FreightWaves’ events are well known for their high-energy, no-nonsense rapid-fire demos. These demonstrations give industry movers and shakers an opportunity to showcase their latest innovations — with added flair and no PowerPoints.
Companies are tasked with creating quick and engaging presentations designed to capture a virtual audience. Presenters managed to do just that during the afternoon block of FrightWaves’ free LIVE @HOME conference on Thursday.
Front, Northstar Digital Solutions, Opendock and Samsara showcased their products during the last demo block of the day.
Front
Front aims to save companies time and money by tackling an oft-overlooked time suck: email inefficiency. The company estimates that the average employee spends 13 hours per week — or 28% of an average work week — tending to email.
Front believes its email management product can significantly cut down on that. The product accomplishes this by bolstering accountability via message ownership, tracking response times and increasing efficiency through automation and prioritization.
Front Senior Solutions Engineer Anderson Yu estimated customers saved six email hours per week and responded to messages an average of 56 minutes faster when using the software, leading to a 17% increase in daily productivity per teammate.
Front’s platform is designed for seamless integration with popular communication and time management tools — including Slack, Salesforce and gmail. It can also be paired with a company’s custom platform.
Ultimately, Front hopes to turn email into a more powerful tool for fostering communication, streamlining workflows and improving customer satisfaction.
Northstar Digital Solutions
Northstar showed off its LIFT — Linking Information for Transformation — solution. The innovative solution seeks to boost human intelligence through artificial intelligence and tackle widespread technology fragmentation in the industry.
LIFT uses robotic processing automation to accomplish end-to-end integration of document management systems that serve brokers, carriers and shippers alike. This type of workflow efficiency cuts down on wasted time and sets people up for smoother, quicker interactions. As a bonus, this high degree of visibility and intelligence provides a solid framework for scalability.
Northstar Director of Software and Product Development Avinash Nagendra noted that the transportation industry faces a myriad of challenges when it comes to integrating new technologies. From inadequate IT infrastructure to time-consuming connectivity issues, it can be difficult and expensive to update a full technological suite. LIFT makes the process of embracing and utilizing technology easier by eliminating those integration issues.
Additionally, data captured while using LIFT is stored in an easy-to-understand and accessible manner, making tasks like reporting as simple as possible.
Opendock
Opendock helps save players across the industry time and money by giving carriers the ability to schedule their own dock appointments. This cuts down on costly wait times for carriers and allows warehouse staff to work more efficiently.
Opendock founder and CEO Bob La Loggia compared the platform to popular restaurant reservation website OpenTable, allowing carriers to schedule dock appointments at the push of a button. If needed, appointments can be modified or cancelled via the platform, eliminating phone calls and complicated cancellation procedures.
In addition to letting carriers book appointments, the platform offers a view for warehouse administrators. This view allows warehouse staff to configure dock availability and ensure they are not overbooked at any given time.
Opendock currently boasts 35,000 registered users and records about 500,000 appointments each month.
Samsara
Samsara offers a portfolio of industrial solutions designed to bring hardware and software together, streamlining processes and making communication more efficient. The company’s asset gateways and dashcams feed real-time data into the Samsara dashboard, keeping users up to date.
The company demonstrated how its customers have been using the platform as they pivot their business practices and adapt to life during the coronavirus pandemic.
Samsara Product Marketing Manager Gabby Deocares said fleet managers have been using the platform to operate fleets efficiently while working remotely, manage fluctuating demand, maintain social distancing and protect drivers on the road.
The platform is enabled with a hub that allows entire teams to find and access the information they’re looking for, including driver logs and detention reports.
The Samsara driver app also allows drivers to digitally manage documents and signatures, streamlining their workflow and helping them keep their distance during this time.