you have to really like the last, I guess three years is 2020. The data is just thrown everything off in perspective off. So we're kind of coming back down to a little bit of reality in 2023, but still comparative to 2019. We are still lightyears ahead where especially in the E commerce area. So Stephanie, great insight. I love hearing the perspective especially from you know, a company like Pitney and everything that you're doing over there and, you know, collaboration and innovation and automation. where can folks, you know, follow more of your work follow Pitney Bowes, you know, all that good stuff.

Stephanie Cannon: 34:45

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, Pitney Bowes, you can go to their Pitney Bowes website and you will find all the links and all the press releases and sort of everything that we're doing can follow Pitney Bowes on LinkedIn as well. We're constantly posting about all the new innovation in the new technology. That's all.

Blythe Brumleve: 35:04

That's amazing. Well, well, well, thank you again, Stephanie, this is this has been a great conversation, I'll be sure to link to all of those spots in the show notes just to make it easy for folks because they're not just mailing machines any more. And they haven't been for quite some time. And I think that's probably, you know, for a lot of transportation folks, that's their experience with maybe Pitney just only in the office itself. But then outside, you know what anybody who's working in a warehouse obviously has probably heard of you guys in the massive things that you're doing within the space. So So thank you again for coming on the show.

Stephanie Cannon: 35:35

Yeah, this is a great conversation. Thank you.

Blythe Brumleve: 35:44

I hope you enjoy this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. If you liked this episode, do me a favor and sign up for our newsletter. I know what you're probably thinking, oh God, another newsletter. But it's the easiest way to stay updated when new episodes are released. Plus, we drop a lot of gems in that email to help the one person marketing team and folks like yourself who are probably wearing a lot of hats at work in order to help you navigate this digital world a little bit easier. You could find that email signup link along with our socials in past episodes. Over at everything is logistics.com And until next time, I'm Blythe and go Jags