Being a shipper, manufacturer, 3PL, or cargo owner should be about achieving your vision for a successful business and making your customers happy. But all too often, you and your employees get bogged down in the day-to-day, trying to track your cargo and update your customers while juggling paperwork. These tasks take away time from more meaningful, revenue-generating activities. That’s why real-time transportation visibility has the potential to transform your company, boosting business efficiencies and improving the quality of life of your employees and customers alike.
What Is Real-Time Transportation Visibility?
You will see many definitions floating around on what “real-time” means as it’s used more ubiquitously in tracing goods. At Delivery Chain, our real-time sample intervals occur between every 5 seconds to 2 minutes. For most, this is overkill, especially on a 3-day run. This is why Delivery Chain provides customizable sample intervals depending on whether your cargo is moving or idle, so you can maximize the battery life of the device while achieving real-time or near real-time insights.
Reduce friction in your supply chain with IoT devices that stay with your cargo, no matter what mode of transportation or type of equipment it’s traveling on, so you can promptly know the condition of your precious goods. Even when your freight changes hands, you’ll never lose sight of it.
As you can imagine, the potential efficiency improvements are huge. Let’s take a look.
Say Goodbye to Check Calls
Check calls are among the most time-consuming obligations that shippers, freight forwarders, and their employees face on a daily basis. But often enough, these are also a waste of time. Your dispatcher, driver, or customer service representative can give you an approximation of where the freight is — often after long hold times or delays — but do they really know the status of your particular cargo? Unless they’re using a platform like ours, they likely do not know.
In comparison, an IoT device can not only tell you where your cargo is, but also how it is, including whether it’s experienced temperature fluctuations or G-force impacts. These events are displayed and managed in an easy-to-use user interface (UI).
Set Custom Auto-Alerts
With Delivery Chain’s asset trackers, you don’t need to check in on your cargo — your cargo will tell you how it is. That’s because you can set auto-alerts with an Automatic Communication Engine (ACE) to notify you of key status updates, including when freight arrives at key waypoints. Triggers Action Groups (TAGs) are on perpetual standby ready to deliver essential information. Ever wanted instant alerts based off multiple events on the road or rail? Not only does Delivery Chain provide these instant alerts, but we also reduce friction by guiding you on the next best steps depending on the event. That way, you don’t waste time watching your cargo’s status — instead, you can focus on the bigger picture of your business.
Spend Less Time on Paperwork
A huge time thief in the logistics industry is the pursuit of paperwork for billing. From PODs and lumper receipts to weight certificates and BOLs, the daily paperwork associated with freight management can be a lot to juggle.
Luckily, Delivery Chain’s asset tracking technology features automatic document processing capabilities. This means all your documentation will be delivered into your desired ecosystem automatically. That way, you can skip the paper cuts, and boost your quality of life!
Minimize Your Losses
Managing losses hurts your bottom line and wastes your time. Delivery Chain’s asset trackers stay with your pallet. IoT combined with the powerful, proprietary platform custom deadline events can be preprogrammed. So, if freight has been idle too long or has not met a certain waypoint deadline, Delivery Chain’s ACE will alert any or all stakeholders. This can help you jump to action immediately and potentially prevent irrecoverable losses, like stolen cargo.
All of these advantages help you minimize damages and expensive losses. But even when damage occurs, you’ll have key data on when and where it happened — and that streamlines the process of claims-filing.
Keep Your Customers Happy
When you have 24/7 insights on where your freight is, you can pass along those insights to your customers or stakeholders. You’ll have access to precise arrival times, and you’ll know about delays immediately. This helps you take the necessary steps to keep your customers informed and satisfied with your service.
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Delivery Chain’s platform provides so much more than real-time transportation visibility. It fundamentally changes how you run your business, improving workflows and quality of life for your employees, and keeping your customers coming back for more. It’s a win-win. Learn more about how Delivery Chain can streamline your business processes, and improve performance and morale.