We developed this partnership to supplement our industry leading mobile app that tracks the location of loads when carriers turn on location services to track progress towards an on-time delivery. However, if the carrier’s mobile phone loses battery or if they enter an area with poor cell reception, GPS is unable to send precise location information to our platform, which requires us to check-in with the carrier to confirm the estimated arrival time. 

The integration with Motive’s freight visibility API will provide a secondary location proof point to augment our shipment tracking capabilities, using data from the carrier’s Motive ELD. As a result, carriers in our network who consent to share Motive data with us will benefit from an additional layer of location tracking—eradicating check-in calls, and gaining the ability to manage their profile easily through the Motive platform.

This partnership also lowers critical business costs for carriers in our network by offering a 15% discount on Motive’s ELDs, cameras and other fleet management technology. Motive’s Electronic Logbook App and ELD system are the highest rated on Android and iOS, and have more than half a million users nationwide. Carriers can use the newly offered discount to save up to $1,000 per year on each truck in their fleet.

We are excited to kick off a strategic, multifaceted partnership with a fellow industry leader in Motive, starting with the integration of their freight visibility API and offering discounts on critical fleet management products. Ensuring carriers in our network have access to high-quality ELD devices and powerful fleet management tools at reasonable pricing is core to our commitment to help carriers earn more with less hassle.

Carriers can access the exclusive discount here.

The post Convoy and Motive (formerly KeepTruckin) Partner on Freight Visibility Integration appeared first on Convoy.

The RFP is a key part of the planning process for many high-volume shippers. The goal of the RFP is to help a shipper find the best carriers at the best prices, and — more importantly — create reliability and predictability in their supply chain.

This goal is often unrealized, however, because the freight RFP process is broken.  

Three factors driving the broken freight RFP process:

1. Lack of commitment from carriers and brokers – Carriers and brokers are incentivized to bid low because it helps them win more business. However, when the market tightens and trucking prices go up, carriers and brokers often decline the freight they earlier agreed to take.  
2. Lack of commitment from shippers – To hedge against the risk of carriers not taking their primary freight, shippers often sign up more carriers than they actually need. As a result, when the market softens, shippers have a hard time living up to their primary commitments.  
3. Lack of predictability – The above issues add to shippers’ challenges of collecting and managing data, and making the right decisions needed to ensure their supply chains operate smoothly and efficiently.

These factors are exacerbated by the high degree of variability and unpredictability in freight pricing.

All of this together keeps logistics professionals stuck in a daily grind of worrying and lane-by-lane thinking, and makes it difficult for them to step back and look at their transportation network and supply chain strategically.

Rethinking the Freight RFP

We think about freight differently. This includes the RFP process. Primary work makes up the majority of our shipments, and we are committed to developing enhancements to improve the overall outcomes for shippers long-term. Signs of this success are coming in accolades from our customers, such as our recent award of Innovation Partner of the Year from Procter & Gamble.

Transforming the Freight RFP Process

We will cover our approach to a new type of freight RFP in our three-part series, RFP 2.0:  

• Part One – Beyond the Lane – We will focus on how analyzing the overall network rather than individual lanes can provide significant benefits to the shipper.
• Part Two – Data and Insights – We will talk about how Convoy’s unique data and analytics can help shippers make the most of the RFP process.  We’ll show how we use data to help shippers meet their goals, while taking into consideration how they run their supply chains.  
• Part Three – Predictable Future – We will introduce Convoy’s unique approach to commitments and show how this is an integral piece of delivering a reliable — and great — experience.

By approaching the RFP process differently, shippers can create reliability and predictability in their supply chain — both from an operations perspective and a cost perspective. Over the next few weeks, we’ll show how, with RFP 2.0, Convoy is bringing that promise — finally — to reality.

Shippers – To learn more about shipping with Convoy, visit the shipper hub or contact us at (206) 971-1237.

Carriers – To learn more about hauling with Convoy, visit the carrier hub or contact us at (206) 202-5645.

Read Convoy's Guide to Developing a Freight Transportation Strategy.

The post RFP 2.0 – Improving the Shipper RFP Experience appeared first on Convoy.

1. Collaboration is the way forward

In a world of limited resources and rising costs, partnerships between shippers, carriers, and receivers is no longer a nice-to-have. Working together eliminates waste in the system, reducing costs and lessening the industry’s environmental footprint. It also creates a better experience for all parties involved.

To continue to deliver efficiencies and maximum value, each link in the supply chain must partner to create easier and seamless shipping experiences. We heard this sentiment come through in a number of ways.

2. A seamless experience needs to account for some flexibility

Carriers talked about the need for shippers to move toward becoming a “shipper of choice.” Frustrations for carriers, such as inflexible appointment times, late fees for being less than 5 minutes late, painful detention practices, arduous claims processes, and sub-optimal transit times all contribute to carrier frustration, along with higher rates and reduced service for shippers.

Shippers expressed a desire for carriers to adopt and utilize available technology services and make better use of the data available. Everyone talked about improvements to trailer pool management and visibility. Convoy has rolled out a number of programs to simplify the process for each side of the transaction and actively shares data with carriers and shippers…which leads us to our last takeaway.

3. Data transparency is the key to collaboration

Convoy is a trucking company. And, we’re a data company — so this one is near and dear to us. For a long time, the parties along the trucking and transportation supply chain haven’t always been open to sharing data with each other relating to their concerns about losing leverage in the relationship. However, only through the sharing of data and insights can the parties make smart decisions that drive significant changes, increase efficiency, reduce costs, and generally make the whole whole shipping process easier.

From the main stage to conversations in the hallway, this idea bubbled to the top. Convoy has been a pioneer in this space with our carrier scorecards and shipping facility reports — among many other insights and reports shared with carriers and shippers. We collect data at every stage of the process, including carrier and shipper feedback, and then make it available for each party to use to improve the experience going forward.

Through data sharing and focusing on creating seamless experiences and collaboration, we can work together to reduce waste and eliminate the inefficiencies of this industry — together.

Shippers – Interested in learning more about our industry-leading tender compliance, on-time service, and data-driven insights? Learn more or request a demo.

Carriers – Interested in a hassle-free experience, detention pay, quick payments, and unique offerings such as Request-A-Load? Learn more on Fleet Cards or call us at 206-202-5645.

The post 3 Takeaways for Food and Beverage Shippers from the Food Shippers of America Conference appeared first on Convoy.

Market conditions are dynamic, but routing guides are static

A typical routing guide works like this. Shippers offer the job to the primary carrier at a pre-negotiated price. This price is usually set during the annual freight RFP. When the primary carrier rejects the load, the shippers start going through their routing guide giving each backup carrier two hours to accept or reject the load.

When the primary rate is lower than prevailing market prices, carriers start rejecting more loads. As loads make their way through the routing guide, each rejection means valuable time lost in securing the right truck. With less time available to find a truck, prices increase and the possibility of a service failure looms.

This problem is magnified in current market conditions as it is one of the most volatile freight periods in history. In June, as much as 27% of contractual freight was being rejected per FreightWaves’ outbound tender reject index.

Reinventing contractual freight

With Dynamic Backup, we insert a real-time and guaranteed market rate into the routing guide that is instantly bookable. Dynamic Backup does this by building on two of Convoy’s established technologies:

1. Real-time pricing data models to determine the current market price
2. Relevance models to find the best available truck for the job

Dynamic Backup is live with some of the largest shippers in the United States. By adopting this new backup strategy, shippers have seen:

1. 1. Increased operational efficiency. Load planners spend less time trying to get last minute, urgent loads covered in spot through auction, email and phone calls.
   2. Increased shipment SLA. With better load coverage, shippers see fewer service failures and increased on-time delivery.
   3. Savings on freight costs. With a truly guaranteed rate in the routing guide, shippers see increased coverage and avoid the spot market.

At Convoy, we are committed to solving real customer problems through the use of technology. We are always looking for innovative partners. Contact us if you’re interested in reinventing your contractual freight with Dynamic Backup.

The post Reinventing Contractual Freight: introducing a real-time, guaranteed rate for routing guides, resulting in a 20% increase in load coverage appeared first on Convoy.

For most stores, the average order-to-shelf time is over 7 days for most of their beverage suppliers. For this private bottled water manufacturer, average order-to-shelf is just 3 days.

Ask any grocery store what the #1 selling item is, and they will all say the same thing: bottled water.

Bottled water consumption has increased 120% over the past 15 years. This increasing demand pushes Bottled Water co., the leading private label water manufacturer in the United States, to constantly drive improvements in their supply chain.

Bottled Water co. ships product to some of the largest retailers in the United States, some of whom demand near-perfection from their suppliers. In order to stand out as a top-performing supplier, Bottled Water co.’s business continues to invest in new supply chain technology and systems.

Why the leading private bottled water manufacturer partners with Convoy

Bottled Water co., facing off against some of the world’s biggest beverage brands, needs to find advantages in supply chain innovation in order to differentiate themselves. They use this innovation to both maximize the speed at which they can deliver goods to their customers, while also decreasing the cost of transportation.

For one regional grocery’s 350 stores, the average order-to-shelf time is over 7 days for most of their beverage suppliers. Bottled Water co.’s average order-to-shelf is just 3 days. Because of their ability to fulfill orders faster than ever before, demand for Bottled Water co.’s products continues to increase, with 23% annual growth over the past five years.

Bottled Water co. has partnered with Convoy, one of the world’s most innovative trucking companies, to help double the speed of their supply chain. This partnership helps Bottled Water co. achieve the following goals:

• Improve their ability to ship products directly to customers from production facilities.
• Gain access to valuable data that helps improve supply chain performance.
• Avoid increasing costs typically associated with adding speed to transportation.

How Convoy helps Bottled Water co. reach these goals

Enabling more direct-to-shelf shipping

In the past, in order to make sure they could always fulfill customer orders, Bottled Water co. housed inventory at storage warehouses—a very common practice in the industry. But warehouse space is expensive and inefficient, creating more bottlenecks in the supply chain and requiring Bottled Water co. to utilize more transportation services. The overall impact of maintaining these facilities was millions of dollars a year spent inefficiently.

Today, Bottled Water co. uses Convoy’s flexible trucking capacity to avoid costly storage and warehouse fees. This strategy doubles the speed of their supply chain and decreases the number of trucks they need to schedule, greatly improving Bottled Water co.’s ability to fulfill customer orders on shorter timelines.

Visibility into each shipment

Because Convoy requires all carriers to use a mobile app to accept work, Bottled Water co. has visibility into each load’s progress. Throughout each step of the shipment, Convoy provides automatic updates, and real-time GPS.

From pickup to drop-off, it takes Bottled Water co. less than a few seconds to check in on their freight. This eliminates the need for time-consuming back-and-forth communication with traditional brokerages, saving time and money.

Real-time tracking enables Convoy to catch potential delays and minimize their impact. This cuts costly exceptions by more than 80% and allows Bottled Water co. to keep their customers up to date on delivery at all times.

Collecting the most valuable data insights

In order to make the most impactful supply chain optimizations, Bottled Water co. strategically collects and analyzes data. Convoy’s commitment to transparency and data sharing enables Bottled Water co. to create even more robust and useful optimization strategies.

These anecdotes offer valuable insight, allowing Bottled Water co. to take action to make sure all facilities perform at a high standard. Carriers are more willing to work with high-performing facilities, keeping the cost of sourcing trucks down.

With Convoy, Bottled Water co. has full access to accurate and actionable data. Convoy is able to collect metrics on each facility’s performance and provide this directly to Bottled Water co. These data points include load and unload times, and detention time paid by individual facilities, offering a clear view into performance trends at each location. Bottled Water co. uses these metrics to implement improvement plans to minimize facility-specific issues.

Convoy also allows drivers to leave feedback via the Convoy driver mobile application about each warehouse experience. Bottled Water co. can read hundreds of notes left by drivers about their time spent at the facility.

Bottled Water co. also saves money by analyzing the most cost-effective appointment times. While looking at the pricing data provided by Convoy, Bottled Water co. was able to optimize shipping appointments, resulting in significant cost savings.

Because these trends can shift at any time, real-time access to pricing changes makes it easy to adjust appointment and tender times. This allows Bottled Water co. to find the best rates through any season.

A 2014 McKinsey & Company report stated that supply chain issues are increasingly demanding senior executive attention. Bottled Water co. is on the forefront of optimizing supply chain performance, investing in innovative technology and services.

This is the best time for supply chain professionals to start investing in new technology partnerships. Increasing pressure from executive teams to improve supply chain operations, a more competitive landscape, and customers that demand faster, on-time delivery are just some of the reasons to invest now. Companies willing to look into new and modern technology to improve performance will see continued business growth.

“In this industry, it’s so important that we’re able to keep our customers’ shelves full. Convoy provides us with the trucking services needed to fulfill these orders faster than our competition, while at the same time helping us keep costs down.”— Direct to Store Operations Manager, Bottled Water Co.

Interested in learning more?

Fill out the form below to get in touch with our team to learn how we might partner to optimize your supply chain operations.

We partnered with a customer to develop this story for publication to share insights and ideas with the industry but the names of the company and people have been changed to respect their privacy.

The post Case study: Speeding up the supply chain appeared first on Convoy.