In the transportation industry, reputation is everything. It takes a lot of on-time and in-full deliveries to build a reputation of excellence, but it only takes a few fumbles to make the wrong impression.
Making a name as a leader requires dedication, innovation and top-notch partnerships. It also requires unfailing visibility. When 3PLs, brokers and carriers fail to provide shippers with reliable, real-time insights into their loads, trust crumbles, relationships are negatively impacted and customer satisfaction suffers. This is especially true if something goes wrong with the untraceable shipment.
Tive helps companies avoid that uncomfortable — and potentially expensive — scenario by providing the real-time actionable visibility needed to ensure everyone stays in the loop throughout the lifespan of every shipment.
“We are here to help companies meet and exceed their supply chain commitments by eliminating in-transit incidents, providing real-time visibility into shipments and offering actionable insights so that all parties involved can make sure that the load arrives on time, in full and in perfect condition,” Tive CEO Krenar Komoni said.
Once a red hot industry buzzword, “visibility” seems to have taken a backseat to “artificial intelligence” and “back-office automation” when it comes to webinars, conference presentations and virtual happy hours. While visibility certainly has not become less important, it has steadily moved away from the “add-on feature” territory and into the “bare necessities” arena. This widespread adoption, however, does not mean all visibility solutions are created equal or that visibility services cannot be expanded.
Getting people to think about visibility in a more dynamic and collaborative manner requires dismantling the idea that visibility refers only to a moving dot on a map, according to Komoni.
“I think that visibility as a term is tied to the proverbial dot on a map, and people may have temporarily taken their eyes off the dot-on-the-map feature of visibility,” Komoni said. “However, visibility is much more than that, and we have seen tremendous pull in the market from customers who want to dive one layer deeper to monitor and understand what’s really happening with their load — essentially Visibility 2.0.”
Tive takes visibility a step further, ensuring customers have all the information they need to be confident in their loads.
Companies monitor whether a load of perishables is meeting the temperature requirements and not arriving “cooked” at the destination. They make sure that the load remains intact and nobody opens up a trailer or container while in transit. They make sure that expensive racks of servers are not experiencing shock events that can cause permanent damage, and they make sure that the shipment is going to arrive on time and not be rejected or hit with detention or demurrage charges.
“Think of Tive as an extension of your team,” Komoni added. “We help logistics professionals actively manage in-transit shipments because we believe that every shipment matters — that’s what is unique about Tive.”
Every load — from toilet paper to expensive computer equipment — is valuable. No load, however, has commanded the nation’s attention quite like the truckloads of COVID-19 vaccine doses making their way to hospitals and health departments across the country. The vaccine doses — a symbol of hope for many — are fragile and will be rendered useless if temperature controls fail.
Due to vaccines’ combined importance and fragility, vaccine manufacturers must be able to monitor the location and condition of shipments at all times. That is where Tive comes into play.
“Tive’s solution today handles temperatures down to negative 40 degrees celsius, which makes us a great match for many companies shipping pharmaceuticals at extremely low temperatures,” Komoni said. “Additionally, we give companies real-time, hyper-accurate location information for proactively managing ETAs, which can assist health care facilities in scheduling staff for when doses will be available for preparation and dispensing.”
Komoni noted that the company is currently working with multiple third-party logistics providers and distributors to service vaccine loads.