Although Chief Technology Officer Haim Haviv joined Deliveright in December of 2020, he’d already been following the company since its founding, thanks to his connection with co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Ori Anavim. Haim’s expansive career journey and wide-ranging expertise make him an invaluable member of our team. Read on to learn more about how his journey—which has spanned continents and industries—brought him to Deliveright.

How did you and Ori meet?

Ori and I first met in the army almost 30 years ago, and then attended the same university. Years later, we ran into one another and discovered we were working in the same building, for different start-ups. I have always been impressed by Ori’s work, so when he co-founded Deliveright to solve the challenge presented by heavy and bulky deliveries using technology, I knew it was a company to watch. 

Your professional background is so diverse—you’ve worked for a hedge fund, for military contractors, at Bloomberg, and in R&D for Citibank. What skills do you bring from this background to your work at Deliveright?

Working for big companies like Bloomberg and Citi, I had responsibility for large teams and technology platforms, and dealt with high-stakes situations every day. These roles prepared me to take on the challenge of building and managing a technology platform undergirding a nationwide supply chain. I believe that exposing yourself to many cultures, people, and educational opportunities is essential, and these experiences have been crucial to my work at Deliveright.

During my time working with a hedge fund, I developed a risk assessment dashboard using predictive analytics, which allowed my team to “shock” a financial model with simulated circumstances and observe the likely fallout. This kind of forecasting and preparing is as essential to the supply chain sector as it is to the financial services industry. 

A throughline in my career is an interest in balancing stability and scalability while finding efficient solutions to big problems, no matter what they might be. I’m always asking myself, “What is the problem I’m trying to solve?” whether I’m working at a multinational company, or trying to get a couch across the United States.

How did you become interested in the supply chain? 

I love working on complex problems in a team environment. The need for supply chain solutions is enormous, and the landscape is wide open—a wide blue ocean: there’s a lot to manage, and most customers can’t find effective tools. Solving this problem for customers motivates us to tackle complicated problems. We still meet prospective customers who are using a meticulous, entirely analog process where they document everything on paper from end to end. The work lends itself enormously to innovation, and it’s exciting to hear from customers that they’re improving their bottoms lines, fielding fewer claims and customer service calls, and getting better online reviews.  

Are the issues of the logistics sector shiny and exciting in the same way as, say, the challenges presented working in AI and cybersecurity? 

Well, for one thing, the supply chain is crucial, as has been especially apparent in recent years, so these are very important problems that affect hundreds of millions of people every day. And for another thing, working with both AI and cybersecurity is essential to developing an effective supply chain solution. So I’d say yes, the supply chain is pretty shiny and exciting, and Deliveright is at the cutting edge. In general, the industry has a return rate around 20% when it comes to big and bulky furniture like couches. Our rate at Deliveright is consistently below 3%. 

Speaking of those evolving areas of technology, what do you think the future of supply chain innovation holds?

I think 2024 will see us augmenting our predictive analytics with artificial intelligence as AI tools continue to advance, which will allow us to further sharpen our already industry-leading fleet management, warehouse optimization, and delivery scheduling. Ideally, customers will soon be able to “talk” to their delivery in natural language, asking questions about delivery time, tracking, and so on, communicating with one centralized chatbot that has all the information. 

As the markets grow around big and bulky products like kitchen appliances, Deliveright will continue working to optimize delivery for increasingly complicated items. Of course, our system is advanced and flexible enough to deliver anything—we could deliver a pizza if we wanted to, but we’re focused on building in the big and bulky market.