Powering Your $400M Cost Reduction
Eliminating coordination waste across 133,000 shipments
Your team manages 133,000 annual shipments across Melbourne, Charlotte, China, and 156 carriers. Fragmented systems force manual synchronization across locations, consuming hours that could be spent on cost reduction initiatives. Unified visibility eliminates this overhead, freeing capacity for strategic work.
What’s Draining the Power From Your Cost Reduction?
Three specific challenges that consume the most capacity:
- Your 19,400 intermodal shipments cross three carriers, each in a different system. Melbourne tracks drayage, Charlotte monitors ocean, and China follows rail. Different teams see different data, so customers get conflicting delivery estimates. Without unified tracking, each intermodal move requires multiple people coordinating fragments instead of one person managing execution.
- Only 42% of your 156 carriers provide reliable tracking data. The remaining 58% operate in a visibility gap. You don’t know where shipments are, when they’ll arrive, or whether delays are occurring. This makes it impossible to verify carrier performance claims, hold carriers accountable for service failures, or make proactive decisions about at-risk shipments across your direct contracts, freight forwarders, and NVOCC arrangements.
- Detention charges arrive without the proof you need to dispute them. When invoices show port dwell time or facility detention, you lack timestamped arrival and departure data. Hours of reconciliation work follows to validate or challenge charges that should take minutes to resolve.
How We Power Solutions to These Three Challenges
Solution 1
See All Intermodal Moves in One View
FourKites integrates with your SAP S/4HANA and SAP TM to deliver Arthur’s “single platform view,” where one reference number tracks the entire journey from pickup through ocean transit to final delivery. Everyone in customer service, transport planning, and regional operations sees identical information simultaneously, which means Melbourne, Charlotte, and China work from the same status updates and predicted arrivals. When customers ask about delivery timing, they get one accurate answer instead of three conflicting estimates. One person manages the complete journey instead of three people coordinating fragments. As you scale toward 400,000 annual shipments by 2030, this automation becomes essential. What handles 133,000 shipments today scales to tripled volume without adding coordination headcount.
Who benefits:
- Customer Service answers inquiries in seconds with accurate ETAs
- Transport Planning tracks complete journeys in one system
- Finance validates deliveries instantly
- IT maintains one integration point
Solution 2
Stop Managing 58% of Your Carrier Network Blind
Through SAP integration, the FourKites platform captures verified carrier performance across all 156 carriers, every lane, every mode. You get verified on-time percentages, transit times, and delivery accuracy layered with AIS data for ocean moves, terminal information, and over 150 additional data points. When carriers claim 98% on-time performance, you respond with facts from your own shipment data. Poor performers lose renewals. Strong performers get rewarded. Verified performance becomes a contract requirement across direct contracts, freight forwarders, and NVOCC arrangements.
Who benefits:
- Procurement negotiates from a position of strength
- Operations holds carriers accountable with documented performance
- Transport Planning identifies underperforming lanes for improvement
- Finance validates delivery performance instantly
- Management makes sourcing decisions based on facts
Solution 3
Validate Detention Charges and Address Root Causes
Timestamped arrival and departure data flows automatically from ports and facilities into your SAP systems, capturing verified dwell times at every point in the journey. When detention invoices arrive, you validate charges against this proof instead of accepting carrier claims. What used to require hours of back-and-forth reconciliation now resolves in minutes with documented evidence. The data also reveals whether detention resulted from carrier delays, facility issues, or internal scheduling, so you can address root causes. Beyond dispute resolution, the automated POD triggers to SAP TM accelerate your entire cash conversion cycle. Faster settlement means better working capital metrics across 133,000 annual shipments.
Who benefits:
- Finance resolves disputes in minutes with timestamped proof
- Operations identifies the root causes of detention quickly
- Transport Planning addresses dwell time problems at specific ports
- Procurement uses performance data in carrier discussions
- Accounts Payable processes invoices faster
Powering Similar Results in Specialty Chemicals and Manufacturing
Henkel
Global Specialty Chemicals Manufacturer
Henkel Adhesive Technologies operates across multiple continents with nearly identical challenges to Albemarle. Fragmented visibility across regions, inability to verify carrier performance, and manual coordination draining resources. After FourKites integrated with their Oracle TMS, Henkel eliminated the manual tracking burden on customer service, gained LSP accountability through verified performance data, and achieved rapid dispute resolution that reduced late fees and penalties.
“Once we started our rollout with FourKites and more people saw what it could do and the value it can deliver, there was strong demand for FourKites access from across our organization.” The platform’s value became obvious across previously siloed operations.
Clearwater Paper
12 Manufacturing Facilities Managing 5,000 Monthly Loads
Clearwater Paper’s transportation teams worked in silos with fragmented data, adversarial carrier relationships, and exhausting manual coordination. After implementing FourKites, the transformation was immediate. Clearwater gained unified data access, going from “little to no collaboration” to information sharing that “bridged that gap” between internal teams and external carriers. Carrier relationships shifted from adversarial to collaborative. Detention costs dropped as fault identification became faster. Customer service stopped providing unreliable information and started getting ahead of loads, taking pressure off the entire team.
Powered Results From Specialty Chemicals and Manufacturing
"Before we started with FourKites, we had little to no collaboration with teams, internally or externally. Our transportation team was inundated with emails from carriers as well as customers. Our internal FourKites team bridged that gap and allows for better information sharing."
"Prior to FourKites, there was little to no reliability in the information we were providing to customers. Now, our team is able to get ahead of loads, deal with customer issues and have taken a lot of pressure off the Customer Service team."
"Improved visibility adds up to increased transparency regarding the efficiency and accountability of Henkel's LSPs. Armed with accurate data on LSP performance, Henkel now has the insight it needs to proactively address service issues and reward providers that maintain or exceed agreements."
"The burden placed on customer service to manually track shipments has been eliminated. When you consider how many hours the customer service team spent tracking shipments, the time and cost savings Henkel has captured are substantial."
"Collaboration with FourKites has resulted in quicker turnaround to identify whether fines were due to carrier fault, production or Clearwater error."
Industry Leaders Who Trust FourKites
