1. The Logistics World We Knew No Longer Exists

Ten years ago, a logistics company could operate with a few core systems, a predictable flow, and a relatively linear process:

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But that world is gone.

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Today, logistics companies sit at the intersection of changing consumer expectations, evolving brand requirements, and exploding operational complexity. The traditional architecture consisting of monolithic systems, batch updates, siloed operations - simply cannot keep up with the speed and variability of modern supply chains.

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Let me give you a snapshot of how the tech world of logistics has changed.

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2. Customer and Consumer Expectations Are Changing Faster Than Technology Stacks Can Adapt

2.1 The 15-minute economy is real

What used to be “next-day delivery” has become “15 minutes or less.” (see real world examples from Noon Minutes, Flipkart minutes, Blinkit, zepto, Big basket)

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Such ambitious promises require Multiple micro-fulfilment centres, dark stores, and a fleet of fast drivers must operate in parallel.
Inventory accuracy must be perfect adapting to the location demand. Communication must be instant. Re-routing must happen automatically.

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This isn’t a WMS problem or a TMS problem.
It’s an architecture problem.

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2.2 Businesses outsourcing logistics now expect full control

Brands, merchants, and manufacturers are no longer accept the “black box” services, they need:

• Real-time visibility
• SLA tracking
• Seamless continuation of their internal workflows
• Integration with their OMS, ERP, CRM, POS, and eCommerce stack
• Custom SOPs, custom exceptions, custom SLAs
• Full event history
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The old WISMO (“Where Is My Order”) queries make a way for
“Make your process feel like an extension of mine.”

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3. Logistics Providers Are Forced to Diversify Their Services, and No Single System Covers It All

Many logistics companies started their business around a single flow we discussed above: receive → route → deliver → invoice.

But growth requires diversification:

• eCommerce fulfilment
• B2B distribution
• Reverse logistics
• Returns consolidation
• Middle mile
• Cross-border & customs
• Contract logistics
• Marketplaces fulfilment
• Cold chain
• Value-added services
• Inventory pooling
• Multi-brand warehousing

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This is where the cracks start to appear.

One system cannot handle all of this.

And yet every vendor claims they can.

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What used to be covered by a “simple OMS” suddenly requires:

• WMS for picking, packing, storing
• TMS for routing, dispatching, linehaul
• Freight systems for cross-border shipments quotations and deals
• Last-mile systems for parcels
• Electronic Proof-of-delivery applications
• Billing & rating engines
• Dock scheduling solutions for Slot-management
• IoT temperature sensors
• Customer portals
• Control towers
• Data platforms
• AI engines
• And a dozen middleware connectors

Every new service introduces a new system.
Every new system introduces new complexity.
Every complexity introduces more failure points.

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This is how logistics companies slowly drift from execution engines to systems integration nightmares.

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4. The “Happy Path” Illusion, and Why Real Operations Don’t Work That Way

Most transformation projects begin with an “ideal customer journey.”

It looks great on slides. It almost never happens in real life.

Logistics is not a flow.
It’s a network of decision:

• A shipment is late → Do we reassign? notify? escalate?
• A SKU is out of stock → Substitute? split order? wait? cancel?
• Traffic appears → Reroute? reshuffle? reschedule?
• A temperature deviation triggers → Hold? alert? reject?
• A customer changes the delivery window → Accept or replan?

Every one of these decisions is influenced by:

• SLAs
• SOPs
• Customer-specific rules
• Operational constraints
• Inventory availability
• Driver availability
• Capacity
• Regulatory requirements
• Geography
• Time of day

This isn’t a process.
This is a decision graph.
A real-time logistics execution network.

And no monolithic system was ever designed to handle that.

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5. The Vendor Trap: Everything Is Becoming a “Platform” with multiple “value-add” services like AI and Analytics

Software vendors have become experts in upselling:

• Your TMS has AI
• Your WMS has marketplaces plug-ins
• Your OMS has analytics
• Your ERP has workflow automation
• Your carrier app has customer communication
• Your CRM has customer notifications

All useful capabilities. None designed to work seamlessly together.

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Instead of a cohesive foundation, companies end up buying:

Duplicated features → overlapping capabilities → rising TCO → disjointed user experience → inconsistent data.

Every system claims to be a platform. Very few are. And the cost isn’t only financial.
The real cost is operational complexity.

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6. The Turning Point: Why We Chose to Build a Platform

At Starlinks, we reached a stage where:

• adding new systems features slowed us down
• integrations became brittle
• customer onboarding required too much manual mapping
• visibility was inconsistent
• billing was delayed due to fragmented data
• exceptions were growing faster than shipments
• operational decisions were not happening fast enough
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We realised we didn’t need more systems.

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We needed a platform, a unified execution fabric that:

• connects all systems
• listens to all events
• takes decisions automatically
• adapts to each customer
• supports multiple business lines
• reduces integration surface
• lowers TCO
• scales with growth

The question wasn’t: “Which vendor should we buy next?”
It was: “How should a logistics company operate in the next 10 years?”

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7. From Systems to Platform: The Architecture That Made It Possible

The platform we built (and continue to evolve) is based on a few core principles:

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1. Event-Driven at the Core

Everything starts as an event.
No polling. No delays. No blind spots.

2. Orchestration as a First-Class Citizen

Logic lives in workflows, not in systems.

3. Rule Engine for Every Customer

Each brand → its own SLAs, SOPs, logic.

4. Composable Services

Small, independent services triggered automatically.

5. Data Fabric, Not Data Warehouse

Every event is stored; every event is traceable.

6. Multi-Tenant by Design

One platform → many business units → many customers.

7. Control Tower on Top

One view of operations, not ten dashboards.

This architecture didn’t replace our WMS, TMS, OMS, or ERP.

It unified them.

8. Lessons Learned

Integration is an operating model, not a project

Integration isn’t something you “finish”; it becomes a continuous discipline that must evolve as services, customers, and products change. Treat it like a capability, not a deliverable.

No system will give you differentiation — only your platform can

Buying more systems makes you more similar to competitors. Building your own orchestration, rules, and data fabric makes you meaningfully different. TCO explodes when features overlap

Customer autonomy is rising; logistics companies must adapt

Customers expect your workflow to feel like an extension of theirs. Your tech stack must accommodate their logic, not force them into yours.

TCO explodes when features overlap

Every duplicated AI module, analytics layer, and workflow tool silently increases cost and complexity. Consolidate capabilities into the platform layer to control spend.

Real-time operations require real-time architecture

SLAs are measured in minutes, not hours. Batch processing creates latency, latency creates escalations, and escalations kill customer trust.

Your architecture must support diversification, not resist it

Logistics companies grow by adding services. If the tech foundation cannot support new business lines easily, growth becomes operational drag.

“One system to rule them all” is a myth

A single system can’t do fulfilment, linehaul, parcel delivery, billing, compliance, and customer visibility. But a platform can unify all these functions without replacing core systems.

9. The Road Ahead

The logistics companies that will win are not the ones with the best single system.
They are the ones with:

• a unified platform
• real-time visibility
• event-driven decisions
• composable capabilities
• customer-level configurability
• observability from end to end
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The future belongs to platform-native logistics companies, not system-centric ones.

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This article is the start of a series where I will unpack:

• our event-driven architecture
• our orchestrator
• our composable services
• our WMS/TMS/ERP challenges
• our AI & automation approach
• how a platform transforms the economics of logistics
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And more importantly, I wanted to create a simple playbook on how others can follow a similar path while avoiding the mistakes we made along the way.