Transportation and logistics giant Schneider (NYSE: SNDR) announced a new collaboration with software provider Blue Yonder, delivering a new carrier marketplace and marking another stage in Schneider’s evolution toward automated and digital experiences.
“The reality is, data is power,” Erin Van Zeeland, Schneider’s senior vice president and general manager of logistics services, told FreightWaves. The company is leveraging APIs and digital interactions, she explained, “to create unique solutions across our enterprise portfolio so we can earn more of [shippers’] freight and business year after year.”
Housed with the Blue Yonder transportation management solution, the new marketplace is intended to provide an integrated and seamless experience for shippers, combining dynamic pricing and visibility tools with access to Schneider’s expansive transportation options.
Using the software provider’s dynamic pricing solution, Schneider can now provide carriers and shippers near-real-time matching of price and capacity, along with shipment tracking that is connected to – and made available on – Blue Yonder’s Luminate platform. That platform combines data from both internal and external sources, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to enable smarter business decisions.
Elaborating on how Schneider’s broker customers will benefit, Van Zeeland said shippers with freight that cannot be executed via routing guides or RFPs, as well as new customers with lanes that are not covered by the RFP carrier base, can now receive an instant solution to that load.
“We can do it without even asking us for it,” she said. “It can go right into their TMS, and if they need an option for this load, it’s at their fingertips.”
After tendering the order for Schneider to execute, the company can then relay real-time information back to the customer about the shipment in transit.
While the Blue Yonder collaboration helps the company digitally connect with shippers, Schneider over the past year has also expanded its software relationships with carriers, partnering with TruckerTools and Truckstop.com to make its own network of more than 30,000 carriers to the load boards more accessible, Van Zeeland said.
“We want to meet the carrier where they’re at. If truckers choose to use Truckertools and/or Truckstop for all the benefits they can get on the app, we just put our freight there and make it very easy for the carrier to choose Schneider.”
These and other digital tools and partnerships have helped Schneider stay competitive as legacy logistics companies and startups alike rush to create frictionless digital experiences that improve performance and speed up operations that are traditionally manual and time-consuming.
The more Schneider can understand what shippers are trying to do, “the more solutions we can create for them that have more value than just executing one order,” Van Zeeland said.
And as the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt traditional carrier and shipper relationships, automating operations and connections has only become more important, “in how quickly we can get access to a large amount of shippers and a large amount of carriers to help the whole ecosystem perform.”