"Where is my item?" is the most frequent question customer service receives. Answering this question each time by calling the warehouse and the shipping company is both costly and slow.
Scope
Status model: Defining the shipment lifecycle with clear statuses: created, collecting, packaged, loaded, en route, delivered, partially delivered, returned.
Event log: Recording each status change with a timestamp, location, and responsible party information.
Location data: Linking location information from vehicle tracking systems, carrier integration, or driver mobile applications to shipments.
Estimated arrival time: The planned arrival time is updated with live location and traffic data.
Deviation alerts: Automatic alerts are generated in case of delay, deviation from the route, prolonged stop, or cold chain breach.
Control tower view: Monitoring all active shipments on a single screen, sorted by risk level.
Customer access: The buyer can track their own shipment via the portal or link.
Cold chain monitoring: Linking data from the temperature recorder to the shipment and determining the fate of the product in case of a breach.
Historical inquiry: The ability to subsequently query the entire movement history of a closed shipment.
The real value of visibility: being proactive.
Visibility isn't just about answering questions. Its real value lies in being able to inform the customer before they even ask . Proactively notifying a customer when a delay is noticed creates a vastly different experience than if the customer noticed the delay themselves.
Similarly, deviation warnings are also useful for the operation: if the problem is noticed a day before delivery, rather than on the day itself, it can often still be corrected.