Personalization: Key to Elevating User Experience for LSPs

Personalization is the methodology to tailor solutions according to a customer's specific needs, which results in saving time, reducing effort, and elevating user experience. In today's world, we have personalization embedded in each walk of life - from the apparel we wear and the type of food we eat to the movie recommendations on Netflix. As a result, we prefer products or services that listen to our needs and shape their outlook that benefits us.

A logistics solutionshould be no exception to this trend. And that is why we have implemented something similar into our Logistics solution so that it satisfies the needs of Logistics Service Providers (LSPs), by reducing pesky manual & redundant data-entry tasks and ensuring faster approval cycles. How we do it is the part that excites me! We achieve it through an in-built Universal Personalization Engine (UPE) that uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithmsto analyze the historical data and provide intelligent predictions and recommendations.

I would like to mention a few key use cases where personalization has been a game-changer for our customers.

#1: AI aided content to fill in Booking Requests to reduce manual effort

Booking requests hold the primary source of information about the customer details, goods transported, freight details, date of picking & delivery, addresses for pickup & delivery, and many more. A typical booking request will have at least 13-15 fields for manual data entry. A single manual error in any one of these fields would lead to failure in delivery and perhaps a breach in contractual service level agreements.

By invoking AI-enabled personalization, these 13 fields can be reduced to just 3-4 fields of manual data entry, thereby saving thousands of dollars spent in manual efforts every year.

Simple math at one of the customer's locations predicted the following set of savings that personalization could bring to the table.

Number of booking requests: 2600

Number of clicks: 60,219

Number of hours saved due to personalization: 132 hours/week

Number of man-days saved per year: 875

Average Savings per year: $120,000!

#2: Predicting the Actual Standard Events based on historical data

Capturing the standard events on a trip log is critical, without which an operational cycle cannot be closed. Although there are genuine reasons for not receiving the timely details of events, there are multiple other reasons due to which events may not be registered on time - like receiving the update only once per day from drivers/vendors, network outages due to remote locations, technical glitches, etc. These sorts of delays will not only hinder in closing the trip but also leads to delay in subsequent activities and postponement in issuing the bills for customer/ invoice for the vendor.

With Universal Personalization Engine in place, all the historic data on standard events are recorded and analyzed for deviations. For example, when a previous trip across the same route may have experienced a delay in specific events, all those delays will be considered while the actual standard events are calculated. Based on the historical data of vendor resources used on the trip, the AI/ML-powered system derives the pattern of the actual time of critical events - Arrival, Taken Over, Handed Over, Departure, Return without Delivery, etc. Based on the average difference, the trip's event gets updated. This prediction supports the operation to plan for progressive movement of the orders and, enables on-time customer/ vendor bills.

#3: Quick Planning based on Planning Profile and Historical Data

Planners have a key role in ensuring that goods are transported at the right time, through the right route, utilizing the right number of resources. In any 3PL organization, there would be more than one planner working with their own set of combinations of planning parameters which would produce an optimum planning output. When more planners are part of the business, each planner owns their set of locations and planning parameters. Hence, personalization at a planning level has a direct impact on improving operational efficiency.

For example, planners who are based out of a specific location or hub have similarities in their planning profile and location details. With Universal Personalization, the information gets defaulted in the screen based on their daily usage, helping them with faster planning.

At the end of the day, it is about understanding the needs of a customer and creating a positive impact on their business. Ramco Logistics' Universal Personalization Engine does this by analyzing our customer's operational data and generating workable insights that will help them automate tasks, reduce time, and improve usability and productivity.

So, are you ready to elevate the user experience?