DSV weighs early CargoWise move as WiseTech tackles pricing and ACCC scrutiny
In the first of a two-part interview with WiseTech CEO Zubin Appoo, The Loadstar looks at DSV's evolving relationship with CargoWise, the impact of its new pricing model, and the regulatory and operational challenges it faces. Tomorrow we examine WiseTech's plans to turn CargoWise into an AI 'system of execution' - and what that could mean for the future of the TMS
DSV has held talks with WiseTech Global over a potentially move onto its new CargoWise commercial model before its current contract expires in two years, despite the forwarder's longer-term plans to migrate operations to its own Tango platform.
WiseTech CEO Zubin Appoo told The Loadstar he had travelled to Copenhagen in May with the company's European sales head for talks with DSV CEO Jens Lund and his leadership team.
The meeting, which lasted around half a day, covered both CargoWise's existing role within DSV's technology ecosystem, and what that role could look like in future.
Crucially, Mr Appoo said, this included discussions over "what it might look like for them to roll onto CargoWise value packs (CVP) sooner than [the contract expiry date of] September 2028".
He stressed that no agreement had been reached.
"That's not to say that they're locked in. It is to say that there are positive conversations," he said, noting more "conversations" had taken place since May.
The comments add another twist to the uncertainty surrounding one of CargoWise's largest customers.
DSV has previously made clear that Tango, the system developed by DB Schenker, is intended to become its strategic operating platform.
That had raised questions over the future of CargoWise within the enlarged DSV, although WiseTech sought to counter those concerns in July, revealing that DSV's CargoWise transaction volumes had actually increased some 20% over the preceding six months, against an increase of just 3% in user numbers.
WiseTech has described DSV's contract as a "substantial financial commitment", but neither company has disclosed the value, although its importance to WiseTech is potentially considerable. In May, Jefferies analyst Roger Samuel estimated that DSV accounted for about 9% of WiseTech revenue and 10% of its EBITDA, while arguing that any complete migration away from CargoWise could take six years.
(That estimate predates WiseTech's consolidation of e2open, which has substantially enlarged the group and therefore should not be applied to its current $1.4bn revenue base)
CargoWise itself generated $756.9m in FY26 revenue, up 11% year on year.
Mr Appoo said DSV was continuing to expand CargoWise usage as it integrated DB Schenker.
"They are currently moving more and more of their DB Schenker users onto CargoWise," he said.
He pointed to DSV's public statements that this was necessary to realise integration synergies and argued that the continuing deployment provided WiseTech with an opportunity to demonstrate the value of remaining on the platform.
"We see it as an opportunity for us to continue to prove to DSV and other large customers the value that we deliver to them, the value we will continue to deliver through more and more AI agents, and the value that they may miss out on if they were to move off CargoWise."
For DSV, the bigger question remains what adopting CVP before 2028 would mean for its longer-term technology strategy. Increasing CargoWise volumes and ongoing migration of DB Schenker users appear, at least in the short term, to run in parallel with its ambition to develop Tango as its strategic operating system. Another question is what role CargoWise might retain when Tango matures.
An early switch to CargoWise Value Packs (CVP) would be interesting, because the model fundamentally changes how customers pay for the platform.
Rather than charging primarily according to seats and cloud services, WiseTech has moved towards transaction-based pricing, which it says better reflects the value generated through automation and increased throughput. Around 95% of CargoWise customers have already migrated to CVP.
Mr Appoo told The Loadstar the majority of CargoWise's 11% revenue growth in FY26 had come from the transition from its previous standard transaction licence (STL) commercial model to CVP, rather than underlying freight market growth alone.
But WiseTech does not break out exactly how much growth came from increased customer volumes and how much from pricing. Mr Appoo acknowledged, however, that the company had expected the change to generate additional revenue.
"We made this sort of change, knowing at the end of the day there would be incremental revenue for us, given our increased spend on R&D," he explained.
The impact varies considerably by customer, he added, some paying approximately the same as previously, while "some pay more, some pay far more, some pay less, some pay far less".
"Were they a very efficient business where they had less seats but more volume, or were they inefficient where they had a lot of seats but not much volume? It really depends on their usage."
WiseTech also modified CVP during the second half after receiving customer feedback and observing how the model operated in practice.
Mr Appoo said that, in some cases, WiseTech had found it was "capturing value too early", while in others it was taking a "disproportionate amount of value for a specific type of transaction".
He clarified: "When I say disproportionate, I mean disproportionate compared with what we had planned. We didn't sit down and say we're going to take 10%, or we're going to take 50% or 40%. We decided we would charge between $2.63 and $19.95 per job, depending on the permutation or type of shipment. In some cases, there were refinements we made to the packaging. In most cases, it was about the time we would actually extract the value from the customer. When would we charge them the $2 or the $19? When does it make sense to charge them compared to when they charge their customer? So that was the crux of the refinements."
The changes contributed to lower-than-initially-anticipated CargoWise revenue growth during the second half, but Mr Appoo argued they would encourage greater adoption over the longer term.
The changes to CargoWise's commercial model come as WiseTech faces renewed scrutiny from Australia's competition regulator.
On 19 August, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) executed a search warrant at WiseTech, requiring it to produce documents and electronic data as part of an investigation into alleged contraventions of the Competition and Consumer Act.
WiseTech's ASX announcement said the investigation related to the "supply of global logistics services and software", but gave no further details.
Some industry sources have questioned whether the investigation could concern WiseTech's contractual arrangements, including restrictions in agreements with technology partners, although there is no indication from the ACCC that this forms part of its investigation.
Asked by The Loadstar what conduct was under investigation, Mr Appoo declined to elaborate.
"There's really not much we can say there, other than it's very early days in an ACCC investigation," he said. "We're obviously cooperating ... and we put an ASX announcement out when it happened."
The latest investigation follows an earlier intervention by the ACCC over WiseTech's acquisition of Australian customs and forwarding software provider Expedient, which resulted in WiseTech agreeing to sell Expedient.
Significantly, the ACCC said at the time that it considered WiseTech to have "substantial market power" in the supply of logistics software, and had received "significant concerns" from software users over the acquisition.
The latest investigation comes amid a wider period of corporate and regulatory upheaval at WiseTech, although Mr Appoo rejected the suggestion that this was affecting customer confidence in the company.
"I wouldn't say it's a distraction for customers," he said. "Most of them, first of all, aren't in Australia, and a lot of these regulatory issues we're facing are Australian regulatory issues."
He pointed to increasing CargoWise customer signings as evidence that confidence had not been damaged.
Mr Appoo also argued that WiseTech had responded to concerns over corporate governance.
"On the governance front, we've listened very carefully to our investors and, basically, done everything they've asked us to do."
He pointed to a board that now comprises five non-executive and two executive directors, the appointment of independent chair Raelene Murphy, and the appointment of a permanent CFO.
Founder Richard White, meanwhile, himself in hot water over several allegations, remains closely involved. Although he resigned as executive chair, he remains on the board as an executive director and continues to serve in his operational capacity as WiseTech's chief innovation officer.
"Richard continues to be very involved in the business and is very dedicated to the business," Mr Appoo said.
The corporate changes have coincided with an equally dramatic restructuring of WiseTech's workforce.
Some 1,700 roles have been removed across its earlier high-performance programme and subsequent AI transformation, an "incredibly hard decision", as WiseTech increasingly uses AI internally for software development and other functions.
"We really lent into AI quite hard, quite early on, and we had the software development intelligence to see what this was going to do to the industry, and what this was going to do to Wise Tech."
Mr Appoo said the changes had resulted in a 45% increase in software-development productivity per employee, as well as a roughly 20%-22% improvement in incident-resolution times.
But the reductions have inevitably raised questions over whether WiseTech can maintain service and reliability with a substantially leaner workforce, particularly after CargoWise suffered a global outage earlier this year.
Mr Appoo insisted "that outage actually had nothing to do with AI", adding: "All software ultimately has outages. We've had outages in the past as well."
He said the incident remained within WiseTech's service level commitments, and argued that the company had maintained - and in some cases increased - the checks governing AI-assisted development, incuding code, design, and documentation reviews, user-acceptance testing, cyber-security and data-integrity checks, and reviews covering privacy and personally identifiable information.
"The gates still exist, so it's not like we've just delegated the work to an agent and said 'we don't really care about quality anymore, go and write the code'," he said.
"That's absolutely not what we've done. In fact, we've put even more gates in place, because we're rapidly learning where AI has limits."
