FourKites joins Scheduling Standards Consortium
Earlier this week, Chicago-based FourKites, a provider of real-time tracking and visibility solutions across transportation modes and digital platforms, formally joined the Scheduling Standards Consortium (SSC), a concern made up of various industry players focused on solving freight transportation scheduling challenges by establishing industry standards geared towards “simplifying scheduling, improving automation for businesses, and generating industry-wide efficiencies.”
Established in December 2022, one of the SSC’s key objectives is putting an onus on the urgency currently needed to standardize how information is exchanged between facilities and transportation providers to be able to schedule shipments. And the SSC noted that a key driver for its formation centers around how scheduling system and interface fragmentation represents what it called a “point of friction” among carriers, brokers, and shippers.
SSC’s founding members include: San Francisco-based Uber Freight, a subsidiary of the ubiquitous, ride-sharing service Uber, whose proprietary app matches trucking companies with loads to haul; Seattle-based digital freight network Convoy; and Lowell, Ark.-based trucking and intermodal services bellwether J.B. Hunt. Other member companies that have subsequently joined include: Arrive Logistics; Blue Yonder; Coyote Logistics; DHL; e2open; Echo Global Logistics; Lineage, Mastery; One Network Enterprises; Oracle; Ryder; TI NTG; Werner; and Worldwide Express.
FourKites said it will join the SSC as a collaborator and is the first real-time visibility platform in this initiative.
“We’re thrilled to participate in this consortium of industry heavy-hitters,” said Mathew Elenjickal, founder and CEO of FourKites, in a statement. “A single API between our Appointment Manager solution and our shippers’ carrier networks will create a frictionless operating environment for everyone involved, and will make FourKites’ customers Shippers of Choice, with lower cost to serve and a reliable, reputable integration.”
The standard is available on the open-source community GitHub and being made available to any entity within the freight and supply chain communities that wish to participate.
According to SSC, scheduling systems and interface fragmentation are significant points of friction amongst carriers, brokers, and shippers. The new Technical Standard took eight months to develop and included plenty of collaboration among SSC’s founding members and the many other companies that have joined since. The group said it will break down the “barriers that have long hindered efficient data sharing among shippers, carriers, and brokers.”
Greg Brady, founder and executive chairman of One Network Enterprises, said at the 2023 CSCMP EDGE conference that the collaboration among technology providers to adopt the standard will have a ripple effect throughout the supply chain.
“The opportunity here, and I think the real story, is [it is] much bigger for the shippers,” he said.
Brady said that One Network has run an older version of the standard, albeit in a proprietary way for several years.
“We have proven [this approach] works, and we will be rolling [our version] into this,” he said.
Smarter decisions, fewer wasted miles
The SSC’s API-based approach will allow companies to access the latest data and make smart decisions to increase efficiency, reduce empty miles and waste, lower costs, and improve service outcomes. As each company aligns with these standards, the industry can better orchestrate freight needs with data-informed systems, the group said.
Opening up the standard to anyone will foster better cooperation among all the parties in the supply chain, the group noted. Brady said retailers could see a 25% reduction in inventory cost through the standards due to what he said was a “three-to-four-day” lead time cycle for collecting and approving pickup and drop-off times and carrier and facilities coordination.
It will have a “dramatic impact,” he said, on utilization of freight, the ability to move product, and the opportunity to improve inventory efficiency. More than 14,000 companies are eligible to participate once the API is made available.
More than 800 companies have reached out to or joined the SSC, indicating the level of interest, the group said.
SSC is looking to bring together industry stakeholders including brokers, 3PLs, TMS and WMS vendors, to help streamline the freight process.
