"Stabilisation should not be confused with full recovery." - SAAFF, on Durban, October 2026
Hi from Ireland. Derek here.
I had an interesting call at the back end of last week, around the value of conferences and shows. It was very much a two-sided conversation. One side: the upside is absolutely not worth the cost, and attending as a delegate is the best approach. Roadshows were also discussed, and even setting up micro events around the major conferences. Opinions were definitely mixed, but at face value, for vendors, it’s very hard to justify the major costs. So, what’s the future? Where would there be real value add for operators and potential customers? I’m not sure, but I suspect workshop-based micro events are top of my list. All this, as I prep to go to the Central European Intermodal Conference in Budapest tomorrow… If I knew how to put a rolling eyes emoji in here, I would!
Last week I promised you the reference call. I'll be blunt: the way most of us run them, they're theatre. The vendor picks the customer. The customer has been briefed. Half the time the account manager is on the line. You find out how nice everyone is. You don't find out what breaks.
This week: how to turn a reference call into due diligence, what the world's biggest forwarding merger is teaching its customers, and why "the system is stable" is not the same as "we've recovered".
New here, or missed it? Your free Day 90 Pre-Mortem Kit is waiting: the one-hour exercise to run with your team before you sign, plus 10 questions to put to any vendor. Get the kit →
About a seven-minute read.
In today's Day 90:
The Day 90 Question: the reference call is rigged. Un-rig it.
Peer poll: your biggest tech decision in the next 12 months
Day 90 Case: DSV and Schenker, a migration with the customers still on board
One thing for a Wednesday: find your own reference
News: Durban at Day 74, and the weekend Ahold Delhaize went dark
1. The Day 90 Question
Who did the vendor not put on the reference list, and why?
Every vendor has three customers they love putting on the phone. The ones where it went well, or where a champion's career depends on it having gone well. Nothing dishonest about that. It's just sales. But it means the call you're offered is the best case, not the typical one.
So change three things:
Pick the customer yourself. Ask for every customer that went live in the last 24 months in your segment, then choose. If they won't share the list, that's an answer.
Get the vendor off the call. Say it nicely and say it early. People talk differently when the account manager isn't listening.
Talk to the user, not the sponsor. The sponsor signed it. The planner lives with it. Ask for both, and spend most of your time with the planner.
Then ask the question a slide can't answer:
"What did Day 90 actually look like? What broke, who fixed it, and how long did it take?"
And two follow-ups: "What did it cost that wasn't in the contract?" and "If you were signing again tomorrow, what would you change?"
Listen for specifics. Names, dates and numbers mean someone lived it. "It's been a journey" means you need a second reference. And if three references say the same polished thing, ask yourself who wrote it.
2. This week's peer poll
Last week: I asked if you'd ever run a pre-mortem. Eight of you voted, and the top answer was "No, I'd never heard of it" (3 of 8). Small numbers, but it's a start. If that's you, the Day 90 Pre-Mortem Kit is free and takes an hour.
This week, one click:
What's your biggest tech decision in the next 12 months?
Got 20 more seconds? Tell me your role and company size so every issue fits your job.
3. Day 90 Case: DSV and Schenker, a migration with the customers still on board
DSV bought DB Schenker for €14.3bn and became the world's largest third-party logistics company. About 85,000 people in 90 countries came with it. Now DSV is moving all of them onto its own systems, one country at a time, using a 32-stage plan refined over nearly 20 mergers. It did the same with Panalpina in 2019, pulling it off an SAP programme and onto DSV's in-house systems.
If anyone knows how to do this, it's DSV. So it's worth watching how it actually goes.
Where it stands. According to Computer Weekly in April, air and sea were still running two business systems side by side. Road was moving fast to a single system. Consolidation of Schenker's contract logistics had been set back five years. CEO Jens Lund: "It's very hard to drive those changes in 90 countries."
The wobble. On 21 October, DSV's Q3 results showed European Road operating profit down 35.1% to DKK 526m, and that figure includes DKK 195m from selling property. DSV blamed lower productivity and falling volumes, and pointed to "integration-related operational disruptions" and "reduced service reliability" for customers. Service, it said, was back to normal by the end of September. The remaining road savings now land in 2027, not 2026. Total integration costs are heading for about DKK 11bn. (Breakbulk News)
Why road? Because road is where everything moves at once. DSV is cutting a combined estate of more than 400 road terminals to about 280, moving the network and migrating systems at the same time (In Supply). In road, small errors compound. A late trunk misses a cross-dock window and a consignment slips a day. A customer code, a dangerous-goods record or a delivery instruction that doesn't migrate cleanly breaks the job even when the truck is there.
To be fair to DSV. Group profit was up 22% in the same quarter. Service recovered within weeks. Most companies would take that outcome from an integration this size. As one consultant told Computer Weekly: "Smooth integrations remain the exception rather than the rule."
The uncomfortable bit. You didn't sign up for a migration. Your forwarder did. But your freight runs through it. And it's not only DSV: consolidation in forwarding means plenty of shippers are, right now, somebody else's test data.
So if your forwarder is mid-migration, ask them:
When do my lanes and countries cut over? Get dates, the way you'd ask for a sailing schedule.
Who checks my account data after it moves? Customer codes, DG records, delivery instructions, billing terms.
How will I see exceptions during cutover? Not at month end. That week.
What service level do you commit to during the migration, and what happens if you miss it?
And if you're the one migrating? Take DSV's playbook and shrink it. Run old and new side by side where you can. Cut over one country, site or lane at a time, not all at once. And before anything moves, ring-fence the data of your top 20 customers and check it by hand afterwards. They're the ones who'll notice first.
The lesson: a migration is a project for your supplier and a risk for you. Treat their go-live date like your own.
4. One thing for a Wednesday
Find your own reference. On LinkedIn, search the product name plus a job title: "Navis N4 planner", "CargoWise operations", "Blue Yonder WMS supervisor". People who use a system every day often list it on their profile. Filter out anyone who works for the vendor, then pick two people at companies like yours and send this:
"We're looking at [system]. Would you give me 15 minutes on what Day 90 looked like? Happy to return the favour."
Peers say yes to peers more often than you'd think. Another quick way: check the vendor's own go-live press releases and LinkedIn posts. They name the customer, and often tag the project team. None of them will be on the reference list.
5. News worth your five minutes
Durban is on Day 74. When Durban Gateway Terminal went live on Navis N4 on 15 August, existing users weren't carried across. Forwarders, hauliers and shipping lines had to register again. Two months on, the freight forwarders' association SAAFF reports ships averaging about 251 hours at anchor, and around 30 former Transnet workers have been brought back on short contracts to help. The terminal says the system is stable. SAAFF's reply: "Stabilisation should not be confused with full recovery." Day 90 falls on 13 November. Full review here on Wednesday 18 November. Read more →
Ahold Delhaize pulled its own plug. After a cyber incident on 11 October, the group took websites and apps offline across Albert Heijn, Delhaize, bol.com, Stop & Shop and others. Home deliveries paused for most of a week, and experts put the cost to Albert Heijn alone above €10m. CEO Frans Muller: "Taking the systems offline as a precaution was the right decision." The Day 90 angle: when did you last test what your operation does when the system goes dark on purpose? Read more →
That's a wrap
Hit reply and tell me: what's the best question you've ever asked on a reference call, or the one you wish you had? I read every reply, and the best ones (anonymised) go into a future issue.
Know someone about to sign off on new tech? Forward this. They can join at flow.workdatahq.com/join and get the Pre-Mortem Kit free.
Next Wednesday: what your poll answers say about where the money's going in the next 12 months.
Fair winds and following seas,
Derek
