FourKites has released an update to its ocean visibility solution, Dynamic Ocean. Dynamic Ocean provides firms with accurate information about international shipping operations. It enables manufacturers and 3PLs to better understand the likely arrival times of components and finished goods at their destinations.
At its heart, Dynamic Ocean is an information service that leverages data from a host of different sources. It has direct integrations with over 35 major carriers and access to information from more than 150 major global terminals. The schedule data it ingests and analyses come from over 11,000 shipping lanes, more than 100 carriers and over 3,00 services.
The latest release includes iterative improvements that will further assist customers in mitigating disruptions affecting shipping. With traffic restricted on the Panama Canal and the major disruption caused by the conflict in the Red Sea, firms need access to timely information to reduce fees such as preventable detention and demurrage charges. The Red Sea crisis is also forcing the rerouting of ships to longer routes. Carriers are adjusting allocations, which may result in delays on other routes, though it will improve reliability overall.
What is in the latest release of Dynamic Ocean
In general, the updates fall into two main areas. The first is that it has decreased the delay in receiving data from third parties. The second is improvements to the user interface that enable international teams to collaborate better.
Priya Rajagopalan, Chief Product Officer at FourKites, commented, “In the face of military conflict in the Red Sea, storms and supply shortages, end-to-end visibility is critical to resilient ocean supply chains. And when disruptions do occur, minutes matter. With our enhancements to ocean visibility, FourKites is giving cross-functional teams access to the real-time supply chain data and insights they need — helping them seamlessly integrate their international supply chain and keep their customers happy.”
FourKites has improved the dynamic ETA and ETDs. It now achieves over 90% accuracy for vessel arrival terminal predictions. It also synchronizes the ETAs and ETD, where multiple shipments are on the same vessel. FourKites believes that its ETAs are 27-37% more accurate than carrier ETAs on average as it takes into account other factors.
FourKites now obtains and distributes data faster. Dynamic Ocean now provides information on events that impact shipping within 8 hours of their occurrence 85% of the time, 35% faster than the industry average. It allows organisations to mitigate risks faster and keep customers informed of any downstream impact.
With faster access to information, FourKites has also enhanced its alerts platform. The system will surface more accurate alerts faster. It enables customers to proactively identify exceptions and identify containers that might incur detention and demurrage fees.
Finally, the platform includes an end-to-end user interface that enables international teams to work together. Eliminating silos with a single view of data from across the globe. It enables teams to better coordinate, both internally and with third parties.
The interface includes a new detention and demurrage dashboard and analytics to help customers reduce penalties tied to delays, manage carrier performance, and analyse cost and service levels by lane. Dashboards across the Dynamic Ocean solution are customisable, proactive and provide real-time alerting. These alerts are across multiple channels and include over 18 categories of events that span the lifecycle of a shipment. Events such as ETA status changes, imminent stops, milestone confirmations and unexpected shipment detention.
The platform also provides a real-time view of all inbound inventory. Customers are able to optimise safety stock levels with mitigating actions should delays be identified. With greater visibility of inventory working capital is optimised and inventory turnover accelerated. It enables customers to improve the efficiency of order processing, fulfilment, invoicing and collection.
Customers see benefits
The updates to Dynamic Ocean enhance the existing ability of the platform to identify costs and waste in the supply chain. Especially during a period of global disruption, give organisations the agility they need.
Davide Busato, Logistic Competence Center Innovation Project Manager at Barilla, commented, “Adding FourKites’ ocean visibility to our technology stack was an obvious choice, and it has paid off handsomely. Now we don’t need to spend time hunting for answers and instead can focus on more important tasks like acting on the FourKites data to improve customer satisfaction.
“Our goals with FourKites in 2024 are to track 90% of our shipments, reduce penalties with carriers by 5% and decrease inefficient communication with partners by 10-15%. Thanks to FourKites’ ability to send automatic ETAs with delay updates, among other features, we’re well on our way to meeting these metrics.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Dynamic Ocean’s approach uses multi-layered data to provide continuous visibility of the end-to-end supply chain that is reliable. It enables organisations to make decisions in a timely manner when new issues arise. The visibility of changes in schedules is almost immediate. By leveraging robotic process automation and its industry-specific enhanced data architecture, FourKites can provide customers with more accurate data than other sources. It uses machine learning to enhance predictions. With its timely alerts, enabling customers to better navigate unexpected disruptions, improve handoffs between teams and reduce costs.
