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OpenTrack Delivery Visibility Introduction & FAQ
OpenTrack Delivery Visibility Introduction & FAQ

Get better delivery visibility, faster by integrating your drayage carriers with OpenTrack. Here's what's included.

Christian Petroske avatar
Written by Christian Petroske
Updated over a year ago

Here's a summary of what you get when you activate OpenTrack Delivery Visibility.

What is OpenTrack Delivery Visibility?

  1. OpenTrack integrates with your drayage carriers for free. Fully managed, all you have to do is intro us.

  2. You get final mile visibility in OpenTrack, in the same place as all your ocean and rail visibility data.

What new data do we get?

With delivery visibility, you’ll get the following data depending on what your dray providers can offer:

Delivery data

Description

Delivery Order Received Date

New with delivery visibility

Date of D/O confirmed receipt by the drayage carrier.

Appointment Date (POD)

Exists in OpenTrack today, but can benefit from drayage provider data

Full Outgated (Actual)

Exists in OpenTrack today, but can benefit from drayage provider data

Driver’s Real-time Location

New with delivery visibility

Delivery Appointment Date

New with delivery visibility
The planned time of future delivery.

Estimated Delivery Date

New with delivery visibility

The estimated time of future delivery (helpful to have if an appointment will be missed).

Delivered (Actual)

Exists in OpenTrack today, but can benefit from drayage provider data

Empty Ready for Pickup (Actual)

New with delivery visibility

The container has been emptied and is ready for pickup.

Empty Picked Up for Return (Actual)

New with delivery visibility

The empty container is now en route to being returned.

Empty Returned (Actual)

Exists in OpenTrack today, but can benefit from drayage provider data

Drayage Carrier

New with delivery visibility

[Exports] Empty Outgated

Exists in OpenTrack today, but can benefit from drayage provider data

[Exports] Full Ingated

Exists in OpenTrack today, but can benefit from drayage provider data

[Exports] Full Ingated at Origin Rail Facility

Exists in OpenTrack today, but can benefit from drayage provider data

Chassis Number

New with delivery visibility

Full Dropped Off At Trucker Yard,
Full Picked Up From Trucker Yard,
Empty Dropped Off At Trucker Yard,
Full Picked Up From Trucker Yard

New with delivery visibility

Seal Number,
Live Unload,
And more...

Coming soon!

Key Benefits of Delivery Visibility with OpenTrack

Actionable delivery data all in one place.

Stop chasing key information through tons of spreadsheets and emails. OpenTrack can give you clean, accurate delivery data, updated in real time, directly from your carriers. So your team can spend their time actually managing your supply chain.

Quick, effective integrations you don't have to manage.

Your dray carriers can start sending data to OpenTrack in under a week. Then we'll work with them to upgrade to an API connection over 2-8 weeks so you can get up-to-the minute data, including GPS location updates. Our product team sweats it all so you don't have to. We provide detailed documentation and one-on-one support to make integrations as smooth as possible.

See into the delivery visibility black hole.

Get ahead of delays and avoid demurrage and per diem penalties. OpenTrack helps your team proactively pinpoint exceptions through actionable dashboards, real-time alerts, notifications, and our powerful reporting features.

Plan deliveries and returns more easily, with fewer mistakes.

When your teams have the Planned Delivery Schedule in front of them (plus ocean & rail ETA), they can plan better and reduce cost across the supply chain. See this on the Delivery Dashboard (more info below).

See your deliveries on the map.

With real-time container location, get a bird’s eye view of your whole supply chain. Then zoom in on a single container to take action. To see it, click the Map button on Explore.

How It Works

Essentially, OpenTrack will integrate with your drayage providers to get data from them, aggregate it, and report it to you.

We'll show you around the new features you can access with OpenTrack Delivery Visibility.

Exploring the Delivery Dashboard

See the Delivery Dashboard for an actionable overview of your deliveries. Head to the Dashboard page and click the truck icon in the left navigation panel.

Delivery visibility demo

On the Delivery Dashboard you'll see:

  • Planned Delivery Schedule
    A calendar view that makes it easier to plan for upcoming deliveries. See how many containers are inbound for each facility, carrier, and time.

  • Ocean Terminal Dwell Time
    See the containers dwelling the longest at ocean terminals, so you can immediately see if an appointment is set, follow up with the drayage provider or terminal, and avoid more demurrage.

  • Street Dwell Time
    See your containers that have been out for delivery the longest, so you can immediately see the status, follow up with the drayage provider or receiving facility, and avoid per diem charges.

  • Empties That Need To Be Returned
    See your empty containers that haven't yet been picked up, so you can immediately follow up with the drayage provider and keep your yard clear for full deliveries.

Accelerated Exception Management on Explore

On Explore, you can create, save, and share custom reports that your team can use to pinpoint exceptions and take action more quickly to avoid costly delays and penalties.

Here are a few examples. Click the links below to view and save each report:

On each of the above, remember to sort the metric column in descending order to make sure you see the most urgent containers on top.

To see more on how to create Explore reports to accelerate your exception management, see our quick help guide.

FAQs

Here are some frequently asked questions and answers detailing how it all works.

How does the integration work?

We may already have an integration with one of your truckers. If we don't, then the first step is a simple email introduction from you. We'll take it from there.

We have several simple integration pathways we'll use to get data from your drayage partners, including:

  • Emailed spreadsheet (can take truckers 1 to 2 weeks to set up)

  • One of two API formats (can take truckers 3 to 8 weeks to set up)

Once you put us in contact with your trucker, a dedicated OpenTrack product manager will guide them through the least-friction path to get the data flowing.

Once data is flowing, we'll get on a call with you and your trucker to review the data and get your approval.

If you have feedback, we'll work with the trucker to implement changes until you're satisfied with the data you receive.

We typically recommend starting with the emailed spreadsheet to get data flowing quickly, then moving to an API connection to benefit from real-time driver geolocation and more timely data.

How will we consume the data?

You can consume the data the same way you currently do, whether through the OpenTrack web dashboard, API, or integration.

Does delivery data come through to CargoWise?

Yes! Several of our customers have live CargoWise integrations that are receiving live delivery data from OpenTrack.

Can I offer the same delivery visibility to my clients or partners?

Through our white-label features, you can offer a final-mile visibility solution to your clients and partners – hosted on OpenTrack, but with your brand and logo. Ask us for more information on this!

How does this help me manage my drayage better?

Once we have delivery visibility data flowing, you'll be able to quickly evaluate your drayage providers based on real metrics like dwell time, delivery performance, return performance, and more. This will help in two main ways:

  1. You can pinpoint and manage exceptions more easily. Work down from the top of the list, going case-by-case to solve delays and risks more efficiently.

  2. It's easier to keep your drayage providers accountable to metrics targets. If you're reviewing the actual data on a regular basis with your carriers, your results will be improved.

Could my final mile freight providers get data from OpenTrack?

Optional: You can also allow your final mile freight providers to consume data from OpenTrack directly (for ETAs for example), to help make their operations more efficient and performant.

Next Steps

  1. Book a call with us to learn more about Delivery Visibility.

  2. Introduce us to one or more of your final mile freight providers via email so we can arrange to ingest data from them.

  3. OpenTrack will guide each final mile freight provider through the lowest-friction integration path based on our experience integrating other providers.

  4. In anywhere from 1 to 8 weeks, depending on the integration, you'll start seeing delivery data from OpenTrack.

More questions? Don't hesitate to ask us. Reach out to us any time via Intercom in the app or via email at support@opentrack.co.

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