Avoiding Expensive ‘Blind Spots’
There is a lot of talk about blind spots on the road these days in the road transport industry and eliminating some of them is certainly saving lives. However, there is another kind of blind spot that is costing the industry millions in delays and lost efficiency. Almost every transport company will, at some point, rely on another to help carry their freight (based on research involving over 4000 carriers). When companies collaborate, as they must to remain agile and competitive, time and again they lose the ability to see in ‘real-time’ where their freight is due to missing or incompatible telematics and tracking across the industry.
In today’s market, a typical broker or medium/large freight carrier will be dealing with dozens (if not hundreds) of sub-contractors, ad-hoc arrangements and partners every day – all with different ways of keeping track of their own vehicles and assets. To help create a ‘single view of the truth’ for any given load from pick-up to POD, across multiple organizations, CX North America has developed a system designed to make sure organizations never lose sight of their freight again, called “FreightVision’.
By pulling together data from more than fifteen telematics providers (so far), TMS systems and its own driver apps, FreightVision delivers that ‘single view of the truth’ to mobile devices, load boards and management systems. Whether a carrier or freight business is working with 3 logistics partners or 300, FreightVision allows them to stop having to ‘guess’ where their freight or available resources are.
FreightVision is made up of two main components:
- An easy to use management app, available on smartphones, tablets, via a browser
- A cloud-based system called ‘S.C.A.L.E’.
Together they allow users to keep an eye on their freight, whoever is carrying it for them.
‘S.C.A.L.E.’ (Smart Context and Location Engine) technology is already used by our market leading CX North America. Being the result of millions of pounds of R&D investment, it uses state-of-the-art telematics and TMS integration with sophisticated user profiles to deliver unrivaled load tracking, management and notification functionality. These capabilities are delivered, live, in a range of user-friendly apps and services so users always have the right information, with the right control, at the right time.
FreightVision does much more, however, than just bring together many different GPS sources. It allows users to see in one place freight, carrier, progress and ETA details. With one click or tap, users can, for example, choose to view only those jobs that are running behind schedule and then with another tap call or message the carrier directly. Furthermore, working together with S.C.A.L.E., users can even set up automatic alerts to keep their customers happy with features like real-time progress maps.
Every job is important so FreightVision makes it easy to control who sees what and how users want to manage resources – from smart customer alerts to secure messaging. Whether a business is using the built-in telematics support or CX North America’s driver apps, they choose exactly how to work with their partner networks.
Eliminating freight ‘blind spots’ allows businesses to more safely and consistently collaborate, improving efficiency and lowering costs. In fact, in the last year, through the use of technologies like S.C.A.L.E. and services like FreightVision, we have helped users carry over 80 million miles of road freight and, by dramatically reducing empty running, cut emissions by nearly 9,000 tons of CO2.