CHICAGO, Dec. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FourKites®, the #1 real-time supply chain visibility platform, today announced significant growth numbers for 2020, as the company and its global community of shippers, carriers, brokers and 3PLs increasingly turned to real-time supply chain visibility to manage the unprecedented disruptions spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the challenges, FourKites and its community introduced a slew of new innovations that the industry leveraged to improve delivery times, reduce detention, optimize labor and protect workers.
Growth
According to Gartner, by 2023, 50% of leading global enterprises will have invested in real-time transportation visibility solutions1. Major media including the Wall Street Journal and Forbes continue to write about the accelerated move to real-time transportation visibility platforms (RTTVPs) that can help the logistics industry better manage operations amid this year’s severe supply chain disruptions.
As the creator of and leader in this market, FourKites saw demand for its superior network of logistics tracking data and proprietary machine learning technology surge in 2020, as evidenced by the following:
- Record growth in new shipping customers, particularly among leading retailers, F&B companies, CPG leaders and manufacturers.
- Greater than 100% growth in total shipment volumes, including ocean load growth of 149%, and rail and intermodal growth of 49%.
- International load volume growth of 200%, including a 400%+ increase in tracked loads in EMEA and 95%+ growth in LATAM.
- 67% increase in carriers onboarded, and more than 350 carriers, brokers and 3PLs qualifying as Premier Carriers.
- 63% increase in the number of drivers – now totaling 377,000 individuals – using CarrierLink.
- Greater than 70% growth in connected facilities, now totaling over 6 million individual facilities.
Innovation
FourKites continues to build its product and technology roadmap in close collaboration with its customers, a model that was instrumental in helping FourKites deliver 126 new product enhancements and features in 2020, including:
- Dynamic YardSM, creating a new category of software – estimated to be worth $7.9B by 2027 – that gives enterprises the ability to proactively manage all of their facilities based on real-time in-transit and in-yard freight data and analytics.
- Appointment ManagerSM to help facilities, carriers and 3PLs create, manage and collaborate efficiently on pickup and receiving appointments.
- A host of new collaboration and paperless document processing capabilities to accelerate shipments and facilitate touchless document processing.
- Multimodal End-to-End Purchase Order Tracking, greatly simplifying freight visibility for inbound logistics, track-and-trace, customer service, procurement/materials management, merchandising and other teams that use PO numbers to track freight location.
- Dynamic ETA® for LTL, enabling shippers, carriers and 3PLs to track LTL shipments from pre-pickup to proof of delivery.
- Sustainability Dashboards to help reduce the supply chain’s carbon footprint.
- An interactive live Network Congestion Map that provides visibility into cross-border freight movements across North America, Mexico and Europe, port delays of over 230 ports globally, and interstate transit metrics
- Direct Store Delivery and Mobile App, enabling store managers to track deliveries to the stores they manage and communicate with drivers in real time.
Improved Outcomes Across Industries
“2020 will go down in the books as the most challenging year modern supply chains have ever encountered,” said FourKites CEO and Founder Mathew Elenjickal. “And yet the community rose to the occasion, innovating and collaborating based on real-time visibility data to keep food, medicine and goods of every kind flowing during a time of crisis.”
Every industry has distinct challenges. Food & beverage, CPG and retail companies are facing a holiday shopping season like no other as consumers opt increasingly for online purchases and curbside pickup. The pharma industry is striving to meet unprecedented demand for medical products, many of which require precise handling and temperature controls in transit, as well as the ability to scale globally. Manufacturers are adjusting to new demand patterns. And carriers are trying to maximize efficiency during a severe capacity crunch.
In this time of supply chain upheaval, real-time data have been vital in helping companies respond to these challenges, with the FourKites platform playing a critical role in driving visibility, transparency and collaboration across the supply chain ecosystem. In aggregate in 2020, FourKites customers improved OTIF by 20%, reduced detention by 7.5%, and relieved countless customer service teams of the need for manual responses to time-consuming “where’s my shipment?” inquiries.
Food & Beverage and CPG
- "With FourKites, we have all the information we need in one single reliable source, in real time. Knowing the variations of ETAs in real time allows us to better manage our inventories – even reducing the percentage of safety stock of some raw materials so we can change to plan for just-in-time production. This connection that exists between planning and reliable transit times allows us to be prepared for any change in volume, either up or down, and – above all – to attend to the urgency that we may have in production changes.” – Fernanda Ongay, Transportation Manager at Constellation Brands, Inc.
Retail
- “Visibility has been hugely valuable for us, and as a large retailer and shipper, adding PO lifecycle visibility means we can now identify critical orders faster, eliminate inefficiencies and make better decisions on lead times. Meijer prides itself on being first to market in many categories, and we are thrilled to have co-innovated this product with the FourKites team, which will drive enhanced transparency throughout our entire supply chain.” – Paul Thompson, Inbound Logistics Director, Meijer
Chemical
- “Digitization is an important step in Dow’s journey toward the implementation of an end-to-end supply chain visibility strategy. Our strategic partnership with FourKites enables us to digitize and move away from a manual way of working to an integrated technology platform workflow.” – Kevin Nielen, Logistics Leader, Dow Chemical
Manufacturing
- “FourKites’ automated reporting and tracking provides more accurate and real-time data, which allows Canfor to respond to customer inquiries quicker and with up-to-date information on their upcoming shipments that would have otherwise had to be manually tracked.” – Bob Hayes, Vice President, Global Supply Chain, Canfor
Carriers
- “Load visibility is among the highest priorities for shippers today, necessary to build resilient supply chains amid ongoing market instability accelerated by the global pandemic. From the start, Uber Freight has made it a priority to increase transparency in the freight industry, enabling shippers to effectively streamline operations, proactively manage exceptions and facility resources, and save time and costs across the supply chain – including for their carriers. Through our always-on technology and partnerships with industry leaders such as FourKites, we’re proud to provide crucial around-the-clock insight into the loads shipped on the Uber Freight platform.” – Gony Noy, General Manager - Load Visibility, Uber Freight
About FourKites
FourKites is the largest predictive supply chain visibility platform, delivering real-time visibility and predictive analytics for the broadest network of Global 1000 companies and third-party logistics firms. Using a proprietary algorithm to calculate shipment arrival times, FourKites enables customers to lower operating costs, improve on-time performance and strengthen end-customer relationships. FourKites’ network spans millions of GPS/ELD devices in 176+ countries and covers all modes, including truckload, LTL, ocean, rail, air, intermodal, courier and parcel, and extends real-time visibility into the yard. FourKites has 1 million loads and over $100 billion in freight under management at any given time. The platform is optimized for mobile and equipped with market-leading end-to-end security.
To learn more, visit https://www.fourkites.com/.
Media Contact:
Marianna Vyridi
Big Valley Marketing for FourKites
(650) 468-3263
mvyridi@bigvalley.co
1 Gartner, Market Guide for Real-Time Transportation Visibility Platforms, Bart De Muynck, 25 February 2020.