Using Analytics to Boost Multi-Carrier Performance

Partnering with multiple carriers is an emerging trend in the parcel and express logistics segment. With multiple carrier partners, businesses can offer diverse service offerings, such as same-day/next-day deliveries, delivery scheduling, rapid scaling, and unlocking new audiences. However, the ecosystem can easily turn into a broth pot being stirred by multiple cooks if not managed properly. 

Poor or negligible visibility across carrier operations, inability to unify the operations for streamlined management, and the absolute lack of cumulative performance evaluation for strategic improvements – the list of challenges is definitely consequential. This is where analytics comes into the picture. Below, we share five excellent ways analytics can help businesses boost multi-carrier performance and get the best value out of their multi-carrier network.

#1 – Actionable Insights for Carrier Optimization 

Analysis of consolidated carrier data, shipment data, and business processes offers crucial insights and data points, such as the least expensive partner for a particular shipment or type of delivery or location. Businesses can easily identify the core actionable insights, such as the fastest delivery partner, the partner with the highest SLA adherence, the partner with excellent customer feedback, etc.

These insights help businesses take strategic initiatives and make highly targeted and well-informed business decisions. Advanced multi-carrier management platforms with in-built analytics allow businesses to put these insights to work by allowing businesses to set specific rules for order allocation, carrier prioritization, etc. and even compare vendors across multiple offerings. All this improves vendor selection and boosts operational efficiency, ultimately amounting to higher ROI.

#2 – Cost Calculators for Optimal Vendor Selection

Advanced analytics platforms make it possible for businesses to process carrier data in one place and draw highly actionable data visualizations across multiple business deliverables. For instance, businesses can get a comprehensive consolidation of data, such as vendor rates, delivery/pickup locations, serviceability, and financials. 

Now, these databases can be used to calculate costs for every trip, which helps businesses choose the most profitable partner for each logistical movement. As businesses are able to calculate costs for all types of deliveries, namely – same-day, next-day, planned, etc., they can always ensure highly cost-efficient movements and limit the expensive carriers for express logistics requirements.

#3 – Performance Measurement for Increased Productivity

Another crucial way analytics can boost multi-carrier performance is by enabling businesses to set unified performance evaluation metrics and benchmarks for all the partners. They can set custom parameters for performance evaluation and assess whether a particular carrier partner is actually contributing to the business or is a sink for resources.

Legacy systems fail to unify the carrier data from multiple parties in one place and offer highly consumable and usable insights to businesses for strategic decisions. Smart multi-carrier management platforms offer highly customizable performance metrics, such as ETA SLA breaches, NDRs, PoDs, driver deviations, etc., to ensure higher levels of productivity and efficient operations. Thus, businesses can improve visibility & transparency via real-time KPI tracking and identify and mitigate risks in logistics operations.

#4 – Route Optimization for Efficient Field Operations

Route planning and optimization is a complex process, which can evolve into an even more complex puzzle with multiple carriers and shipments going out in multiple directions. Advanced analytics platforms can help businesses overcome this challenge by offering highly efficient routes based on custom business constraints. 

Data analytics engines can process complex and large data sets for shipments, vendors, and routes to increase the efficiency of logistics operations and reduce costs across the entire multi-carrier ecosystem. Businesses can plan routes for shipments that are yet to arrive at the consolidation centers/warehouses and arrange unloading/consolidation in an efficient manner. They can also get real-time insights into the shipment movements that can be leveraged for multiple actions, such as customer alerts, tracking driver movements, and field operations planning.

#5 – Unified Analysis of NDRs, Customer Feedback, and PoDs for Strategic Improvements

Managing NDRs, customer feedback, and PoDs in a multi-carrier ecosystem is impossible when done manually. This is because it becomes hard to ensure the credibility of the information received from the logistics partners and to use them for process improvement. 

On the other hand, multi-carrier management platforms with analytics enable businesses to collaborate across multiple vendors and gather entire information related to NDRs, PoDs, and customer feedback in one place. Further, the data is presented in the form of pretty reports, and rich visualizations that empower businesses to leverage the field insights for cumulative business decision-making. 

Making Analytics Work for Your Business – The Step Ahead

Analytics and data visualization can help businesses transform their multi-carrier management and unlock amplified revenue, insights into core processes, and potential areas for improvement. Thus, they can take the guesswork out of the process and leverage the numbers for making the right decisions right from the first step – vendor onboarding. 

Businesses can drive logistics excellence and orchestrate last mile deliveries in the most efficient way by leveraging data insights. They can also automate financials, make the financial processes more streamlined and transparent, and ensure bias-free carrier management without having to manually oversee the operations. 

Leveraging smart technology-powered advanced multi-carrier management platforms that come with in-built analytics and data visualization capabilities is a sure-shot way to stride ahead and unlock endless business opportunities.