EKA Solutions has unveiled the second weapon in its triad of supply chain transportation management system (TMS) offerings with the release of its EKA Omni-TMS for small and medium-sized carriers.
“EKA Omni-TMS for carriers is a native cloud-based SaaS TMS that provides affordable, quote-to-cash, best-in-class, intuitive, easy-to-use functionality to empower small- and medium-sized carriers with the functionality and services to grow and perform as well or better than large fleets,” JJ Singh, founder, investor and CEO of EKA Solutions, Inc, said.
Singh told FreightWaves that the offering is targeted to the “heart of the market,” those long-haul truckload fleets operating between two and 100 trucks that handle movement of 80% of the freight in the country.
“That said, the EKA carrier TMS as currently configured can be used by larger truckload fleets with simple and distributed operations and any size short-haul and last for-hire or private mile fleets,” Singh added.
EKA offers a digital freight management ecosystem, dFEMX, that helps clients manage all of a customer’s freight business including freight exchange and third-party services. It serves as the system of record across multiple applications and seamlessly ties into other freight solutions (TMS, driver apps, etc.) and third-party services, the company said.
“Intuitive precision asset and revenue management tools, real-time availability of all the data and information at the point of decision-making, automated work processes that facilitate exception management, real-time load movement visibility and live ETA will help deliver best-in-class carrier performance,” Mark Walker, investor, president and chief digital officer for EKA solutions, Inc., said.
Under the dFEMX offering, EKA offers the Omni-TMS for brokers, carriers and shippers. Providing real-time information, EKA Omni-TMS enables brokers, carriers and shippers to provide visibility and transparency as they trade across an expanding and verified network with key, trusted partners.
Singh noted the new carrier option “enables a comprehensive end-to-end and intuitive carrier TMS designed to meet the needs of the carrier and every other player in the supply chain.”
Benefits include:
- Communicating with trusted trading and services’ partners in real-time
- Enabling carriers to transform their organizations as the needs and opportunities of the supply chain change
- Empowering a carrier to easily adapt to changing business circumstances
- Allowing carriers and trading partners to wield their versatility as a competitive strength
- Creating a role-based environment, allowing all parties to optimize the use of personnel and resources
- Bringing to bear any peripheral services and tech/stack components in an efficient and affordable manner
- Giving carriers the power to “tech-up” in a cloud-based, scalable, and secure environment
The solution adds more precise asset/load matching and revenue management tools, real time availability of all the data and information at the point of key decision making, automated work processes that facilitate exception management continue to streamline carrier management work processes.
Singh said the cost of integrating all these tools continues to fall, and carriers are able to start benefiting from this. The EKA Omni-TMS for carriers is highly intuitive, he said, and features pricing “based on dollars per truck per month” that makes it affordable for small fleets. It also enables automated tools to allow the smallest fleet or owner-operator the ability to answer common customer customers such as “where is my order,” in an automated way with real-time order and load movement visibility and live estimated time of arrival.
The solution is scalable so as the carrier grows, so too can the EKA Omni-TMS for carriers.
“Legacy and ‘contemporary technology’ carrier systems have done little to support carriers to compete in the new supply chain world,” Singh said. “Many allow carriers to dispatch loads using traditional tools, post capacity to load boards or some other load sources, and some provide effective operations and financial record keeping for customer billing and payments to speed-up cash flow. Unfortunately, carriers continue to generally rely on phone, e-mail exchanges and disparate APPs that gobble time and do not create the digital record needed to generate the next level of intelligence for high productivity and precision load sourcing for them to compete effectively and grow their business profitably.”
EKA Carrier TMS connects real-time and seamlessly with EKA broker system for the full lifecycle of load activities, including load availability, tendering, negotiation and assignment, real-time load movement visibility and ETA, exception events and notifications, automated document capture and settlement status monitoring, and settlement notification and details.
In addition to the Omni-TMS solution, EKA is building a private marketplace platform, fourth-party logistics provider (4PL) solutions, and solutions for service providers such as insurance companies as part of its ecosystem approach.
In a May interview with FreightWaves, Singh and Walker explained that the platform allows users to add web portals for any vendor, allowing customers to extend capacity and loads, and enabling “digital freighting in a marketplace environment,” Walker said.
EKA is not a brokerage, but digital brokerage is a subset of what they offer broker customers. “We give them a whole gamut of lanes based on relationships, rather than a singular one-touch or touchless lane for doing their business,” explained Singh.
In mid-2019, EKA launched MPlace, a private marketplace for shippers and brokers to trade with “trusted providers in a more precise, automated and real-time manner.”
The company launched its unified, cloud-based Omni-TMS platform for small and medium-sized brokers and shippers in 2018. MPlace allows shippers that need a load hauled in a new freight lane to find partners in its own private space and not have to go out to the spot market or load boards, Singh told FreightWaves at the time.
“Utilizing the EKA MPlace, customers reduce direct labor, transportation spend and contracting risk while providing end-to-end visibility, audit and analysis,” Singh said.