Tracking Shipments in Freight Shouldn’t Be Hard or Costly

Tracking shipments remain a concern for the modern supply chain. Participants in the freight market continue to experience higher costs and challenges in tracking freight before, during, and after transportation and delivery. Leaders need to understand why tracking shipments in freight shouldn’t be challenging or costly and how collaborative logistics can help.

Disparities and Poor Visibility Add to Tracking Costs and Delays

Systems in use in the modern supply chain today have grown in number. However, not all of these systems are passing data between each other via integration or API. This disparity between systems and the inability to share data freely between parties will make it difficult for participants to have visibility into an order’s real-time shipment status, which may negatively impact the customer experience. According to a use case story of Turvo customer, Royce Neubauer, President and CEO of SFL Companies, a freight broker: “Turvo has given us the ability to grow revenue by 30% with two-thirds fewer people reducing operating costs by 60%. With Turvo, we can onboard customers faster, giving them the ability to track every shipment from anywhere while having live interaction with our operators, in a single-threaded, collaborative environment. The driver app has been a complete game-changer in how we connect with our drivers and carriers enabling us to do more with less for greater ROI.”

The use case-story talks about the effective use of both tracking technology and collaboration to reduce visibility initiative costs while increasing customer experience.

Tracking Shipments Proactively is Possible with Technology Built to Increase Process Efficiency

Supply chain management technology that yields improved workflows’ efficiency is anchored in unifying systems, processes, and people together. This single pane of glass view provides visibility into all of the processes from the execution of orders to shipments, tracking all of those processes transparently and yielding proactive visibility into real-time shipment status. Tracking shipments with such systems allows for the streamlined management of all freight regardless of its current leg in the shipment’s journey. This is especially true when working with multiple freight management parties, such as freight brokers, freight forwarders, logistics service providers (LSPs), and business-to-business suppliers or distributors. The modern supply chain is hugely complex, and it is not as simple as making a phone call anymore to track a shipment proactively. 

Modern tracking platforms have drastically changed the game for tracking shipments by using real-time data capture and sharing functionalities. As reinforced by Inbound Logistics, “a real-time load tracking platform gives you and your customer service team access to location information for all your shipments, regardless of carrier. Instead of being built on outdated EDI technology, new offerings provide updates directly from the onboard GPS device your carriers use to track their own trucks. Combine that with cell phone tracking for small fleets and owner-operators, weather and traffic information, and other predictive analytics, and you have a tool that enables you to manage exceptions proactively. Top platforms not only provide you with real-time location information, but they also alert you to potential issues, give you the information you need to take action on those loads, and allow you to view performance over time so you can target systematic issues in your supply chain.”

Tips for Faster, More Informed Freight Tracking

Technology implemented with the desired outcome of reducing costs to track shipments and improving both the efficiency and the proactive nature of tracking shipments must include collaborative logistics infrastructure and be hosted in the cloud to enable the real-time sharing of information in real-time. Here are some practical tips for supply chain leaders to implement faster, more informed freight tracking:

1. Use a single pane of glass to unify the tech stack. Unifying the tech stack with a single pane of glass eliminates the need to log into multiple systems and share data manually.
2. Share data with supply chain partners in real-time. The ability to share data in real-time with all partners and freight market participants helps build collaboration and reduces miscommunication.
3. Let automation handle exceptions. Automated exception management handles unusual one-off circumstances and manual status inquiries.
4. Reduce paperwork errors and loss of critical documents with digital document management. Using a technology platform that enables document management reduces the risk of mistakes and loss of essential documents. Further, in a time of digitization and minimal contact between freight parties, digital document management enables contactless paperwork and management processes.
5. Take advantage of embedded, contextual messaging capabilities. Embedded, contextual messaging services, i.e., the ability to “chat” as you would in a social media platform, should live alongside every process. Users may act quickly with partners and other freight market participants involved in the shipping process. These messaging features are fully auditable, provide more transparency into functions, and reduce miscommunication.
6. Stay instantly informed with real-time, automated alerts. Receiving automatic alerts in real-time further helps keep everyone informed in real-time, also adding to proactive freight management.
7. Reduce clicks with easy sorting and filtering options, self-auditing systems, and integrated payment management. Seeing the supply chain’s overall view and health from a single pane of glass is made easy by leveraging sorting and filtering options to create easy searches and views to act upon any item or object within the SaaS-based platform.

Start Tracking Shipments the Easy Way With Turvo

Tracking shipments in the modern supply chain shouldn’t be challenging or costly. Freight participants should get full visibility into the order to cash processes and, once the shipment is created, real-time status of that shipment 24/7.  A collaborative, single pane of glass logistics platform makes that possible. Learn how by requesting a demo of the Turvo platform.