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Track & Trace – Visibility in a world of changing transport partners

According to a study by the market research institute Statista, companies will invest around 2.5 billion US dollars worldwide in track & trace solutions across their transport chains in 2021. By 2026, this figure is expected to more than double to over 5 billion US dollars.

The main priority of Tracking & Tracing solutions is visibility. The client or forwarder can see when the truck arrives at the point of pick-up, where the freight is waiting and when it reaches its destination. Visibility facilitates communication between forwarders and carriers and makes their cooperation that much easier. Instead of time-consuming telephone calls, all you need is a glance at the screen where you can track the current position of and distance travelled by the truck. In the event of imminent delays, early and specifically designed intervention is possible. Additionally, we can easily check whether the driver is using the agreed safest route or whether that route is deviated from.

Quality of logistics as an important selling point

Visibility is gaining importance in logistics not only for safety reasons. Other driving factors include the mounting demand for high quality and reliability in logistical services. Timeliness and speed of delivery have long since become essential criteria in purchase decisions, because the product offering is increasingly becoming identical.

Visibility plays a key role here, leading to the investment boom that we have just mentioned. Those who use their own fleet of vehicles or work with fixed transport partners can achieve this objective more or less easily. Under these conditions, the client or fleet manager may require that a uniform telematics system be implemented. The corresponding solutions have long since been refined and are now available quite inexpensively. Often, commercially available smartphones and a special app are all that is needed to accurately determine the current vehicle positions. The solution can also be used to document the current order status.

Small companies that don’t have their own telematics

It only becomes difficult when many different transport partners and subcontractors are involved. Freight orders are often passed through several pairs of hands, so that the original customer no longer knows which carrier is actually responsible for transporting the goods. This may also become a challenge even where a direct contractual relationship exists between shipper and carrier, but the cooperation is on a one-off basis or occasional. This is where online platforms for digital carrier management come into play. Trans.eu in particular offers a comprehensive and versatile solution for end-to-end visibility, which is also tailored to micro-enterprises that do not have their own telematics system.

There are two cases to be distinguished here: In the first case, the carrier is presented with a choice of one – or more – of well over 200 well-established telamatics software solutions from various European countries. In his turn, the carrier collects data on position and status and usually uses that information to manage their own vehicle fleets and dispatch systems. The IT team of Trans.eu is – especially for this particular set of arrangements – constantly developing new solutions for telematics systems, of which more than 120 have already been implemented. This standard software allows carriers to easily and automatically forward position and status data pertaining to the order, to Trans.eu.

Free app or manual input

In the second case, the carrier’s truck does not have its own telematics system on board. The company or the driver is not at all prepared to provide any data on position or even status. For this particular set of arrangements, Trans.eu has developed the TransTask mobile app for Android, which any freight carrier can download for free-of-charge from the Google Store. The carrier receives an individual tracking code for the order in question. The process is so simple that the effort is worth the trouble even for one-off orders and can be adopted by the forwarder at no extra cost. As an alternative, Trans.eu nevertheless offers the possibility for the current road events to be entered manually by the carrier into the platform’s online system. Around 30 percent of the 30,000 carriers registered with Trans.eu already use this service.

Data captured via interface, app or manual entry can be accessed by everyone within the supply chain. This makes Trans.eu the only tool that can be used by shippers, forwarders and freight consignees at the same time. In addition, Trans.eu offers the visibility service completely independently of its online platform, on which all the transport management features can be found, including a multilingual messenger and slot booking system and many other functions.

Trans.eu as a common denominator

Conclusion: Visibility is a crucial quality issue that is rapidly gaining importance in logistics. Solutions such as Trans.eu form an important platform comprising a highly diversified product offer regarding telematics, which can be consistently and transparently presented to a wide range of carriers, shippers and forwarders.

About Trans.eu

Trans.eu is a logistics platform for overland transport. Freight forwarders who want to push their digitalization further will find extensive features for carrier management. The IT solution offers forwarders and logistics service providers increased transparency and security in working with carriers across national borders: one of the largest databases of carriers in Central and Eastern Europe, a system for screening and verifying carriers with ratings from one of the largest transport platforms with around 40,000 users. In addition, a live messenger with an integrated translation engine allows the entire transport process of freight allocation to be handled in different languages. Thanks to a wide range of options for integration with existing TMS systems, external partners can use the Logistics 4.0 capabilities for their systems.

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