It’s official: our GateHouse Logistics Acquisition is complete! After entering into a partnership in early October, we soon realized focusing on a common goal as one company was the next logical step. Despite the Atlantic separating our offices, we share a culture focused on high-fidelity data and customer-first prioritization. A unified project44 is better for us, for our customers and partners, and for consumers.
We now offer the world’s largest and only GDPR-compliant visibility platform across North America and Europe. The project44 platforms covers more than 175,000 capacity providers, more than 760 telematics data partnerships and integrations, and connections with major transportation management systems (TMS).
We’re incredibly proud of this achievement. But North America and Europe coverage is just phase one.
Why a Global Visibility Platform is the Goal
Between manufacturing, assembly, distribution, shipment, and end-user delivery, a product’s supply chain can easily touch a few dozen countries, and several continents. Even organizations with smaller footprints feel the pain as they plan expansions outside their markets. The lack of a global, real-time visibility solution leaves these companies with two options:
- forego tracking and insights in geographies and modes their current visibility system does not cover, or
- attempt to marry the data from multiple visibility vendors into one central location.
This choice is practically the definition of a dilemma. Each one carries a heavy cost, whether in opportunity cost or in significant investment in vendors, integrations, and professional services.
Saving funds by deferring a solution will cost businesses in the long-run as competitors differentiate themselves with the reliable tracking end-users crave. (Not to mention the predictive analytics that provide insights into warehouse management, fleet, and operational savings opportunities.) And the businesses that pony up and make the investment will soon navigate a dizzying web of technology and manual processes to input, connect, and interpret the data. Synthesizing and presenting that data into a format customers can actually use will likely necessitate its own lengthy (and costly) engagement.
The companies that recognize their supply chains as competitive differentiators, not cost centers, will lead the pack. But rather than choosing multiple real-time visibility solutions, investing in a platform dedicated to global expansion is the smart bet.
project44’s Plans for Global Advanced Visibility
The future of Advanced Visibility doesn’t lie in linking tracking companies’ technology together. Creating one platform that spans as many modes and geographies as possible is the only path toward global visibility as the examples above illustrate. This solution requires a constantly evolving network that keeps pace with the needs of customers and consumer demands. A.k.a., giving companies of any size an Amazon-like customer experience.
This view is shared by the industry’s leading analysts. In Gartner’s Market Guide for Real-Time Visibility Providers, “Visibility/traceability across the end-to-end supply chain” was the most funded 2018 initiative in a survey across supply chain leaders. The Gartner guide, which features both project44 and GateHouse Logistics, also encourages supply chain leaders to focus on vendors’ product roadmaps to ensure they include:
- multiple modes of tracking
- expanding geographical coverage
- intelligence capabilities such as advanced analytics and machine learning
We couldn’t agree more. Shippers and third-party logistics firms continually ask us for visibility across every mode, and every location, of their digital supply chains. Our network now spans North America and Europe and provides coverage across Ocean, Rail & Intermodal, LTL and vLTL, Truckload, Parcel, and Final Mile. But that’s not enough.
We have our sights set on covering every geography and mode—and continuously delivering more meaningful functionality. That means connecting the global supply chain, normalizing the data, delivering real-time stats, and providing predictive analytics from Tallahassee to Timbuktu.
If you’d like to see how a united project44 can help your organization, check out our GateHouse Logistics Acquisition Overview page or schedule a demo.