A few days into 2022, I’d like to reflect on the past year and what’s ahead for shipping. Last year continued to be tumultuous as major supply chain issues remained, but for some, those challenges led to opportunities to reset and adjust. To remain agile as backlogs and capacity issues tightened, many shippers and 3PLs turned to their technology partners for help.
Banyan's Commitment to Clients
As the leading provider of live carrier and API connectivity, Banyan Technology has helped our clients navigate challenges in the supply chain and we are committed to providing them with innovative ways to remain flexible and create efficiencies that impact their bottom line. We put our clients’ needs at the forefront of everything we do by listening to them and creating solutions that will work.
Enhancements in 2021
Our team is dedicated to the continued development of a client-centric business focused on delivering exceptional service, support, and innovation to drive significant cost-savings. Client feedback and collaboration have led to the following enhancements to our LIVE Connect™ freight-pricing platform in 2021:
- Push Tracking: The tracking capabilities and reporting within the LIVE Connect™ platform are even better. Push Tracking gives you the ability to subscribe for push notifications to track a shipment. These updates are provided to you through email, flat file, or web hook to increase visibility for you and your customers and help you instantly understand where a shipment is located to determine if it is on schedule. This eliminates the need to retrieve tracking information on your own. The Push Tracking notifications can be sent directly to you!
- Exception Shipment View & Reporting: To help you gain more visibility into your shipment status and help manage exceptions, Banyan released the Exception Shipment View and Exception Reporting tools. The Exception Shipment View highlights missed pickups and undelivered shipments and eliminates the manual work or searching for “problem” loads. Exception Reporting is an Excel spreadsheet of missed pickups and undelivered shipments that you can share across your organization. It also helps with carrier performance visibility for you to use for future RFPs.
- QuickShip™: Banyan added QuickShip™ to its suite of integrated features. This tool streamlines data entry in as few as 5 data points and steers efficiencies by giving access to clients’ suppliers and other decentralized users to ensure their contracted carriers are utilized in the most efficient manner. Clients involved in the beta testing of this product experienced a savings of greater than 10% on their inbound freight spend using QuickShip™.
- Freight Bill Management: FBM is designed to audit and manage your freight bills. Specifically, it automates reporting to only include exceptions, like flagging any differences in quotes and what the carrier billed. This frees up your internal resources to focus their time on invoice exceptions rather than having to review all of them. It also eliminates the need for third-party auditors and helps identify pricing miscalculations to better plan for future shipments.
- Lane Restrictions: LR allows you to restrict rating quotes from specific carriers or based on certain parameters. Shippers typically use Lane Restrictions to limit a carrier's ability to service defined service areas where the carrier is either refused by the client and other factors. 3PL clients use this tool to help align the carriers they use to service specific customers. This is particularly important now with managing the embargoes carriers have placed on weight or certain areas and locations.
New in Q1 2022
New product features for LIVE Connect™ in early 2022 will include Multimode and the Analysis Tool. Clients will be able to book loads for LTL, TL, parcel, and final mile all on one screen in Multimode and access analysis of their data quicker using the Analysis Tool.
- Multi-Mode On-Screen: To simplify booking a shipment through Banyan’s LIVE Connect™ platform, we are developing the Multi-Mode On-Screen that will allow you to input shipment information for all applicable shipping options. For example, a shipment can be booked for TL, parcel, final mile or LTL modes and you can choose the option you feel is best suited for their business. You can view rates applicable for the size, weight, and dimension of the shipment itself all on one screen!
- Analysis Tool: The client-facing Analysis Tool will allow you to analyze your shipments or carriers in real time. It will provide an opportunity for you to access these reports as needed and gives you the ability to provide pricing examples to potential clients.
A Business Intelligence Dashboard and Load Consolidation tool are also on the schedule to be released in 2022. Both enhance the system to add even more efficiencies for your shipping operations and allow you to successfully streamline shipments in this tumultuous environment.
It is our goal at Banyan to continuously innovate and create flexible client solutions to help them capture better data for better freight management. We are focused on innovating our technology with highly efficient, real-time carrier data through LIVE Connect™, an adaptable solution that provides optimal benefits based on clients’ unique business needs.
LIVE Connect™ also allows clients to boost efficiencies and deliver cost-savings on shipping through a comprehensive TMS solution and carrier pricing delivered via APIs. Clients not only receive real-time rates and scheduling flexibility to meet the growing demands of the industry, but our lightning-fast data connectivity also gives them the competitive edge they need to succeed.
Contact Banyan Technology today to learn more about Banyan’s patented LIVE Connect™ platform.