The Question That Matters

Let’s start with a deceptively simple question: is your supply chain unique?

Most executives I ask answer without hesitation: “Of course. Every supply chain is unique.”

It’s an intuitive answer. Every company has its own mix of products, suppliers, customers, geographies, and risks. Surely that makes each supply chain one-of-a-kind.

But intuition can be misleading.

The better answer is: your supply chain is reasonably standard—at least in the dimensions that actually matter.

Getting this answer right is critical, because it determines how you design your technology stack, how much you spend, and how much risk you assume.

Why the Wrong Answer Is Dangerous

If you believe your supply chain is fundamentally unique, the logic follows that no off-the-shelf technology can possibly handle it.

That means:

• You’ll assume you need a bespoke solution.
• You’ll pay for heavy customization.
• You’ll attempt to codify the “unique” ways your business operates.
• You’ll almost certainly fail to capture the complexity correctly, because no one can perfectly define a “unique” system in advance.

The result? A multi-year IT project that is hard, expensive, and risky. And if the business shifts—as it always does—your “unique” design is obsolete before it goes live.

This is not a hypothetical. It’s the lived experience of thousands of companies that spent millions customizing ERPs or building homegrown systems, only to be left with fragile technology that can’t evolve.

The Better Answer: Standard Supply Chains

Now flip the premise. If you accept that supply chains are reasonably standard, your starting position changes dramatically.

Instead of chasing uniqueness, you start with this question: which existing technology best solves the core problems every importer faces?

The focus shifts from reinventing the wheel to finding the right vehicle. You don’t need to build an engine from scratch—you need to choose the car that best fits your driving conditions.

This mindset allows you to:

• Deploy faster.
• Spend less.
• Reduce project risk.
• Focus your energy on the areas where you truly are different (your customers, your products, your market strategy).

Why Supply Chains Are More Standard Than You Think

The reason supply chains are standard is simple: you don’t control most of the moving parts.

• Ocean carriers are going to carry. They operate massive fleets under global regulations. Your volumes don’t change how they schedule ships.
• Customs brokers are going to broker. They comply with government rules, not with your internal quirks.
• Draymen are going to dray. Rail carriers are going to rail. Manufacturers are going to manufacture.

You have very limited ability to alter how these actors perform their core functions. And all of them operate within highly regulated frameworks. When change does occur, it’s usually regulatory, not because a single customer demanded it.

In other words, the underlying physics of your supply chain are shared with everyone else.

What Is Unique

If the underlying flows are standard, where does uniqueness show up?

It shows up in how you interact with the data.

Think about it:

• When an estimated delivery date changes, how does that information ripple into your internal processes?
• How do your sales or customer service teams learn about the change, and what do they do with it?
• If a container is rolled, how does that affect your inventory plan or manufacturing schedule?
• If a container is held for inspection, how does that change your landed cost and customer pricing?

These are not examples of a “unique supply chain.” They are examples of unique points of interest in a standard supply chain.

Every company faces the same baseline events: rolled containers, delayed vessels, customs exams, rate hikes. What differs is how those events intersect with your business.

Why This Distinction Matters for Technology

This distinction—standard flows vs. unique interactions—is not academic. It is the single most important factor in designing your technology stack.

• If you treat the entire supply chain as unique, you will attempt to encode every business nuance into the platform itself. That path leads to over-customization and failure.
• If you recognize the flows as standard, you can adopt platforms built to handle them. Then, you only customize the interactions—how the standard data connects to your processes, KPIs, and decision logic.

This is where most companies go wrong. They don’t separate the operating environment (which is largely fixed) from their internal response (which is variable).

A Practical Example

Let’s take something simple: a vessel ETA changes.

Standard supply chain fact: vessel ETAs always change. Every importer faces this. Systems already exist to track and update ETAs.

Where you are unique:

• Do you automatically update promised delivery dates to customers?
• Do you trigger an inventory reallocation algorithm?
• Do you escalate an alert to sales because a key customer’s order will miss?

The event is standard. Your reaction is unique.

The technology implication: you don’t need a custom tool to track ETAs—that’s solved. You need a system that lets you define how changes to ETAs should trigger your own workflows.

Another Example: Customs Exams

Every importer has containers held at the port for inspection.

The unique questions are:

• Who internally needs to know?
• How do you handle cost pass-through?
• Do you adjust customer lead times or absorb the delay?
• How do you allocate unexpected fees across POs?

Again: the exam is standard. Your business response is not.

Where the Real Risk Lies

Believing in uniqueness has a hidden cost: it blinds you to the areas where you actually are unique.

If you spend years customizing technology to handle container tracking (a standard problem), you won’t have the resources to design the workflows that define your customer experience (your real differentiator).

Ironically, the pursuit of uniqueness in the wrong place erodes your ability to compete in the places where you could stand out.

The Organizing Principle

Here’s the framework I use:

1. Flows are standard. Product moves from factory to port, onto vessel, off vessel, through customs, onto rail or truck, into the warehouse. That’s the physics of global trade.
2. Events are predictable. Containers roll. Vessels delay. Customs exams happen. Surcharges increase. These are systemic realities.
3. Your interactions are unique. The meaning of those events inside your organization—how they affect planning, cost allocation, customer communication—that’s where uniqueness lives.

Technology should reflect this hierarchy. Standard flows → standard platform. Unique interactions → configurable workflows.

Why This Is So Hard to Accept

Executives resist this framing because it feels like it diminishes the complexity of their operation.

Saying “my supply chain is standard” sounds like saying “my company is ordinary.” But that’s not what it means.

It means you accept that you operate in the same physics as everyone else. Your differentiation comes from how you navigate those physics—not from pretending you’re exempt.

Think of airlines. Every airline faces the same air traffic control system, the same regulations, the same weather delays. What differs is pricing strategy, customer service, fleet configuration. The industry is standardized, but carriers still differentiate.

Supply chains are no different.

The Cost of Confusion

When companies get this wrong, they pay in three ways:

1. Financial cost. Over-customization leads to bloated IT budgets and endless consulting fees.
2. Organizational cost. Staff waste time defining and redefining “unique” processes instead of solving customer problems.
3. Strategic cost. Companies miss opportunities to adapt quickly because they are shackled to fragile, custom technology.

The Payoff of Clarity

When companies get this right, the payoff is huge:

• Faster technology adoption.
• Lower implementation costs.
• More resilient systems.
• Teams focused on the right problems.

And most importantly: technology that actually works.

Bringing It Back to You

So, is your supply chain unique?

Yes—in how you interact with it.

No—in the flows that make it up.

The challenge is to separate those two truths, and design your technology stack accordingly.

That’s the difference between being perpetually stuck in costly IT projects and actually running a reliable, resilient supply chain.

Final Thought

In global trade, humility is a strength. Acknowledging that you operate within standard flows doesn’t diminish your company—it frees it.

Once you stop fighting the physics of the supply chain, you can focus on the interactions that really define your customer experience, your profitability, and your resilience.

Everything else is just importing bunk.

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