Tive, FourKites partner to improve shipment visibility

Supply chain technology companies Tive and FourKites are partnering to offer shippers, carriers, and third-party logistics services providers (3PLs) an integrated platform that provides greater insight into in-transit shipment data, the companies said today.

The partnership combines Tive’s asset-tracking visibility inside the trailer with FourKites’ in-cab telematics and ETA (estimated time of arrival) capabilities. Together, the services will help the firms’ mutual customers ensure that shipments arrive on time and in full, all while improving the end-customer experience, the companies said.

FourKites’ Vice President of Business Development Nimesh Patel said the partnership essentially brings together two value-added service capabilities to enhance the overall view of a product while in transit. The firms’ mutual customers will no longer have to log into separate systems to track arrival-time data and shipment condition data, including temperature, light exposure, and other factors that could adversely affect products in transit. 

“This is getting closer to having data in one place,” Patel said Tuesday. “That’s the number one value.”

The partnership also addresses the growing volume of consumer packaged goods (CPG) shipments in the supply chain today and heightened customer demand for faster and better service. Increased shipments of CPGs, combined with an already-strained global supply chain, demand more meaningful insights to improve ETA, load integrity, and efficient mitigation of preventable delays and damage, the companies said. Insights such as location, temperature, and light “have become critical, especially for big-box retailers, food shippers, and logistics service providers. The Tive and FourKites partnership extends access to critical shipper data—including load location and condition—to ensure that more shipments arrive on time and in full,” the companies said in a joint statement.

“Collaboration and open access to visibility data benefit everyone in the supply chain,” Tive CEO and Founder Krenar Komoni, said in the joint statement. “Tive trackers are deployed on shipments worldwide, which means insightful data on carrier and route performance is growing every second of the day.”

FourKites said it plans to integrate Tive’s capabilities into its yard-management platform— Dynamic Yard, released last year—as well, giving customers “an unprecedented advantage by enabling them to identify temperature excursions; know precisely when the doors of a load are opened at the dock; and prioritize yard movements that reflect the actual condition of inbound and outbound shipments.”