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Truckloads of Data for Better Supply Chain Visibility

ShippersPublished on June 3, 2020

The traditional freight tendering, bidding, and acceptance process revolves around phone calls, emails, and faxes. The modern version of that process happens through an automated process that inherently collects tons of data. In order to automate the brokering process and track shipment progress from start to finish, Convoy collects more than 1,000 supply chain data points on every shipment. Since 2015, we’ve collected and analyzed over 16 terabytes of shipment and operations data. For context, that is the equivalent of more than 104 million pages of digital content, such as Word documents or PowerPoint slides.

We also share this operational data with shippers to help you understand potential inefficiencies in your supply chain, and benchmark how your supply chain operations compare with others in the industry. Convoy provides you with visibility into operational data that can improve your supply chain visibility. This data is spread across ten core categories:

Shipment Volume

For loads that you ship with Convoy, we provide month-over-month and year-over-year information on total number of loads, trends by shipment type (primary contract, backup contract, spot), top lanes, number of pickup and drop-off facilities, and total miles driven.

Facility Overviews

For each facility that Convoy services, we provide information on the number of shipments picked up and dropped off, as well as trends on incidental spend over time.

Facility Ratings

Through a combination of automatically gathered data points and driver feedback, we provide detailed comparisons of operational efficiency and carrier preference for your facilities. This includes trends in facility ratings, a list of highest and lowest-rated facilities, benchmarks of your facilities compared to the other shippers, feedback on yard space and customer service, and a detailed list of facility strengths and areas for improvement based on driver feedback.

Wait Times

To better understand the efficiency of your facilities, Convoy provides a range of statistics and charts to help you understand wait time trends, facilities with the highest and lowest average wait times, the range of wait times at each facility, and more.

Incidentals

To help you understand your total cost to ship, we provide statistics, charts, and benchmarks of incidentals. This includes a breakdown of detention, lumper, TONU, layover, and redelivery spend, incremental spend over time, and comparisons of your incidentals vs. similar shippers and vs. the rest of Convoy’s shipper network.

Driver Safety

We set higher safety and compliance standards for our carriers than many of the nation’s most prominent brokers and asset carriers. As part of our network insights, we provide you with details on carrier compliance and any incidents involving your shipments.

Sustainability

At the core of our digital freight network is the goal of reducing carbon emissions associated with empty miles. As part of this, we provide a detailed assessment of your year-to-date environmental impact, including the amount of carbon emissions saved through the use of automated reloads, green appointments, and fuel savings.

Performance

Whether you’re shipping with Convoy for contract or transactional freight, we provide industry-leading tender acceptance and unmatched accuracy in reporting on-time pickup and on-time delivery. As part of our network insights, we provide detailed information on our OTP and OTD trends for all your live and drop loads, including the number and percentage of shipments picked up and delivered on-time, early, and late.

Supplier Diversity

We’re committed to fostering business partnerships that include minority owned businesses, women owned businesses, people with disabilities owned businesses, veteran-owned businesses, and LGBTQ+ owned businesses. As part of our network insights, we provide statistics and charts showing shipments and spend with diverse-certified carriers.

Carrier Network

Convoy works with tens of thousands of carriers across the US. Many of these carriers are small businesses with fleets between one and five trucks. Convoy provides you with a breakdown of the carriers covering your loads by fleet size so that you can see how you’re supporting America’s small businesses.

Don’t worry: we don’t dump a 1,000+ row Excel sheet in your inbox each month. These insights into your business are surfaced and packaged in several easy-to-understand formats.

To provide focus on what’s happening right now, monthly business reports are sent with an emphasis on all activity over the last month. If you want to dig deeper into a specific area of your supply chain, our dynamic reporting dashboard provides you with the ability to slice all historical data, including comparisons to the rest of the Convoy shipper network. And sometimes, you know the problem but not where to begin looking for the solution–that’s when we connect you with our data science and shipper insights teams to create custom supply chain insights tailored to your specific needs. Together, we’ve worked with shippers in every industry to improve their supply chain efficiency, reduce logistics costs, and improve their customer service. 

If you’d like to learn more about how Convoy uses operational data to help you gather insights and uncover hidden inefficiencies in your supply chain and strengthen your supply chain resilience, download the white paper, Supply Chain Visibility and the Digital Freight Network.

 

Author

Convoy Team

Convoy is the nation's leading digital freight network. We move thousands of truckloads around the country each day through our optimized, connected network of carriers, saving money for shippers, increasing earnings for drivers, and eliminating carbon waste for our planet. We use technology and data to solve problems of waste and inefficiency in the $800B trucking industry, which generates over 87 million metric tons of wasted CO2 emissions from empty trucks. Fortune 500 shippers like Anheuser-Busch, P&G, Niagara, and Unilever trust Convoy to lower costs, increase logistics efficiency, and achieve environmental sustainability targets.
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