The digital era has ushered in innovative technology solutions to complex problems the supply chain has historically faced. While businesses have digitized their operations, too often data remains siloed between various systems and programs. This creates disconnects, requiring manual processes to complete and connect workflows and the resulting communication and information flow to customers.
Shippers still managing their businesses using individual carrier websites or through internal isolated systems are limiting their potential to save money, grow efficiency, increase customer service and redirect resources to revenue-generating activities. This prevents them from enjoying the full benefits of shipment life cycle automation.
When processes and data are siloed, it requires a sizable chunk of employees’ time and attention to complete tedious tasks, such as retrieving rate quotes, scheduling pickups, tracking shipments and retrieving documents. Not only do these processes create a slower, less-than-optimal customer experience, but they also reduce internal productivity.
When shipping KPIs miss the mark, it can result in late delivery and missed appointment fines, delayed payments for improper invoice match or late proof of delivery. These take a toll on businesses in overall profitability, lost wages and opportunity costs when time could be redeployed elsewhere. Further, manual entry can introduce errors that take additional time and effort to resolve.
Shippers want and need to proactively manage their business, which includes ensuring smooth delivery for customer satisfaction. They require quick notifications from carriers when something goes wrong with shipping. With manual processes, however, that is not always possible.
“LTL carriers are managing the movement of goods for thousands of shippers every single day. Although there are some exceptions, the expectation that an LTL carrier will call a shipper when a shipment is delayed is generally unreasonable,” said Brian Thompson, chief commercial officer at SMC³, a trusted transportation data and solutions provider with 88 years of expertise.
Application programming interfaces and electronic data interchange connections are both prevalent for their ability to bridge the complete shipment life cycle and provide shippers with complete visibility into the status of each shipment, making it possible to receive real-time updates, from pre-shipment to final delivery.
For example, using an electronic bill of lading (eBOL) API service to transmit shipment information and details eliminates a carrier’s need to manually enter the shipment information into the carrier’s billing system from the paper BOL. This electronic transfer of information saves the carrier effort while ensuring the information entered is complete and accurate, improving the likelihood of successful on-time delivery of the shipment.
“Eliminating manual processes on the shipper’s side, connecting to your carriers through API services can save the carrier manual labor, reduce errors and elevate the shipper to ‘shipper of choice’ status by reducing the carrier’s cost to serve,” Thompson said.
SMC³’s LTL API solutions help connect and streamline shippers’ services, closing the gaps in a shipper’s processes to remove inefficiencies. SMC³ does this by connecting the shipper’s system with the carrier’s freight management system to digitally communicate and transfer critical information about the shipper’s freight moving with that provider.
Using all of SMC³’s API services, shippers and logistics services providers (LSPs) can manage their shipments across their entire life cycles, from quote to invoice. Shippers can obtain rate quotes, schedule pickups, preassign a progressive routing order (PRO) number to the shipment before pickup, take advantage of a PRO number management service, and track and provide customers with the status of a shipment in transit. It can also retrieve document images, including the BOL, invoice, weight and inspection certificate or proof of delivery.
Express Logistics, a leading third-party logistics provider specializing in LTL, experienced the productivity benefits that SMC³’s APIs offered its business. Though Express had adopted another provider’s API services, performance and service gaps prevented Express from realizing the full benefits of LTL APIs. Express opted for SMC3’s APIs and experienced a significant improvement.
“Because of our partnership with SMC³, we are now able to rate 100% of our LTL carriers via API. We’ve simplified our core process for building and maintaining contracts, which gave us the ability to utilize this additional labor in other key business areas,” said Dianne Giltner, director of operations at Express Logistics.
Additionally, Giltner said, “SMC3’s LTL APIs gave us the ability to move from manual processes, separate from a TMS, to automatically managing excessively lengthy accessorials. This provides our customers with complete quotes and accessorial visibility on the front end, saving time and resources and reducing accessorial invoice surprises.”
Carrier Logistics, a transportation management logistics software provider, also noted the ease of executing critical transportation processes through SMC³’s APIs.
“Quoting became automated and could be done without human intervention,” said Ben Wiesen, president of Carrier Logistics. He added that “single-button dispatching replaced lengthy manual entry of orders in the carrier portals.”
While API integrations are invaluable, working with the right API provider is paramount to maximize opportunity and eliminate issues that can sometimes occur in these integrations, such as inconsistencies and technical issues caused by varying attributes, data requirements and business rules across carrier services.
For example, complications can arise from simple variances in field length. Some carriers may allow for 64 characters in a field while others allow for 256 characters. When the character limits are exceeded, some carriers cut the message at the character limit, while others return an error message. Information critical to the service performance can be lost when messages are truncated.
SMC³ standardizes these connections so a shipper can connect to SMC³’s API services and immediately connect to the shipper’s stable of carriers.
“Standardization greatly accelerates the process of connecting to carriers,” Thompson added. “It is vital for shippers to connect to their carrier networks efficiently and reliably so their operations and processes do not suffer.”
SMC³’s approach to working with shippers and LSPs focuses on delivering creative problem-solving and adding unparalleled business value. SMC3 offers both API and EDI technology. If a shipper has invested significant infrastructure in EDI and requires a hybrid solution, EDI and API can be tapped to connect the shipper to the carrier, to ensure the flow of reliable, timely data. SMC³ has the ability to customize in a way that matches the shipper’s preference and provides a complete solution.
Contact your sales rep at SMC³ or complete the “additional information” form on its website to get information about SMC³’s LTL APIs and how they can reduce the hidden cause of manual LTL shipment life cycle management for your organization.