 |
| Recent Articles |
End-to-end Supply Chain Services
CEVA Logistics said it has appointed Bill Aldridge as executive vice president for its newly created business unit, International Logistics Solutions. ILS aims to provide end-to-end supply chain services from...
Retail Container Traffic Falling...
As discussed previously, within this blog...we have plenty of big ships...but the market will not have the space/container demands matching the the past few years... Traffic at U.S. ports that handle most...
Looking Back On The CHaINA Awards
A few weeks ago, the China Supply Chain Council presented its CHaINA Awards for the third times to celebrate superior achievements that are enabled by supply chain management in China. Over 150 supply...
Journey To Supply Chain Excellence
Having a competitive advantage with supply chain management (SCM) no longer exists. That window of opportunity has closed. Some firms took advantage of and exploited it well. Many companies however...
China Leading RFID Utilization
A massive national identification card program will allow China to leap forward this year as the world's largest market for radio frequency identification devices, or RFID, by value, according to a new industry study.
Supply Chain Granularity
Concept of Granularity. A company is not homogeneous. It has different granularity. Granularity reflects the size of the units being assessed, whether large or small. Think of the United States as a country, then each...
|
| 03.07.08
The On-Line Solution For Demanding Customers
 By Michael Stolarczyk
Where is my stuff?
Isn't it all to often the question? If you have a small business shipping what it sells, or if you buy from one, this is happening all the time: once a shipment has left your premises, it is most of the time completely invisible for you or your customers. You are depending on the efficiency and good will of a transporter with whom you often have no direct communication, should anything go wrong.
Your customer is just as left in the dark as you are. But it is not better for the party organising the transport: it has no way of making sure that the delivery address is correct, that there will be someone to receive the package or simply to warn that his trucker is blocked in a trafic jam.
This was the first idea behind VisibleLogistics. For people running small businesses, keeping tracks of orders and shipments is vital but it can also be very time consuming. Phone calls, sending email and faxes are all important for managing communication with suppliers, transporters or customers.
And very often, these people have to copy all these exchanges of information in spreadsheets again.
This requires duplication of efforts and it takes precious time. The ideal tool for small and medium businesses.
With VisibleLogistics, smaller business can save themselves these tedious aspects and unreliable ways of communicating. VisibleLogistics merges in one on-line and on-demand application all the processes linked to orders, deliveries, inventory and communication with the other partners of the supply chain. It monitors orders and shipments status, and automatically sends e-mails to the relevant parties when important changes occur.
Unlike the track and trace systems provided by the express carriers and large shipping companies, VisibleLogistics monitors orders and shipments across different carriers and transport modes. This can be useful if agents are moving shipments with a variety of different carriers. Indeed VisibleLogistics is being used by some small forwarders to provide shipment monitoring and status updates to their customers, enabling them to provide service levels that match those of their larger competitors.
Sell it, Ship it, See it.
The benefits of VisibleLogistics are improved accuracy, round the clock availability of information for customers and a single view of all order and shipment activity.
VisibleLogistics is designed to support small businesses by:
- Managing orders using an easy to use application controlled through any standard web browser
- Giving buyers and carriers on-line access to information about orders, status and catalogues
- Notifying business partners by e-mail or SMS when orders are created and when statuses change
- Adding comments to orders, communicating with business partners and vice-versa
The basic features of VisibleLogistics are free to use and can be found at www.visiblelogistics.com.
I love it..."where is my stuff?"
Don't we always ask this of ourselves, and plenty of times during our daily work life...this is an awesome tool for you gonzo supply chain executives out there...
Ken Lyon and crew are onto something here...give it a try...tell me what you think.
Comments
About the Author:
Michael Stolarczyk is currently Senior Director, of Business Development for Exel in their Westerville, Ohio General Office for the Americas. He is also on the Board of Advisors for West Virginia University’s School of Business. http://blogonlog.blogspot.com |
!
0 comments:
Post a Comment