Talk
Before the Invoice Arrives: AI That Stops Logistics Losses
Brands expanding into the Gulf focus on marketplaces, pricing and marketing, yet a quiet share of their margin disappears in cross-border logistics. Port congestion, demurrage and detention fees, unbilled or duplicate charges and carrier choices made on gut feel rarely show up on a dashboard until the invoice arrives, when it is already too late to act.
In this case study, I will show how Syntask detects these losses early using operational data most companies already have, enriched with external signals such as weather, traffic and live port activity. I will walk through a real validation on 28 months of public port data from PSA Singapore, covering more than 10,000 vessel records, where the system flagged congestion and berth anomalies that drive delay and demurrage risk.
I will also explain how a “human-in-the-loop” approach works in practice: the AI flags the risk, explains the root cause and recommends the next action, and an operations manager approves it with a single Yes or No.
The audience will leave with:
A practical checklist for spotting hidden logistics losses in cross-border operations
A clear picture of what explainable, trustworthy AI looks like in day-to-day operations
A simple way to start with the data they already have, without a long IT integration project
About
Berna Bulgurcu is the Co-founder & CEO of Syntask, a Finland-based AI-native decision intelligence platform for freight logistics. Before founding Syntask, she spent 6 years in logistics, working on both the operations and technology side of a US-based logistics technology company. Syntask was ranked #1 on Startup Finland’s Startup100 list in November 2026, selected for Time2Scale, a Central Baltic Interreg programme for scale-up companies from Finland, Estonia and Latvia, and shortlisted for the Turkish Airlines Terminal Startup Accelerator Program 2026. Berna has spoken on the port digitalisation panel at the Baltic Ports Conference 2026 in Turku and on the A Grid Impact Series panel “Building Impact as a Female Founder,” and was a Technology finalist at the IWWOF Awards 2026.