Control Tower Dashboard
What happens when a company cannot track its shipments once they leave the production facility or warehouse? It turns out that several problems can result from a lack of visibility into each stage of the shipping and delivery process - issues that could negatively affect a company's reputation and erode the customer's trust in its capabilities.
For example, a company can end up looking bad when one of its shipments arrives late, and neither the company nor the customer knew about the delay in advance. This means the company is blind to the fact that something is going wrong in transit to cause the shipment to show up later than promised to the customer. Even if the delays are not the shipper's fault, not having visibility of the cargo's whereabouts can give a customer a negative view of the company.
Another scenario that impacts a company's reputation is when products and shipments go missing or spoil while being delayed at the port. When dealing with perishable cargoes or time-sensitive shipments, it is crucial for both the shipper and receiver to have visibility of where the shipment is in its journey. As a result, the receiver can make the appropriate changes or other arrangements if they know the load is delayed or impacted in advance. These are examples of a few of the problems the new Control Tower Dashboard has been built to solve.
Benefits for the Customer
The Control Tower supports end-to-end (shipper to receiver) supply chain visibility for the user across multiple countries. It provides shipment tracking details and capabilities, including GPS location. Users can also follow the domestic leg of the container’s trip and maintain the ability to visualize the status of the container throughout the journey.
All information is conveniently located in one place and it can be accessed by all supply chain channels. Control Tower offers value for the transportation and logistics industry by providing visibility into specific areas such as costs, transit time, and shipment location. The Control Tower software looks to solve for and provide answers to the following questions:
- Where is the container?
- How many containers are on time?
- Are there any delays?
- What is causing the delay?
Control Tower Features
Among the many features that Control Tower has to offer, perhaps one of the most significant is the ability to configure filters to reflect the users’ preferences. Filters like time period, location, and service provider, can be selected to show a precise view of specific segments within your operation. The sleek-looking dashboard offers a bird’s eye view of what’s going on with extensive data on shipments and time-sensitive events while also providing access and visibility to past shipments.
With this open standard software and its simple user interface, there is improved cost visibility. The users can access real-time data to better forecast transportation costs. The data helps define shipment costs and provides visuals into their income and invoice statuses to answer questions like ‘Has the customer been billed?’ or ‘Have the customers paid?’ Additionally, the software can anticipate delays and proactively generate alerts for customers to plan accordingly.
The Future Awaits
While the Control Tower is a software as a service that Accelalpha is providing to customers during specific projects, the software is not yet ready for sale at this time. But the good news is that it will be very soon! Control Tower is in the pre-integration and software testing phase with Oracle, and it is anticipated that the solution can be deployed within 3-6 months. Once released, Control Tower will be available within 3 to 8 weeks, depending upon the complexity of the customer’s needs, and can be deployed quickly. In the meantime, the Control Tower prototype is being fine-tuned and tested to ensure its effectiveness so it can add even more benefits to future Oracle Transportation Management (OTM) implementations.