EsPanjiva Research was founded as part of the then-independent Panjiva Inc. in May 2016 with the first research being published in July that year. Five years on, please excuse our indulgence as we highlight five important lessons we’ve learned since then.
Always outnumbered, never outgunned
The first of Panjiva Research’s mottoes, “Always outnumbered, never outgunned“, indicates our reliance on Panjiva’s exceptional technology and data resources to deliver high frequency, high quality, short-form research for our customers. While Panjiva’s research group has doubled in size since the takeover by S&P Global in 2018 it still consists of just two people.
We’ve also been blessed with an incredible group of colleagues across Panjiva and S&P Global more widely. We particularly want to thank Panjiva’s former CEO, Josh Green, without whom Panjiva Research would never have gotten started.
Supply chains never sleep
Panjiva’s research considers the key issues across global trade policy, the logistics sector and industrial supply chain operations. Continual vigilance is needed to keep track of the fluctuating long-term trends and short-term events across those arenas, hence our second motto “Supply chains never sleep”. The topics we’ve tracked range from the ascent of tariff-led, America-first policies under President Trump and the unprecedented exit from the EU by the U.K. through to the more recent challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, logistics network congestion and supply chain inflation.
Human readable data matters as much as machine-readable data
One of our key insights from the past five years has been that the overload of information available to supply chain decision-makers has created the need to build narratives around datasets. Among Panjiva’s many remarkable technological competencies has been creating machines that can read human text to create value-added data sets and services.
Panjiva’s Research’s job has been to leverage those technologies to create human-readable data in a short-form report structure. We’ve written nearly 7,500 research articles across our three core research areas based on coverage of 15 sectors and three commodity groups.
Source: Panjiva
Always add links
Panjiva’s research is centered on Panjiva’s data and services, but has been increasingly combined with other datasets including our partners across S&P Global’s Platts, Ratings and Market Intelligence business units to create insights for our readers. We’ve also been honored to work with outside contributors to our Insights series of webinars based on our Outlook and other forward-looking research reports.
Less is more and more is more
The original vision guiding Panjiva Research has been to provide short-form research that addresses a topic important to global supply chains with easy-to-understand data insights. Over time, our reports have expanded from single paragraph insights, such as one of our earliest published reports on U.S. imports of porcelain-on-steel cookware, through to our more recent, extensive reports looking at matters as significant as the struggle to decarbonize supply chains and the emergence of competitive onshoring policies. For reference, Panjiva’s data shows U.S. seaborne imports of porcelain on steel cookware from China in the 12 months to March 31 were 43.7% higher than they were in 2015.
Source: Panjiva
The most-read research in each of our first five years have been:
Year 1: Trump, Trudeau and Peña Nieto’s Top 50 NAFTA Pain Points (Feb. 3, 2017)
Year 2: Five Facts About Trump’s New China Tariffs – Watch Out for Blowback (April 4, 2018)
Year 3: Trade War Quote Watch: Two-Fifths of Firms Raise Prices, Just A Quarter Retool Supply Chains (Aug. 3, 2018)
Year 4: We’re not there yet – 18 coronavirus lessons from supply chain and financial data (March 16, 2020)
Year 5: Q2 2021 Outlook: Words become actions, threats going nowhere (March 31, 2021)
Finally, Panjiva’s research has always been guided by our customers’ feedback, so if there’s anything you want to see in the next five years, please reach out to your usual Panjiva contact.
