FourKites Introduces Integrated Appointment Scheduling; Announces Winners Of Inaugural Golden Kite Awards

FourKites has announced a free appointment scheduler that integrates with various systems, giving managers the ability to schedule shipments through a single interface. The company also announced the winners of its inaugural Golden Kite Awards for shippers.

The announcements were made on Sept. 19, 2019, at the company's 2019 Visibility Conference in Chicago.

Appointment Manager, a cloud-based solution, connects disparate systems from facilities, carriers, and third-party logistics providers to make collaboration on scheduling pickup and receiving appointments easier. FourKites said it anticipates 2.5 million man-hours per day currently spent on scheduling could be saved across its network of more than 260 global Fortune 1000 companies.

"Like all carriers, we feel the acute pain of appointment management every single day," Sanford Gruhn, director of sales at K&B Transportation, said. "Our dispatchers manage an incredibly complex workflow, which involves managing scheduling and rescheduling across many different platforms every single day. FourKites' Appointment Manager, which is the first universal platform that integrates with all of our systems, would save our dispatchers approximately eight hours a week, and allow them to shift their focus to higher-value tasks."

The solution will integrate with all major transportation management systems and enterprise resource planning systems, FourKites said.

A screenshot of FourKites Appointment Manager scheduling solution. Photo: FourKites

"Up until this point, there has been no way of escaping the pain of appointment management," Mathew Elenjickal, founder and CEO of FourKites, said. "This has major downstream implications on detention, driver productivity, and warehouse and dock operations. It is high time we look beyond monetizing something as simple and basic as setting up an appointment at a location. Our hope is that an integrated system will untangle the current mess, facilitate real-time collaboration, and improve relationships between supply chain partners."

At the 2019 Visibility Conference, FourKites recognized four shippers that make up the inaugural Golden Kite Awards. The Golden Kite Awards honor companies that are "leveraging real-time visibility to improve customer satisfaction and achieve greater business results," the company explained.

Winners were determined by votes from FourKites' network of shippers, carriers and 3PLs.

The four category winners are:

Customer Experience Award: C&S Wholesale Grocers. C&S is the largest wholesale grocery supply company in the U.S.  Under the stewardship of transportation technology manager Meghan Reilly, C&S Wholesale Grocers reported a 65% reduction in "Where's my truck?" calls within three months; implemented a new notification system that achieved high satisfaction scores from 92% of participating customers; and improved overall customer satisfaction and on-time deliveries.

Innovation & Technology Award: PetSmart. PetSmart is the largest specialty pet retailer of services and solutions for pets. According to PetSmart's Dawn Goudie, senior manager, supply chain, the pet retailer achieved tracking consistency above 83%; onboarded over 95% of carriers for outbound freight; and created a push notification system for stores with six, four, two and one-hour ETAs.

Driver End-User Adoption Award: Ryder. Ryder is an industry leader in commercial fleet management, dedicated transportation, and supply chain solutions. Transportation manager Erin Starliper reports the organization achieved a 32% increase in compliance, and a 30% increase in consistency via a comprehensive program that managed communications between operations, account teams and FourKites. In addition, Starliper and team restructured onboarding and enhanced automated scorecards for carrier management and procurement engagement. Today, Ryder has hundreds of active FourKites users, has achieved 82% overall compliance, tracks 40,000-plus loads monthly, and has onboarded 300-plus carriers to the platform.

Value Realization Award: Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. The FourKites platform has been especially powerful in Cracker Barrel's partnership with transportation and supply chain management company Averitt Express. According to logistics manager Jim Burnett, the company's retail managers can better maintain the delivery window required for planning flexibility, while providing greater certainty of ETAs for delivery. By leveraging the messaging feature to interact directly with retail managers, Cracker Barrel has reduced time-consuming phone calls used to alert stores of late deliveries, and can now keep store associates aware of important events.

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