Our Take
Sellam is describing a real problem, not solving one; Stargo's own pitch is absent from this interview, which reads as market diagnosis rather than company news.
Why it matters
Logistics executives need to hear that legacy TMS and ERP systems were built for structured data in controlled workflows, not the messy reality of freight. If you're evaluating supply chain tools, this explains why spreadsheets still win.
Do this week
Supply chain leader: audit your TMS and ERP usage this week and document which daily tasks still happen in email, Slack, or spreadsheet outside the system so you can benchmark tool fit against actual operations.
The Freight Industry Runs on Unstructured Data
Joel Sellam, CEO of Stargo, told CB Insights that the global freight logistics and supply chain market operates on a foundation of fragmented, human-generated information. Shippers, forwarders, carriers, and logistics partners exchange critical operational data via email, PDF, spreadsheet, EDI (electronic data interchange), and direct messaging. This data is unstructured or semi-structured, often incomplete, delayed, or inconsistent.
Traditional systems—transportation management systems (TMS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and visibility platforms—were designed for predefined, structured workflows. They function well in controlled environments but fail when real-world operations deviate from design assumptions. The result is a paradox: even heavily digitized logistics organizations remain manual-heavy, slow to adapt, expensive to run, and difficult to scale.
Sellam frames this as the core industry problem. Trillions of dollars move through the logistics ecosystem, yet day-to-day coordination still depends on human communication and informal data channels rather than system-native processes.
Legacy Systems Were Built for a World That Doesn't Exist
This diagnosis matters because it reflects a widespread gap between software design and operational reality. TMS and ERP vendors optimized for structured, repeatable workflows—purchase orders, shipment confirmations, delivery status. They did not optimize for the exception handling, contract negotiation, carrier rate haggling, and real-time plan adjustments that dominate actual freight operations.
For procurement and operations leaders evaluating supply chain tools, Sellam's framing is a useful baseline: if your tool requires you to re-enter data from email or convert PDFs into system records, it is not solving the problem. It is shifting the work.
The logistics market is also one of the largest and most complex industries globally. Scale of problem translates directly to scale of opportunity for vendors who can bridge the structured-to-unstructured gap.
Audit Your Actual Workflows, Not System Flows
When evaluating tools or planning digital transformation in supply chain, map where information actually lives today. Track which decisions happen in systems and which happen outside them. Email volume, spreadsheet copies, Slack threads, carrier-portal screenshots—these are not anomalies. They are the real process.
Ask vendors directly: how do you handle incomplete or conflicting data? How do you stay current when a carrier sends a rate change via informal message? If the answer is "you configure this in the system first," the tool is not built for logistics reality.