BlueBox Systems, one of the leading developers of intelligent air freight tracking solutions, is now offering its customers even more accurate access to advance and real-time estimated time of arrival (ETA) information for all shipments. This function is important for both shippers and forwarders. It gives them a better overview of their transport and logistics processes and allows them to plan their processes more efficiently. Being able to calculate arrival times quickly and accurately reduces the consequences of irregularities such as delays and lowers transportation costs.
Credit: BlueBox Systems
The last few years have clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of supply chains: Labor and material shortages, the Covid-19 pandemic or ongoing political tensions and conflicts, disrupted the movement of goods and services. This caused uncertainty among shippers and freight forwarders. In the past, the industry has worked with loose ETA timeframes; but this is now insufficient. Customers want and demand precise insights: Where is my shipment right now? When will it arrive?
Users of BlueBox Systems include shippers, transport companies and logistics service providers. Knowing exact arrival times enables them to support customers quickly by assessing the impact on processes or production. With the latest feature from BlueBox Systems, ETAs are more accurate than ever before, opening up new opportunities to make the entire supply chain network more efficient and reduce costs.
"We continuously track thousands of shipments every day. Using this information, we have built a database from which we can derive the ETA of new shipments. This intelligent function offers shippers and carriers the best possible prediction given the information available," explains Martin Bernemann, Chief Technical Officer at BlueBox Systems.
With precise ETA predictions, logisticians can estimate exactly where the shipment is and when it will arrive at its destination. This allows proactive adjustments to be made to downstream activities in the supply chain, such as rescheduling loading dates. As a result, late fees can be avoided, or personnel deployment optimized. The resources used for manual processes can also be improved. Spending hours tracking shipments manually wastes time.
"Many companies struggle with delays, costly disruptions and dissatisfied end customers because they have limited insight into their air freight shipments. Real-time tracking and accurate ETA predictions can therefore provide a real competitive advantage. We use BlueBox Systems to take our 4PL services to a new level for our customers. By using this software, we can optimize logistics processes and provide our customers with better visibility and control over their air freight shipments," stated Franziska Damm, Director at 4flow.
"If you don't know exactly where your expected deliveries are and if you don't fulfill your customers' wishes in terms of deliveries, all other positive services can become pointless. For this reason, supply chain transparency plays an important role. With BlueBox Systems, we want to solve one of the biggest challenges in the supply chain - inaccurate ETAs from carriers," says Martin Bernemann.