The Benefits of One versus Many

Over the last few months, several well-known names in the industry have announced a “shipper review” feature as an add-on to their services.

A customer asked if we at Dock411 were concerned and how we would compete against these new players “in our space”.

First, we honestly appreciate the competition. It keeps us focused on our mission and re-energizes the team for a fair fight in the marketplace. Competition also gives us a foil to use to point out the benefits of our approach to the problem.

My plan for this article is to touch on some of those key benefits, but first let me make clear what problem we’re trying to solve.

A lack of clear, consistent, reliable, independent information about shipper facilities costs the industry millions of dollars per day. If each of the reported 3+ million truck drivers lose just 5 minutes a day due to delays finding their drop-off and pick-up locations, that equates to over 250,000 man-hours per day of lost productivity.

Shipper facility information does exist, the issue is that it is spread across hundreds or thousands of spreadsheets, one-off databases, notes fields, index cards, and TMSes in all the cabs and the offices of all the different drivers and companies in the industry.

Our new competitors are not helping the situation; by building their own review system, they are repeating it.

The industry needs a clear, consistent, reliable, independent means to collect, curate, manage, and analyze information and reviews about shipper facilities. We built the Dock411 Platform to be that solution.

Our approach, our platform has numerous benefits.

First, our platform collects reviews, but we also collect objective information about the shipper facilities themselves from multiple sources. Dock411 aggregates all this data into a “one stop shop” for everyone in the industry.

If you are a shipper and want to see how your facilities are perceived, you need staff to check data from each of your carriers, social media like Google Reviews and Facebook, and some of the new players in the field. At Dock411, we take on the burden of collecting, standardizing, analyzing, and reporting on feedback.

Dock411 is an independent third party; we are not a freight company collecting feedback on the side. Shipper facility information is not an add-on to our day job, it is our day job.

As an independent party, we can work with ANY carrier, shipper, or receiver. We don’t need to be hauling your freight to use our reviews feature.

Further, by having access to multiple channels of information from multiple sources, we can aggregate more data to build a more complete and accurate picture of any one facility or system.

So, are we going to close up shop because some big new players entered the market? No. On the contrary, we see them as important new channels of information which should be added to the one single picture we’re painting for the industry.

 
As always, feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.