This is the third in a series previewing companies that will be presenting their technology solutions at Demo Day next week as part of MarketWaves18 near Dallas. You can see our earlier stories here and here.
Shipwell
Shipwell is an online freight platform that assists small and medium-sized businesses to leverage data, and helps reduce informational asymmetry by providing them with tools that would make shipping Amazon-sque. Much of Shipwell’s core technology is about creating a seamless customer experience and in driving efficiency through the freight shipping process. At MarketWaves18, the company is showcasing an artificial intelligence powered tool that assists with workflow automation. The AI engine analyzes data produced during the shipment process, with it finding ways to reduce human error through the shipment lifecycle. The tool gathers data points to understand shipments that fall outside normality, for instance, delayed shipments or shipments with variance issues, and looks to evolve the platform to react more proactively and build a positive shipping experience for its customers. This could be about creating geofencing around pickup locations for instantly picking up on trucker data or automating the process of sending out detention notices, in essence, connecting with clients through Shipwell’s native Android and iOS applications, and through regular phone-based tracking. For instance, the tool can detect a truck sitting in detention, and can help the trucker breathe easy by sending out a message mentioning that the tracking enabled on his truck would make him eligible for a detention payout. Though there is nothing to cheer about in getting stuck on detention, Shipwell feels that relaying such messages could show that the company is being proactive about supporting its customers. The AI tool captures around 7500 data points with every shipment, which Shipwell believes would help improve the experience, as it can automate a number of processes, thus doing away with significant manual hours spent on redundant operational touch points.
Trucker Tools
Carrier management platform Trucker Tools is showcasing new features to its existing solution on the demo stage at MarketWaves18. The company mentioned that the enhancements would help brokers to be more sophisticated and work like an asset-based company by putting their weight behind trucks rather than loads. One of the features that Trucker Tools is highlighting is focused on its Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool that can read emails coming into brokers’ inboxes–which generally range in the hundreds–with queries and rates of loads and capacity. The process has largely been manual until now, with company personnel going through every email and responding to them in order. Apart from it being a tedious affair, it would also mean that emails might take hours at a stretch to be responded to, with brokers effectively losing out on a lot of loads due to late replies. The NLP tool would be of tremendous help here, as it would instantly read through the mails, trace back to the broker’s database to match loads, send out an email to the carrier, and revert with a copy back to the broker – all in the span of a few seconds. This would ensure a very high hit rate for the broker, and help seal lasting partnerships with carriers across specific lanes. Next in line is the digital asset negotiation tool that helps brokers to reach out to multiple carriers at the same time, via different mediums like mobile applications, carrier portals, or emails. Once the said carrier responds, the NLP tool picks up on the reply and can answer based on load availability. The third tool being showcased is a mail instrument that understands trucks plying between specific lanes and can predict its movement from location A to B with high accuracy, with it even accounting for freight seasonalities to make matching better. This allows brokers to estimate which trucks to approach when they have a load listing at a particular location.
EBE Technologies
Transportation software solutions provider EBE Technologies will be presenting various applications from its suite of software focused on back-office processes like account receivables and payables, workflow, imaging solution, invoice resolution, and pre-dispatch workflows. Taking center stage will be its innovative mobile capture solution, which comes with various enhancements to make billing a seamless process. In today’s world, once the load is delivered the driver needs to drop the paperwork off at a terminal. Drivers typically use truck stops to scan or take pictures of the documents on their mobile phones before uploading them to the cloud, which is then taken out by the biller. But at this point, the clarity or the completeness of the needed document set is not confirmed, which would only be known when personnel on the desk take it out for billing the client. In the absence of some critical documents or if the images are blurred, the biller would need to set that specific load aside, connect with the driver, communicate issues with the document submission, and wait for the driver to submit the revised paperwork in, making it an arduous process. EBE Technologies’ mobile capture solution takes this redundancy out of the equation by checking on documents in real-time, with the workflow starting out immediately after the paperwork is submitted in by the driver. The software would recognize missing paperwork, move it to the exception queue, automate an alert to the driver about the missing documents, monitor the workflow until the rest of the paperwork comes in, and will finally send the completed documentation to the biller, ready to be invoiced to the client. The application also comes with an enhancement called the “capture wizard,” which would flag inappropriate and sloppy image captures on the part of drivers. The feature would highlight the border of the document in red, and would pop up a message to indicate sloppy handiwork. The feature would also restrict saving or sending improper photos, forcing drivers to retake images until they are clearly shot. EBE Technologies believes that this application in its entirety would help improve visibility for both drivers and carriers, and make cash flow more efficient, while also reducing the amount of labor consumed in the process.