The logistics industry has increasingly become focused on providing customers with shipment visibility. On Tuesday, Convoy, a digital freight network, and Flexport, a global logistics platform, showed their commitment to that by announcing a long-term partnership that will enable Flexport’s international customer base to leverage Convoy’s carrier network to provide shipment automation for global shippers.
Convoy President and COO Mark Okerstrom told FreightWaves the two phases of the partnership will create an end-to-end digital experience for shippers.
“The first beneficiaries of this partnership are Flexport’s internal operations and customers,” he said. “We are going to start with the integrations between our networks, which will enable Flexport’s operations team to have full visibility into pricing and availability of Convoy’s truckload network. They will then have a full suite of tools to be able to see what’s available on the spot while they’re on the phone with their customers.”
Okerstrom explained that a number of Flexport’s customers have been Convoy customers simultaneously, so this partnership will come natural to many international shippers.
Once Convoy is fully integrated into Flexport’s operational dashboard, Transmission, the second phase of the partnership, will allow these customers to get a full visibility of transportation options from the shipments’ international origins to their final delivery destination in one central dashboard.
“I think one of the most exciting things about all this is that once the integration is done, customers will get full end-to-end visibility,” explained Okerstrom. “That’s the vision of this collaboration, for customers to be able to track their products from door to door and understand exactly what’s happening every step of the way.”
Okerstrom explained that while the two companies have plenty of the same customers, what attracted both parties to the partnership was the way they attack problems with international shipping.
“Whether it’s on the carrier side or on the shipper side, Dan [Lewis, founder and CEO of Convoy] was at truck stops talking to truck drivers and figuring out what their pain points were and then automated that tension,” he said. “Flexport is doing the exact same thing. I think that common passion for not building technology for technology’s sake, not building a company for profit sake, but building towards this common mission of making things better for customers is going to produce great outcomes.”
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