Tracking a shipment has not always been an easy task to do, but it is in fact a quite old practice which started at the dawn of goods transportation. We have actually come a long way, from conveying with horses to crossing oceans with boats, and today tracking our shipment 24/7 in real-time. If a few decades ago we only used paper documents and phone calls to communicate with each other regarding container shipments, we all have been bound to integrate technology to keep up with the growth of the freight industry. Indeed, simultaneously, the maritime industry has evolved very quickly, maybe even too fast to conceive and adopt new technologies without falling behind.
In fact, whilst the Internet and its related technologies were arriving on the market, containerships’ capacity skyrocketed to more than 4,900% in 50 years. From carrying 500 TEUs in 1956 to 24,000 TEUS today for the largest capacities, containership evolution is an undeniable proof of worldwide exchanges substantial growth. If today we don’t just use paper anymore, keeping visibility and control on shipments still remains a persistent issue that freight forwarders need to answer.
Premium freight tracking implies solutions that offer further visibility than usual tracking systems. While historical freight tracking solutions often only offer restricted data for instance location, status or temperature monitoring, premium tracking aims to give a whole and global supervision of each cargo, with its own data collected without interruption.
Have you ever lost a shipment for a few hours? Do you always know, at any time, where all of your clients cargos are? Getting information about a shipment still remains a complex process.
Real-time visibility through geolocation and monitoring offers better control over many matters concerning shipping. It indeed provides shipments data such as their exact location but also if they are being unloaded, are stuck with customs or are being inspected thanks geofencing, waiting time and door opening identification.
Shipment geolocation gives you access to real-time information about arrival at terminals, effective loading to vessel, or if there is simply no action at all when there should have been, which is often the cause of extra charges. By identifying the issue on time, you can immediately react and get in touch with the people in charge to make sure they deal with the situation.
Real-time tracking can help you avoid fees such as demurrage and detention because your container stayed too long on the port deck, wasn’t loaded on time or remained for days on terminal, waiting to be picked up.
Everyday, supervision teams continuously call many interlocutors to get data about their shipments and make sure that everything is going well. Premium tracking delivers all the data you need and reduces the interlocutors to 0.
Indeed, tracking solutions with their online softwares centralize and simplify processes, leaving space within teams to focus on agility and performance. Tracking solutions enable you to assign workforce to what’s truly important for your company, such as risk management, time performance or customer satisfaction, while reducing the time-consuming tasks. This helps you put your control tower to good use by working on exceptions instead of low value tasks such as checking every shipment location.
With collaborative tools and all data concentrated in one space, these solutions are a springboard for better internal communication. Some solutions offer collaborative ticketing, comment spaces or user attribution features that help teams to divide workload, to exchange information or to investigate together.
