FourKites has added proactive fleet management tools to its Insights portfolio of carrier and shipper supply chain visibility products.
Recommendation Engine uses a combination of historical data, such as average dwell time at an origin facility, and adds in real-time conditions such as traffic and weather to make recommendations in real time to mitigate potential delays to shipments.
“As supply chains grow in complexity, companies can no longer rely on approaches that worked in the past to plan their shipments,” said Priya Rajagopalan, chief product officer at FourKites. “The industry must evolve and become more proactive, harnessing data and intelligence that can provide actionable insights, and anticipate and mitigate problems to ensure on-time delivery of a shipment before a load has even left the dock.”
The company said that early adopters of the product have seen a 2.1x improvement in on-time delivery when following FourKites’ “departure from origin” recommendations. This led to improved load planning accuracy and better understanding of delivery risks even before the load was picked up. Reduction in fees associated with late arrivals, reschedules and detention were also seen.
Recommendation Engine builds upon the processes many companies use by evaluating historical patterns and overlaying that with real-time data. With this added insight, shippers can proactively work to reschedule loads or implement recovery plans, and notify customers of possible delays. The system can also provide real-time alerts when a shipment deviates from the most optimal route or when new risks appear, enabling companies to intervene to address these issues, FourKites explained.
FourKites ranked number seven on FreightWaves’ Freight.Tech 25 list in 2018.
The company recently introduced DynamicETA, a machine-learning algorithm, which predicts freight arrival times with greater accuracy in narrow time windows.
In February, FourKites secured $50 million in Series C funding led by existing investors August Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, CEAS Investments and Hyde Park Angels. With this round of investment, FourKites has raised a total of $100.5 million since its inception in 2014.
