Shippers rely on 3PLs for supply-chain digitalization

Fast Consumer Deliveries

The trend toward fast consumer deliveries has had an impact on technology development and on the role 3PLs can play in helping shippers. “There are tons of companies coming out with different types of technology,” said Phil Schmidbauer, director of engineering solutions at ODW, a 3PL that serves the personal care, food and beverage, consumer goods, and industrial sectors. “Many of them are startups building tools to make consumer deliveries faster better cheaper.”

Technologies that allow for today’s same-day and overnight deliveries include warehouse systems that slash times for order processing and transportation management systems that optimize transportation modes and routes. In some warehouses, robotics and automation mean that consumer orders are barely touched by humans as they make their way from shelves to trucks.

“3PLs are helping customers get to this point by providing access to technology,” said Schmidbauer. “Smaller shippers usually can’t leverage the latest technologies so they use 3PLs to integrate it for them. A lot of work goes into sharing information and making sure it is clean and accurate.”

DHL increasingly sees its role as normalizing and experimenting with emerging technologies for the benefit of customers. “They can leverage our ability to scale,” said Gillespie. “They don’t have to invest in costly transportation management systems because they get that with us.”

DHL Supply Chain, the Americas recently announced new partnerships with two such emerging technology companies—Convoy and Turvo. Both integrate with MySupplyChain—DHL’s proprietary end-to-end visibility and business intelligence solution.

DHL Supply Chain is the first 3PL to partner with Convoy, a nationwide digital freight network that helps move millions of truckloads by connecting trucking companies with shippers. DHL has integrated Convoy’s network of carriers directly into its supply chain application providing shippers access to Convoy’s automated real-time pricing and increased capacity.

“Convoy provides a digital connection to the small carrier community,” said Gillespie. “The old way was to go to load boards or to pick up the phone and dial for trucks. Your ten favorite carriers might fall through and you don’t know about the five-thousand others out there.”

Convoy uses a crowdsourcing application that speeds up communications between shippers and carriers and uses machine learning to predict what rates should be, making them more predictable. “It means sleeping better at night knowing you have more available capacity,” said Gillespie.

Turvo addresses the challenge of how to get all supply-chain stakeholders to talk to one another while all see the same information. The real-time collaborative logistics platform allows all parties to a shipment to view and take action on the same information at the same time, increasing visibility and collaboration across the lifecycle of a shipment. “Like blockchain technology, Turvo allows everyone in the supply chain to see the same source of truth,” said Gillespie.