In the transportation industry, time is money. Trucker Tools uses their Smart Capacity system to eliminate stale or obsolete data in order to streamline the brokerage process, saving time and money every step of the way. As a part of Trucker Tools’ Smart Capacity freight-matching platform, the company has introduced new software designed to reduce manual work and ramp up the updating of real-time available truck capacity data. Smart Capacity can now automate emails from brokers—using artificial intelligence to scan emails, capture key data points, and update the app in real-time.
“Today, when a broker comes to work, there might be 100 or more emails from carriers waiting to be reviewed in his or her in box, all with capacity information,” noted Prasad Gollapalli, founder and CEO of Trucker Tools. “That broker may then spend an hour or more digging through the backlog, sorting and manually entering data on available trucks. And as the day goes on the emails mount up. It’s a tedious process.”
Not only is the data hard to sort through by hand, it’s easy to miss more relevant loads in the shuffle. “The name of the game is speed and how fast the broker has access to fresh, reliable and trusted capacity data,” said Gollapalli. “The quicker the broker has the data, the more efficient they can be in identifying the right truck for a load and being the first to call and book that truck. That’s especially important in today’s dynamic, capacity-constrained market, where carriers are turning down five or more loads for every one they take.”
In a matter of thirty seconds, emails are processed and the data is made available on the broker’s Smart Capacity dashboard. Prior to posting, the program does one last check, examining the information from the email and running it against the truck’s status as found in the Smart Capacity database. The Smart Capacity platform matches available loads for the trucks and respond back to the carrier. It’s almost like someone is sitting in front of the computer, manually matching these trucks with loads and responding to the carrier – except that it’s all done automatically.
Gollapalli added that the productivity benefits for brokers are equally as valuable. “What we have done is dramatically shorten the time a broker spends researching and validating available capacity,” he said. “Every hour we can give back to the broker is another hour they can generate more revenue and cover more loads for their customers. It’s a huge competitive and productivity advantage.”
Subscribers of Smart Capacity can access and implement the email workflow automation program as of September 10, 2018. Its mobile app, introduced in 2013, has hit 500,000 downloads from truckers. In August, the Trucker Tools platform surpassed 100,000 carriers actively participating on the network.
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