Drayage has gone digital! Old news, we know, everyone is tracking & tracing these days. But how can you turn digitization into a competitive advantage? As your supply chain grows more intricate, the value of visibility becomes vital to operational success. However, many shippers are not using this visibility to its full advantage. Here are three sure-fire ways to get the most out of your visibility:
- Move from passive monitoring to active decision making
- Access visibility from all sources in a single view
- Focus on supply chain agility
Move from passive monitoring to active decision making
Do you view visibility as a means to monitor the movements of your containers or as a way to guide your decisions? Sure, the data from tracking might result in an action— for instance, you see that a container has a gate fee at SSA in Oakland, so you'll go ahead and pay the $30.
Let's dream bigger.
What if that gate fee could be automatically paid for you? What if you could split a large shipment among multiple truckers for faster delivery with just a few clicks? You can use tracking data to recognize an opportunity and change your strategy quickly. Monitoring is useful, but data-based decision making is valuable.
Access visibility from all sources in a single view
Tracking your shipments through multiple steamship and terminal websites is time-consuming and can result in inconsistencies. The hassle doesn't end when shipments arrive at the terminal. When you work with multiple truckers, each one has their own methods of communicating, an individual set of milestones, and different ways of accessing information. #cumbersome!
You could solve this by applying technology that collects all the data from each track and trace portal and presents it in a single view Terminal 49😉.
Focus on supply chain agility
Without visibility, you risk disorganization: you can't properly coordinate capacity and freight, which drives your prices up and asset utilization down. Without visibility, shippers are forced to make decisions in the dark.
If you use a software visibility tool like Terminal 49, you can be much more agile. When you see all the information you need in one place - updated in real time - you can respond to situations faster, improve turn times, and therefore reduce costs. That will allow you to build competitive advantage and gain customer loyalty.
Happy Shipping!
