ONE NETWORK’S LOGISTICS SOLUTION SUITE

Rapidly Achieve Accurate Real-Time Information and Optimization Across Your Logistics Network

Challenges in Managing Logistics

Transportation Management Solutions (TMS) have been around for more than 25 years, but as globalization, outsourcing and specialization have increased, more complex opportunities to optimize logistics performance and reduce costs are emerging. Shippers are relying heavily on logistics solutions as well as their 3/4PL partners to increase competitiveness, attain a global view of supply network activity, and pursue complex opportunities to maximize logistics performance and efficiencies.

Digital Supply & Logistics Network Platform

One Network’s Logistics Solution Suite has industry-proven success across manufacturing, retail, CPG, food service, automotive, healthcare, pharmaceutical, high tech, aerospace, logistics, and government sectors while empowering logistics partners to better serve their customers. Shippers and 3PL’s use the One Network Logistics Solution Suite on the Real Time Value Network™ (RTVN™), to rapidly achieve accurate real-time information, optimization and collaboration across a diverse set of trading partners and their systems. One Network optimizes, automates and tracks execution of the entire inbound and outbound logistics lifecycle, from order to delivery, for a global, multi-modal, multi-leg network of 17,000 transportation providers. To enhance the customer-driven business network, One Network brings unprecedented resiliency, efficiencies, and shared business benefits for the entire Logistics network of shippers, 3PL’s, carriers, and service providers.

Logistics Management Control Tower: The Financial Benefits

  • 30-50% reduction in premium freight costs across automotive & manufacturing segments
  • 10-40% reduction in overall annual transportation costs across all industry segments
  • 2-10% increase in equipment utilization across all industry segments
  • 10-30% inventory reduction across healthcare, CPG, retail, automotive & manufacturing segments
  • 12-50% reduction in manual planning, scheduling, and execution management overhead
  • 1-8% improvement in inbound delivery performance and outbound customer service levels

How a Multi-Party Business Network Platform Enables the Logistics Control Tower Solution

Leveraging the power of a true multi-party network, One Network’s Logistics Control Tower solution, uses real-time data shared across functional areas, inside, and outside of the participating companies. It combines and coordinates all parties and systems around a Single Version of the Truth (SVOT), eliminating blind spots, and providing a solid foundation for optimization, decision-making, collaboration and automation.

The Logistics Control Tower solution allows customers to drive superior service and cost for both domestic, intra-company, and international moves and supports all transport modes: truckload, less than truckload (LTL), intermodal (e.g. ship, truck, and rail), air, parcel, and ocean. With integrated warehouse management, dock-door scheduling, yard management, chain-of-custody, and order management capabilities, it delivers highest service level and lowest cost of goods in a single solution.

The Logistics Control Tower solution also includes the Global Logistics Gateway (GLG). The GLG connects shippers to more than 17,000 carriers and logistics service providers. GLG is where carriers and logistics service providers (LSP) connect one time to the network and collaborate with multiple shippers already on the Network. It leverages advanced technology to integrate across all data sources to process, transform, and monitor Carrier data to support real-time location and event-based updates within the platform.
The solution provides four levels of maturity, so that your organization can gradually unlock increasing benefits.

Level 1: End-To-End and Real-Time Logistics Visibility

To successfully represent the complete logistics lifecycle across a network of supply chain participants (warehouses, plants, DC’s, LSP, customers, contract manufacturers, and suppliers), the Logistics Control Tower solution serves as a system of engagement, integrating and harmonizing data across internal and external players. It also operates with the capability to embrace many systems and to assume control of any point in the shipment execution lifecycle as needed, possibly even serving to replace legacy or redundant systems. By integrating transaction information across all parties, the Control Tower solution enables real-time visibility of the entire logistics lifecycle, from purchase order, shipment order, shipment execution, track and trace, and financial settlement.
The solution has the following capabilities:

  • Multi-modal execution with distinct 3PL/LSP assignments per leg, with LLP control
  • Integrated process flows between cross border and in-country operations
  • Milestone settings and management based on expected arrival/departure times
  • Tracking of Customs Submitted, Customs Hold and Clearance events
  • Chain-of-Custody with serialization
  • Global trade compliance
  • Supply and finish goods condition tracking (e.g. temperature, expiration)
  • Container booking and tracking
  • Telematics Integration

Level 2: Performance Measurement, Predictive Analytics, and Event Management

End-to-end visibility is further supported by robust permission and dashboarding configuration that allows all participants to view in real-time, and analyze only the data relevant to their organization and user role.

  • Operational dashboards are configurable at the user level and include all tasks and alerts and predicted issues relevant to each specific role. Using these operational dashboards, users can drill into each task, review alerts, and quickly resolve issues.
  • Command and control monitoring provides a management overview of the health of the network configurable to their unique perspective.
  • Operational data views provide real-time visibility of transactions where users can build customized reports, leverage reporting templates, and create data cubes or pivot tables.
  • Enterprise slicing allows users to easily export/import data into other operational or reporting tools.

The solution also includes NEO intelligent agents, One Network’s proprietary machine learning and intelligent agent technology that makes and executes decisions. NEO agents run on top of execution data, combining other streaming data sources that compare the plan in real-time and predict ETA and other events. Exceptions are managed though a case management capability that drives root-cause analytics and derives intelligent performance and predicted service insights.

Level 3: Recommended Solutions, Case Management, and Prescriptive Workflows

The system is able to continuously compare planned activities to actuals, determine the likely impact, alert relevant parties of deviations, and provide recommended solutions so that exceptions can be managed quickly and effectively. The network-enabled Control Tower goes beyond what traditional TMS can accomplish by allowing network participants to collaborate on time-sensitive issues in real-time. The Social Network Services provide unstructured collaboration tools that include Chat, with point-to-point live chat; Chat Rooms for group discussions and Blipper, a twitter-like micro-blogging platform.

In addition, the case management, root cause analysis, and what-if capabilities, enables shippers and logistics service providers to manage recurring issues that occur during the execution process.

Prescriptive workflows go even further to seamlessly incorporate warehouse, yard activities, and dock scheduling operations into the end-to-end logistics process. Processes that are frequently managed across separate systems or via manual communication can be streamlined across all parties where specific roles, activities and performance metrics can be established for optimized operations. In addition, Chain-of-Custody tracking enables enhanced tracking and tracing of products and ownership, aligned with industry standards, through the entire supply chain for full visibility. It allows for immediate and efficient management of disputes and enables the handling of targeted recalls in a faster, simpler, and more precise manner. It also enables the rapid resupply of recall-affected locations with appropriate product quantities to preserve revenue opportunities.

It will also set the stage for intelligent rules-based or autonomous logistics decision-making via the Network.

Level 4: Autonomous Network Control

In the final level of maturity, many suggested resolutions and user-managed actions can be gradually converted to automated network actions. The autonomous NEO agents include advanced planning and optimization algorithms that drive tactical decision-making, such as placing a second supply order, executing a transportation move, or taking no actions.

Other capabilities include transport capacity forecasting and transport optimization for dedicated and common carrier equipment as well as the advanced scheduling of DC appointments. The Logistics Control Tower goes beyond detecting trends and automating issue resolution, and can propose new policies and models to improve operational efficiencies. Through increased automation and intelligent agents, the entire multi-party business network will be able to reduce manual tracking and support requirements to ultimately offer greater levels of service and value to the end customer.

Logistics Management Solution: The Operational Benefits

  • A comprehensive supply chain and logistics model that represents all parties, the network and processes from planning through execution delivers real-time management of all supply chain activities
  • The ability to identify in real-time issues impacting performance and resolve quickly
  • Advanced analytics, reporting & insight leveraging a SVOT drive improved carrier, supplier, and personnel performance
  • Ability to mitigate knock-on effects
  • Detailed tracking of transactional and resolution history for continuous improvement
  • Detailed tracking and tracing of products ensures promises and commitments are met
  • Support carrier loyalty in a time of driver shortages and carrier rate volatility
  • 3PLs can unlock new sources of revenue across your customer base by offering new services and levels of visibility

Industry-Leading Logistics Solution Suite

One Network’s Logistics Solution Suite empowers customers to drive the complete lifecycle of transportation processes with precision, all on a single, cloud-based platform, including:

  • Logistics planning, execution and management
  • Procurement and contracting
  • Appointment scheduling
  • Yard management
  • Global trade management
  • Financial and claims settlement
  • Carrier services

Logistics Planning reduces freight cost, distance, and number of trucks through multi stop consolidation and mode selection. In automated mode, it supports:

  • Multi stop cross lane consolidation along with aggregation
  • Single pick multi drop, multi pick single drop, pooling algorithms
  • Equipment capacity and compatibility constraints
  • Incompatibility rules by commodity codes
  • Location to equipment constraints by routing guide
  • Rich set of planning policies at organization and site level
  • Advanced optimization – backhaul, private fleet, continuous moves

In manual mode, it supports:

  • Intuitive Planner Workbench to perform manual consolidations
  • Multi truck planning with what-if scratchpads
  • Manual updates triggering rating/capacity resizing – keeping planning and execution in synch
  • Alerts and exceptions capturing all the edits
  • Outbound integration of changed loads/shipments

Logistics Execution and Management takes the plans generated by Planning and executes the required multi-tier and multi-party transactions in:

  • Carrier rating and tendering
  • Supplier allowances
  • Routing guide
  • Lane bidding/award
  • Carrier/partner portal
  • Taxes and accessorial rates
  • Demurrage and detention costs
  • Private Fleet Management

For 3PL/4PL, transactions include:

  • Client quoting
  • Cost plus/client contracts
  • Dual rating
  • Client, 3PL, and carrier collaboration

The system continuously plans and automatically executes required transactions, saving human intelligence for the exceptions.

Procurement and contracting provides rich representation of freight contracts, covering all complex rating scenarios and client contracts covering dual rating for Buy/Sell business models. It supports:

  • Sequential and broadcast based tendering options
  • Spot and contracted rating options
  • RFQ process for contract bidding and authoring, integrated with freight contract management
  • Rich set of invoicing policies to cover invoice generation, auditing and collaboration
  • Multiple currencies and currency conversions
  • Tender collaboration, quote collaboration and invoice collaborations supported by collaborative platform and portals for carriers and clients

Contracting enables:

  • Global contract representing tariffs for all carriers, with contract overriding
  • Multiple contracts for a given carrier, with one active at any given time
  • Geo lane, equipment, service level, rating type-based tariff structure
  • Extensive list of cost methods configurable by lane, along with step-based rating, incremental step rating and deficit rating
  • Rate derivation policies to influence the granularity of rating
  • Cost allocation policies to do freight cost allocation to shipments and shipment lines

Appointment scheduling provides hourly visibility for inbound and outbound operations. It eliminates capacity issues for short lead time priority orders and enables immediate adoption of Carriers already on network. It continuously monitors the network, suggests calculated responses, and if appropriate, advises users of any deviation from the plan. Additionally, it provides:

  • Automated scheduling for live/drop appointments
  • Capacity management covering door slots and labor/resource requirements based on forecast
  • Extensive policies at site, dock door group and dock doors to simulate all business constraints

Yard management provides complete visibility to gate-in/gate-out, load/unload timings of both inbound/outbound operations. It also enables:

  • Inventory visibility within the Trailers along with their tracking events, contents, and priorities
  • Generation of operational transactions tracking the yard/dock shunting operations
  • Support for GEO Fencing, deriving arrival and departure events based on GPS updates
  • Ability to view a shunting report which shows all shunting operation that the shunter is assigned to perform

Global trade management offers full global visibility across all trading partners. It includes container prioritization, freight forwarding, and integrated customs documentation capture and retention. It also couples integrated business planning with optimized execution orders and automatically executes the required transactions.

Financial and claims settlement supports for accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) invoices covering Freight Invoices and Client Invoices. It also enables:

  • Transactional invoices as well as periodic batch invoicing
  • Multi-currency, multi-line invoices, credit and supplemental invoices
  • Automated invoice auditing based on invoicing policies configured along with thresholds of discrepancy
  • Collaborative platform in resolving the holds and Invoice Approvals and Payment updates.
  • General ledger codes based on geographical regions and associating transactions to these codes
  • Support for EDI 210 and CSV based invoice uploads

Carrier Services enables the carrier roles with mobile apps and provides carrier score cards. The mobile apps are available on iOS and Android and provide:

  • GPS tracking
  • Tender collaboration
  • Appointment scheduling
  • Track and trace
  • Alerts and monitoring
  • IOT data feeds

Carrier score cards enable:

  • Real-time monitoring dashboard
  • Self-subscription model
  • Cost and performance-based metrics
  • Aggregate and shipper specific analytics

“One Network has successfully allowed Albertsons’ to streamline and centralize our transportation and appointment scheduling functions. We have benefited by reducing labor costs, improving our supply chain predictability and visibility, and reducing overall transportation costs.”

– VP of Transportation, Albertsons

Implementing a Logistics Management Solution: The Dual Platform Strategy

One Network’s platform is a unique “Tunable System of Control” for business planning and execution across multiple parties and systems, leveraging new network technology while empowering legacy systems, to deliver optimal results fast. This enables your team to assign system-of-record responsibility to each state and action in the Network process — either to the ONE business network platform or a legacy application. It’s your choice, and the ONE platform enables you to manage end-to-end processes, even as designated steps are still processed by your legacy systems.

We call this a “Dual Platform Strategy”, where your business network platform actually becomes the primary platform for planning and operations, and the old ERP monoliths become bolt-ons to the Network for financial processing.

Whether you are working to eliminate technology silos or collaborate more closely with logistics service providers, the Dual Platform approach ensures that your daily, weekly, and monthly effort is focused on your organization’s most important execution objectives, and is done in the most efficient way. In summary, a dual platform strategy enables you to leverage legacy systems without wasting prior investments – while dramatically advancing your capabilities and decision-making with a business network platform.