The first carrier I onboarded as an Operations Associate at FourKites showed me the real value our platform can provide to our carrier partners. Greg handled just about everything for his trucking company – outside of hauling the loads. As a small-sized carrier, Greg’s company had been operating without a TMS, and GPS tracking was available only for a subset of his assets. When I walked him through the platform for the first time, he was so excited to see his loads tracking in real time. Greg has continued to be an avid FourKites user, which has helped his company reach and maintain a high level of consistent tracking within FourKites.
Since that time, I’ve had the pleasure of training dozens of carriers on the FourKites platform. It’s always a joy to see folks learn for the first time how intuitive the design is, and how certain tasks can be expedited and/or eliminated with our growing suite of solutions. Our Carrier Operations team is onboarding more carriers than ever. At the same time, the FourKites product is growing increasingly advanced to meet the needs of our shipper customers and carrier partners.
Given this momentum, it has become increasingly clear that FourKites needed a reliable way to keep carriers updated on the platform. To that end, we created Channel 19, our recurring training webinar series for carriers, and the public Knowledge Base base for users of CarrierLink, our driver-facing mobile app.
The incredible interest in carrier-focused education has inspired our newest educational offering: FourKites’ Learning Platform for carriers. Similar to the Learning Platform for shippers, which we launched just a couple months ago, the carrier-focused Learning Platform encompasses four learning modules designed for the specific needs carriers and brokers, and culminates in Carrier Certification for those who complete all training courses.
Our Continuing Education team – the same folks who make sure my colleagues and I stay up to date on all new FourKites features – designed this training specifically for FourKites’ carrier partners. We understand that carriers have unique priorities and workflows. Carrier Certification highlights the parts of our platform that help them best achieve their particular visibility goals, like quickly identifying which loads are projected to be delayed or setting up notifications for their team to assign tracking information. By the time a carrier completes Certification, they’ll be able to proactively address tracking and consistency issues with their shippers.
What I love about FourKites’ Carrier Certification is that it gives carriers, like Greg, who don’t have a dedicated IT team, the opportunity to really use our platform to their advantage. I’ve worked with some incredible dispatchers who’ve learned the ropes of FourKites through years of use. Carrier Certification provides a shortcut to that level of expertise. Carriers who complete Certification will have the option to advertise their new expertise with a LinkedIn badge, which helps them connect with and get business from shippers who also prioritize real-time visibility across their supply chains. And, similar to our Learning Platform for shippers, the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals will count FourKites’ Carrier Certification as part of its continuing education requirements for its own certification process, affirming the role that visibility has in overall supply chain excellence.
FourKites was founded on the idea that collaboration makes us stronger. We’ve asked a lot from our carrier partners over the years, and I’m continuously blown away by the generosity and engagement that we’ve received in return. Carrier Certification is another step toward industry-wide partnership and visibility.
Interested in learning more about our continuous learning programs? Contact us at [email protected]!
