Forto, the first European digital freight forwarder, hasy announced the launch of a new customer functionality to provide superior supply chain visibility.
Building on its industry-leading expertise in developing data-powered solutions to help businesses build resilient supply chains, Forto’s new capabilities provide the right information at the right time to empower supply chain managers to proactively mitigate or avoid altogether the impact of common shipment disruptions.
Cornelia Zenker, Transport Manager & Logistics at SellerX, said: “As we are scaling Amazon businesses around the world, we need a reliable logistics partner. “Receiving real-time visibility on my shipment from my freight forwarder enables me to manage my cargo, without the need for multiple platforms or systems. “With Forto Moments of Truth, I am proactively informed of changes in a simple way. I can see at a glance if it’s something I need to jump on to mitigate a possible delay or just a heads up. I feel in control.”
Forto Moments of Truth co-developed with 30 customers
Inspired by the design concept of “Moments of Truth”, Forto started with the customer and worked backwards.
Forto’s technology team gathered feedback from 30 businesses to understand the questions they ask themselves while planning a shipment.
Forto leverages the best data in the industry and proprietary algorithmic decision-making technology to answer those questions within the context of the transport plan, that is, anticipating the consequences of possible disruptions on the shipment lifecycle and suggesting actions to mitigate them.
These answers to customers’ questions are Forto Moments of Truth (MoTs), which are split across three phases of a shipment – booking, transport, and delivery.
The first MoTs to be rolled out to customers are:
- Cargo Ready Date – will the cargo be ready for the planned transport?
- Rolled Cargo – will the container make it onto the vessel?
- Main Carriage – will the main carriage depart and arrive on time?
- Customs – did my goods go through import customs clearance?
- Demurrage – has the container left the port on time? and Detention – is the container returned on time?
Four additional MoTs will be launched in the course of 2023:
- Booking initiated – does the supplier initiate booking on time?
- Booking confirmed – is the booking really confirmed?
- Capacity – is the right capacity fulfilled at the right time?
- On-carriage – will the shipment arrive at the warehouse on time?
Data quality and proprietary technology as cornerstones
Each MoT is generated through an extensive data analysis and decision-making process orchestrated by Forto’s own Transport Management System (TMS) and triggers an email to the customer as well as a notification in Forto’s SHIP platform.
Forto’s TMS collects and processes over 1.2 million data points monthly to generate the first five MoTs.
In order to provide businesses with accurate, complete, and timely data, Forto MoTs pull data from over 10 data sources, including carriers, pre-carriage and on-carriage partners, customs, ports, and tracking aggregators.
Moreover, Forto’s data goes well beyond the location of the goods and includes information about shippers’ actions, prices and capacity thus allowing for an in-depth picture of a shipment status.
As an example, the Demurrage and Detention MoT does not only surface the information about the amount of free days left, but also provides a cost estimation in case free days are exceeded.
The insights powering MoTs go beyond industry standards available through aggregators and rely on the combination of a broader in-house and third-party transport, shipment, commercial and operational data.
The quality of the data is guaranteed through a mix of an always-on data monitoring solution that processes 30,000 shipment events each week, automated alert mechanisms that detect data inaccuracies and anomalies, and a data quality cockpit running across 20 data quality dimensions.
The data processing is based on proprietary technology and is therefore customizable and scalable to enable further use cases such as actionability and predictability.
Powering operational excellence
As both a digital freight forwarder and a technology company, Forto is in a unique position to feed the MoTs back to its operational teams, thus enabling proactive exception handling.
This creates a direct feedback loop for fast iteration to improve the effectiveness and timeliness of the insights, which in return strengthens Forto’s operational excellence and helps deliver superior customer service in freight forwarding.
Kamil Rodoper, Chief Product Officer at Forto, said: “Businesses across the globe are facing complex challenges. We want to empower them to make fast, accurate, and strategic decisions for resilient logistics operations. “That is why Forto Moments of Truth only share relevant and timely information, clearly indicating an important change in the shipment lifecycle and whether an action is needed. “This allows for proactive exception handling, risk management and stricter cost control. “The MoTs are the result of what makes Forto the leading European digital freight forwarder: the trust we have built with our customers by delivering high-quality freight forwarding services and our cutting-edge technology – such as our own Transport Management System that is the keystone of our strength in data and insights generation.”
