Supply Chain Network Optimization
Supply Chain Network Optimization
Identify key performance indicators and optimize supply chain networks using accurate benchmarks and forecasts.
Once you’ve established an operational supply chain network, it’s important to always be looking for ways to improve your efficiency. However, rethinking your approach requires accurate data and proper network optimization techniques for the supply chain. Here’s how DAT iQ can help.
- Take a data-driven approach to refining your strategies.
- Generate reports and analyses tailored to your supply chain.
- Optimize your supply chain and lay the groundwork for success.
Take a data-driven approach to refining your strategies.
DAT iQ processes more than $150 billion annual freight transactions, providing real-time analysis and rates for 68,000 lanes.
To maximize the efficiency of your supply chain, you need a deep well of accurate data that allows you to pinpoint areas of improvement. This data also needs to be relevant to the problem being solved. That’s why, rather than creating a proxy for trucking volumes using a metric like tender rejection, DAT iQ measures actual shipments that are moved, both under contract and on the spot market.
Generate reports and analyses tailored to your supply chain.
Get a clearer view of market conditions and the factors impacting your logistics and transportation strategies — accessible via intuitive dashboards, charts, and visualizations.
Drawing on information shared by our shipping partners across the globe, DAT iQ is able to provide the most accurate rate forecasting data in the business — including the data sets most relevant to your operations. Benchmark your rates with ease, track rate fluctuations over time and by precise geographic markers, and forecast up to 52 weeks in advance with twice the accuracy of any other prediction model.
Optimize your supply chain and lay the groundwork for success.
Armed with actionable insights, accurate market rates, and context for your pricing strategies, you can identify inefficiencies and streamline your business.
DAT iQ offers multiple ways to access the freight market data we gather and organize for our clients. The Benchmark Analytics solution t offers shippers unparalleled insight into benchmark rates and cost volatility by carrier, lane, and more— which can help drive measurable results during your supply chain network architecture optimization processes.
Free resources like DAT Trendlines and the DAT iQ Pulse Signal Report give you a glimpse of updates on market rates and spot budget risk for different transportation modes.
Supply chain network design and optimization are especially critical in the transportation logistics business because of what’s known as a “diseconomies of scale.” Generally speaking, when you purchase a product in increasingly higher quantities, the per-unit cost goes down. However, this isn’t true for the trucking industry — more loads on a given lane can actually lead to a higher cost per load. This isn’t good news for carriers, who distribute their assets and services across balanced networks, and for whom the matter of taking on additional loads isn’t always as simple as a verbal agreement. Increased demand and pressure from other market factors can disrupt these networks without a proper procurement strategy in place to account for tight market conditions.
Supply chain optimization provides a method of analyzing your operations and comparing your rates and performance against real market data so that you can determine the areas where you’re excelling and the places that could use more attention in your network modeling. By ensuring that your network is operating as efficiently as possible, you can minimize your overhead and increase profits at the same time.
Most supply chain management professionals use the practice of benchmarking to understand how they are performing as compared to similar organizations across the market, and the same is true for transportation procurement. Knowing how your truckload supply chain costs stack up against the competition on your preferred lanes is a key part of establishing a solid supply chain network, as it allows you to determine whether your service level agreement, cost, or efficiency metrics might be creating challenges for your business.
We vet DAT iQ’s rate forecasting against confirmed third-party information, allowing us to provide rate forecasting with two times the accuracy of our competitors’ prediction models. However, we understand that rates can change rapidly on certain lanes, especially those with higher degrees of volatility (e.g. those in Georgia and Florida), which can increase the margin of error for rate forecasting. Our rate forecasts always include a margin of error — that way, you can decide for yourself what’s best for your operation.
Shippers who sign up for Benchmark Analytics provide DAT with anonymous transaction-level data on a regular basis (which can vary from weekly to annually). We also conduct in-depth surveys and reports, allowing us to determine the variables and factors on the minds of other supply chain logistics professionals like yourself. Our cutting-edge data analytics engine breaks down this trove of user-contributed data, enabling us to provide you with actionable insights and reports on the state of the market that can help you prepare and refine your approach to developing distribution networks.
Currently, more than 120 shipping companies operating across the entirety of North America contribute transaction information to Benchmark Analytics. A typical year’s total looks like more than 30 million market transactions totaling nearly $30 billion in value. Signing upgives you access to the same reports, dashboards, and analysis tools used by leading shipping operations in the U.S.
We do! Our analytical tools don’t stop at crunching the numbers on raw market data — they can be used to improve your operational efficiency, too. DAT iQ can generate custom reports about your business operations, making it easy to check underlying market data, historical rates, and forecasts. If you’re not sure what you should be trying to streamline, we’re also available to help you determine which supply chain network optimization issues you may want to tackle first.
"In our experience, DAT is the most accurate and complete source of spot and contract rate data available.”
- Don Everhart, VP Technology & Analytics for Knight-Swift Logistics
“By integrating DAT’s forecasting data and analytics tools with our expertise and customized pricing, we can deliver fast, reliable rates using the most comprehensive data and market analysis available.”
- Ryan Ilges, Worldwide Express Vice President of Truckload
Understand your market needs on a deeper level.
There are many factors that influence supply chain network design, but our combination of tools and insights can help you get a handle on what matters most to your business. DAT iQ offers valuable data sources to guide decision-making on where to locate a warehouse or distribution center by giving historical data and forecasts on inbound and outbound freight rates from potential locations.