The Ultimate Guide to Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platforms (2024)

The past year has seen unprecedented growth in the number of companies implementing real-time transportation visibility platforms (RTTVPs) to streamline their operations and provide them with a real-time logistics solution.

On this page, you’ll find the definitive guide to understanding, implementing and benefiting from real-time transportation visibility software and technology for your organization.Plus, we’ll cover some compelling success stories from leading global companies and explore key factors to consider when evaluating Real-time visibility platforms.

Ready to go? Let’s dive in!

What Is Real-Time Visibility?

Real-time visibility is the ability to accurately track and trace assets, their location and status, throughout the supply chain – live and in real-time. Real-time visibility also takes into account a number of variables that can disrupt the supply chain, including any delays, traffic, congestion, and even the weather. This provides businesses with incredibly precise ETAs and a window into their live operations. With real-time visibility businesses can better optimize their supply chain while cutting costs and increasing performance.

What Is a Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platform?

Real-time transportation visibility platforms are software tools that provide companies and consumers with live updates on the location and status of goods they have ordered. This information most often comes from dedicated GPS and telematics hardware located on the truck, trailer or container that is transporting the goods, and is activated as soon as the shipment leaves the manufacturer or warehouse facility.

Why Is Real-Time Visibility Important?

In this age of rising consumer expectations, giving individuals and businesses insight into the status of their deliveries is crucial to ensuring customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Collectingreal-time transportation visibility dataoffers companies the ability to deliver not only the physical products consumers paid for, but also the valuable, intangible benefits ofimproved customer experienceand peace of mind.

Having accurate, reliable data on the location of inbound shipments allows companies, such as retailers and manufacturers, to act swiftly and decisively in the face of disruptions, rather than having to guess at the best course of action.

Benefits of Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platforms

In addition to the customer experience improvements described above, investment in real-time transportation visibility software offers a range of benefits and ROI opportunities for companies of all sizes and industries.

In the context of a global pandemic, there are many use cases where end-to-end, real-time visibility users have been able to attain immediate benefits from their tools. Five of these use cases are as follows:

1. Access to Real-Time, Accurate Data
2. Detection of Actual Stops and Breaks
3. Country Border Wait Times
4. Activity of Carriers and Capacity
5. Collaboration Between Shippers

1. Access to Real-Time, Accurate Data: Global transportation visibility allows companies to counteract the spread of false, inaccurate, or sensational information among their workforce. Plus it allows companies to better filter through the vast amounts of incoming information and focus on detecting and resolving exceptions.
2. Detection of Actual Stops and Breaks:Real-time freight tracking tells us where and how long trucks and containers have beendelayed along their journey. Enabling shippers and carriers to better understand the situation and potentially reroute transports where they’re needed most.
3. Country Border Wait Times:The situation at national borders has been in a constant state of flux since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Havinglive data into delaysat both border crossings and ports of entry enables transportation planners to choose the most efficient routes despite unpredictable circ*mstances.
4. Activity of Carriers and Capacity: Real-time visibility platforms can grant the ability to understand how much capacity is available, and how to free-up additional capacity. In the midst of a global capacity shortage, this is a major advantage for both carriers and shippers alike.
5. Collaboration Between Shippers:Having real-time insight into supply chain performance opens upnew avenues for collaborationamong shippers, in the form of lane sharing, improved handoffs, enhanced communications and more.

Real-Time Transportation Visibility: Success Stories

Though still a relatively young category of technology, the world of real-time visibility is full of success stories from companies and individuals making intelligent use of comprehensive data to drive major improvements throughout their operations.

One of the earliest avenues for achieving strong returns on your transportation visibility software investment is the reduction and reallocation of existing labor costs. As companies automate tasks that once required entire teams to accomplish, those personnel are now free to focus on tasks that provide even greater business value.

Pixelle, one of North America’s leading paper and packaging companies,witnessed a rapid reduction in track-and-trace callsafter choosing to implement a real-time visibility solution. Within less than a year of investing in the new technology, Pixelle’s leadership observed that emails sent by load planners, carriers and customer service groups trying to locate a particular shipment had been cut nearly in half.

Schreiber Foods, the recent recipient of one ofFourKites’ annual Golden Kite Awards, used real-time transportation visibility to supplement their existing process for approving carrier detention time requests. In 2020, Schreiber was able to cut down unsubstantiated detention requests by using FourKites RTTVP. The Schreiber team cross-referenced carrier requests for detention time with existing real-time visibility data. This saved them money on fees and reduced the overall number of detention requests received by 15%.

Kraft-Heinz,another recent Golden Kite winner, leveraged their real-time visibility investment to not only help their bottom line, but those in need as well. For over three years, they’ve fine-tuned their ability to streamline transportation management using real-time transportation data. . During the COVID pandemic, Kraft-Heinz used FourKites real-time visibility platform to support Feeding America. They optimized their process for getting food to those most in need, even as demand grew to unprecedented levels.

These are far from the only stories of success and innovation using real-time transportation visibility. Other FourKites’ customers – including some of the largest shippers in the world – have successfully leveraged FourKites’ real-time transportation visibility software capabilities to:

• Reduce detention costs by $10 million annually
• Slash transportation-related customer service calls by 65%
• Save $300K-$500K per month on fines and penalties

Quantifying the ROI of Supply Chain Visibility

In this infographic, FourKites outlines the 8 major areas in which shippers can derive value from real-time visibility, and highlights success stories from top global customers.

View Infographic

Key Factors to Consider When Evaluating Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platforms

There’s a lot to consider when evaluating RTTVPs but here’s the biggest factor: Choose a solution that will grow with you.

Your business changes fast, and the industry even faster. Choose a provider that will grow with you, adding new features, functionalities and geographies to suit both customer demand and the emerging capabilities of the technology itself.

Key factors to keep in mind when choosing a real-time visibility platform:

• Carrier Connectivity:Real-time visibility platforms should have a robust operation for onboarding and managing carriers, as well as a strong carrier network both domestically and internationally.
• Status and Condition Tracking:In addition to location tracking, look out for real-time transportation visibility software solutions that offer the ability to track status of shipments, such as temperature, as well.
• Integration With Core Business Systems:Visibility is not a replacement for the TMS; rather, the visibility platform you select should offer seamless out-of-the-box integration with your TMS, ERP, etc.
• Multimodal Capabilities:If your business moves freight by a variety of modes (e.g., full truckload, LTL, ocean, rail), then your visibility solution should be able to provide real-time freight tracking all of these modes, end-to-end. Don’t try to stitch together offerings from companies with different specialities; one of the most powerful aspects of RTTV is the ability to view your entire supply chain within a single pane of glass.

Important functionalities to consider when choosing a real-time visibility platform:

• Yard-level Visibility:More advanced real-time freight tracking solutions will pair in-transit visibility data with the ability to monitor performance in the yard, giving you increased granularity and insight into where delays and bottlenecks are occurring.
• PO-level Tracking:If keeping an eye on individual products is a priority for your organization, you’ll want to go with a solution that can accommodate these requirements, rather than simply sending you blanket updates on the status of a truck or trailer.
• Advanced Analytics:Such products can offer detailed insights into loads requiring immediate attention, performance of individual lanes and facilities, even the carbon footprint of your entire supply chain.

Still need help deciding?

Get the Buyers Guide: How to Choose a Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platform

Real-time transportation visibility platforms (RTTVPs) are quickly moving out of the realm of emerging technologies and becoming a pillar of the modern business enterprise. The benefits derived from RTTVPs are extensive and far-reaching, regardless of industry, geography or company size. However, it is precisely because of this rapid growth that you will want to take a strategic approach to choosing the platform that is right for your organization and that can scale with you as you grow.

Ready to choose a real-time transportation visibility solution for your business? Contact our team to find out more.

Start enhancing your supply chain with real-time visibility today.

The road to stronger global supply chain management starts with FourKites’ real-time visibility platform. Contact our team to learn more.

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