How DB Schenker used Feedly to create an “innovation hub” to detect new business opportunities

THE CUSTOMER

DB Schenker, global leading logistics provider

Jacek Pucher is a Global Innovation Manager for DB Schenker, one of the world’s leading logistics providers of land, air, and ocean freight. Jacek helps his company stay up-to-date on the latest developments in logistics – whether that’s by keeping an eye on the competition, identifying new business opportunities, or tracking innovations in the market. 

THE CHALLENGE

Finding an efficient system to scan the horizon for emerging trends and business opportunities

Back in the beginning of 2020, the Global Innovation team didn’t have any tools to help them sift through the flood of information that’s published online every day. 

Monitoring trends and opportunities manually was impossible and impractical. DB Schenker is a global company, and they need to be up-to-date on competitor strategies, events, trends, and what their customers are up to in different markets around the world. 

But if they wanted to continue to be successful in a competitive market, they needed to find a way to scan the horizon efficiently. “Companies operate in an uncertain world,” Jacek explains. “To be able to tackle these uncertainties, you need to be constantly monitoring what is happening around you.” 

THE SOLUTION

Using Leo, Feedly’s AI engine, to build a hub to monitor innovations, trends, competitors, and opportunities

When Jacek first began pitching Feedly to internal stakeholders, his team was quickly overwhelmed with requests for their own newsletters with real-time information.

“Almost right away, we had many colleagues who were interested and asked us to create newsletters for them,” Jacek recalls. “It started scaling quickly, and very soon it got to the point where our Feedly-dedicated team of two wouldn’t be able to do the monitoring for the whole company.” 

So instead, Jacek created an internal scaling model that uses Leo to feed DB Schenker’s innovation, trend, competitor, and opportunity hub and triage intelligence out to the wider company. 

Here’s how he did it:

1. Set up Leo to surface the right information

Feedly’s AI engine, Leo, uses a collection of machine learning models to continuously read millions of articles to analyze and tag key concepts in real time. It’s like having an extremely eager research assistant – with a million times the computing power. 

Jacek set up Leo Web Alerts, AI-powered searches across the web, to track logistics innovations for new developments. He also used Leo’s pre-trained Tech & Scientific Innovation Concept to get immediate updates on emerging trends and new technologies.  

Jacek also set up Leo Web Alerts for the sales teams for DB Schenker’s different business units to help them identify business opportunities. The Leo Web Alerts focused on topics like the supply chain industry, supply chain last mile deliveries, land transport, ocean freight, and warehousing. “It was so simple,” he says. 

2. Curated newsletters disseminate valuable market intelligence information across the company

Once Jacek had Leo set up to surface relevant information, he turned on Team Newsletters. The innovation team curates articles by saving them to a Board in Feedly, and then the newsletters are regularly sent to a predefined list of emails from Boards. 

Then, he pitched the tool’s market intelligence applications to teams across the company to help other teams set up their own newsletters, based on their intelligence needs. 

The innovation team’s first internal customer had a very specific goal in mind: they wanted to use Feedly to stay on top of their customers’ latest investments. “If our customers build a warehouse or a production facility, they are going to need logistics services soon,” Jacek explains. “If we know about that earlier, our sales team can approach our customers to offer our services.”

From there, interest grew quickly, and multiple teams approached Jacek to set up their own newsletters. Pretty soon, Jacek had used Leo to set up 18 different newsletters for teams across the company. 

3. The innovation team creates a scalable framework for surfacing trends   

Now, when a team approaches Jacek to help them gather market intelligence, the process is simple: 

1. Jacek asks the department what keywords and concepts they would like to track. 
2. Then, he creates the Leo Web Alerts for them and asks for feedback on each Web Alert.
3. Together, they refine their Leo Web Alerts to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, so they only receive what’s most relevant to them. 
4. Finally, he trains a team “Feedly editor,” who becomes the owner of the department’s market intelligence – and Jacek is free to go help the next team who wants to gather market intelligence. 

Jacek says, “I assist them in the first few weeks, and I help them publish the first newsletter. After that I hand over the reins and that person becomes responsible for intelligence gathering for their team. They can do their own thing.”

THE RESULTS

A small innovation team with a huge impact across the company

DB Schenker now has an innovation, trend, and opportunity hub, which they use to analyze and distribute content to the wider departments that need to gather intelligence, monitor trends, and spot emerging technologies as they evolve. 

Over 2,000 active newsletter subscriptions

So far, the 18 newsletters have over 2,000 subscriptions, with many employees signing up to more than one. Every new employee gets the option to sign up for Feedly newsletters during their onboarding as well. “I get lots of positive feedback,” Jacek says. “People really value these newsletters and the insights they provide.” 

The “innovation hub” that the team built with Feedly has been so successful that Jacek gathered internal feedback and wrote an internal success story about the initiative.

A collaborative network to break down information silos 

Setting up Feedly as a hub for market intelligence has created an unexpected benefit for the Global Innovation Team, as well: Jacek now has a network of people across the company who can collaborate and lean on each other as resources. He credits the success of this “innovation hub” to the broader team of “Feedly editors” who scan, analyze, and distribute newsletters through Feedly every week for the sales teams within each business unit. 

Jacek reflects on what the Global Innovation team has been able to achieve since starting to use Feedly: “Strategic foresight and scenario building are the innovation tools of the future. And you cannot build scenarios if you don’t know what is happening and what has happened. That’s the big opportunity that Feedly creates for us.”