Trucking and logistics technology is in the midst of a massive upgrade cycle. The widespread adoption of modern technology solutions has opened up a world of possibilities, mostly related to the quality, security and availability of data. The industry is finally achieving a high level of visibility, and one area of visibility that’s seeing a particular uptick in efficiency is tracking.
project44 is setting a new industry standard for tracking data, and pairing it with top TMS providers as well as a house-built UI in order to give users, not only access to their data, but a great way to break it down and utilize it. Still, there are plenty of niche-based tracking companies who settle for legacy, inferior data sources, and that is something you should be weary of.
What is Legacy Tracking?
Tracking shipments used to rely on relatively old technology for sourcing data. Despite being dated and inferior to the instant connectivity of APIs, these methods of communication and data transfer have been utilized by the industry for so long that there are also niche-based tracking companies whose function is to manually pull that data in and input it into their UI. These legacy companies leverage inconsistent methods like web scraping, EDI, spreadsheets, flat files, FTP, manual phone calls, and emails, then return it to users presented as real-time, when in fact it is inconsistent, incomplete, and stale.
This essentially just put a shiny veneer on a much larger, previously existing issue. Because they don’t have the ability to gather and distribute accurate and trustworthy data in real-time, the information received from these legacy tracking companies will never enable quality BI analytics. Bad data like this results in bad business decisions and poor insights.
These companies also can’t provide you with real-time support or feedback because most of their engineering, support, and onboarding teams are offshore in different time zones. If you don’t want onboarding to take 18 months and only reach 60% of your carrier base, we would suggest looking at technology vendors that have modern system architecture and automated, scalable onboarding processes.
How is project44 Different from a Legacy Tracking Company?
Our mission is to usher in a new era of trust and predictability to transportation and logistics, so we don’t settle for inferior data. Not only do we hold our own technology to the highest standards, but we hold our partners accountable as well. If one of our partners doesn’t have the right tech expertise on staff to integrate properly, or their data needs to be improved in some way, we work with them and help them achieve it. We don’t just have a fancy UI with the same old data behind it, we have APIs capable of transferring and normalizing data securely in real-time.
p44 integrates with carriers using the most reliable and secure methods—direct Carrier API or ELD/telematics connectivity. We receive all data via a real-time integration and normalize it before pushing it to customers. This clean, normalized data results in good business decisions and accurate insights and analytics. While legacy tracking companies provide updates every 15 minutes at best, project44 can do so up to every minute.
Visibility into the full shipment workflow is important as well. Legacy tracking companies can’t even provide comprehensive tracking data, so expecting them to provide visibility into other areas of the shipment workflow like rating, dispatch, document retrieval or invoicing is impossible. project44, on the other hand, provides visibility into the entire shipment workflow from planning to payments. In short, if you want an up to date solution that will enable you to be more productive and successful, you have to utilize a modern company.
The era of legacy tracking is over. Relying on legacy tracking companies for your data, whether you’re a shipper, TMS, 3PL, or carrier, is going to result in losing money, efficiency, and customers to companies partnering with modern solutions like project44.