Cover Story
Mariusz Bugno / Shutterstock . com partnership with freight broker Uber Freight , providing ocean milestones that complement the broker ’ s existing surface transportation visibility data .
Gnosis , a provider of logistics software , is a key vendor in that ecosystem , providing ocean , terminal and rail milestones directly to shippers but also to multimodal visibility aggregators and even 3PLs .
“ We see varying levels of interest among BCOs in getting visibility data directly from their 3PLs ,” said Jake Hoffman , CTO of Gnosis . “ To some BCOs , they would rather utilize someone like us — a standalone platform — so that they can continuously evaluate their logistics providers on performance and not become too reliant on them from a digital standpoint . It ’ s an exercise in de-risking their supply chain so they aren ’ t too dependent on any one provider .
“ At the other end of the spectrum , BCOs strongly believe that good visibility should be a core part of the provider ’ s offering , and that they shouldn ’ t have to pay extra for a standalone platform ,” he added . “ This works well in the cases where a BCO uses one 3PL or forwarder for all of their freight .”
Hoffman said most BCOs have an enterprise resource planning ( ERP ) system where they need tracking data to update purchase orders with better delivery estimated times of arrival and status updates .
“ That ’ s where we lean on our [ APIs ] and integration capabilities to get our customers what they need ,” he said .
Data or a platform ?
The issue of whether shippers want visibility tied to a 3PL relationship is connected to another issue : whether shippers simply want a data feed or a platform that utilizes that data .
“ We started as a data company , but not all of our customers can handle or make sense of such a vast amount of data ,”
OpenTrack ’ s Valsi said . “ The reality is that ocean freight visibility is so complex that it requires a dedicated software platform to produce the ‘ right ’ answer — the same answer that a veteran operations team would get from fully understanding the situation and comparing the data from multiple sources . It ’ s one thing to get the data right , but it ’ s even more important to deliver a solution to real persistent problems .”
“ The market is trending toward better data , but data can only get you so far .”
Hoffman , too , said most customers need help contextualizing the data even if it ’ s accurate .
“ I think the market is trending toward better data , but data can only get you so far ,” he said . “ We can turn on a fire hose of container milestone events for our shipper customers , but then what ? They would need the proper infrastructure in place to sort , filter and identify exceptions . That ’ s where we are doubling down on the software itself , allowing our customers to actually do their jobs .”
Jain said a bifurcation is happening in which a shipper ’ s internal team purely wants data , but it uses an external platform to serve everyone outside that logistic team .
“ The increasing trend is the input and output data that goes into APIs for PowerBI and ERPs ,” he said . “ But they want their consignees to be using a platform . They want a dashboard for their stakeholders .”
email : eric . johnson @ spglobal . com
14 Journal of Commerce | May 6 , 2024 www . joc . com