Auto Transport Shippers: Where to Start with Operational Visibility

Visibility is key to maintaining an auto transport business and growing your vehicle shipping operation. While financial visibility may seem obvious, there are a few other areas that get overlooked, but are just as critical. Across the board, the most successful shippers have this in common – operational visibility. 

For many shippers, operations managers, and internal transport teams, visibility can mean many things. The truth is that visibility is needed across the business and at every step of the way. Here are a few ways you can increase visibility throughout your business. 

Data is King

Data can seem mysterious. What does it all mean? How do you mine for it? And it’s often an overlooked item because of how inaccessible it can feel. However, it’s the operational activity that is key to making leaps in your business, or if ignored, potentially setting you up to fail. 

As Forbes states, increased data visibility helps leaders build, “increase resilience, increased operational efficiency, and seamless collaboration with other functions.”

Aside from the obvious financial data, investing in analytics in delivery processes or productivity workflows are important to see where you can improve in your operation or get a better idea in how your teams are performing. By increasing visibility into your data, this will also enable your auto transport business to better forecast for the future while maintaining a better sense of security today. 

As Forbes states, increased data visibility helps leaders build, “increase resilience, increased operational efficiency, and seamless collaboration with other functions.”

Connected Systems

The nature of managing your business, as well as, transportation means shippers use several different tools throughout the day. Typically, spending their day bouncing between accounting software to load boards to a transportation management system (TMS). While each individual tool may give you visibility into the workflow that tool assists with, it does not give you a comprehensive view.

This is where leveraging an auto transport platform or an advanced TMS backed by API or other integration technology is the game changer for visibility.”

Disconnection and lack of communication amongst your systems is a huge blind spot too many shippers overlook. This is where leveraging an auto transport platform or an advanced TMS backed by API or other integration technology is the game changer for visibility. By integrating all of your systems with one another, you’re building a clear and holistic view on everything you need to know about your shipping operation. This process doesn’t just improve your visibility, but also the quality of your data.

Regular Reporting

After you’ve identified ways to increase your data insights and an understanding of which data is important, it’s time to have a consistent schedule on organized reports. By department or by teams, every shipper operation should have regularly scheduled reporting on a consistent basis. This not only helps the entire business understand auto transport shipping insights, but also the performance of every team or function that exists across your operation. 

Reports every shipper should consider to get started:

• Accounts Receivable/Accounts Payable
• Monthly Orders Picked Up and Delivered
• Profits Loss or Gain Monthly
• Costs by vendor and shipping costs

There are many more to consider based on goals and needs of your business, but this list will help you get started. If you are already using a TMS, especially one integrated with your other tools, then you should be able to build and automate these custom reports at a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. 

As an auto transport Shipper, now that you have this introduction into visibility, you can invest in data, integrated systems, and a consistent reporting workflow. 

Want to learn about how Super Dispatch can help your auto transport shipper team? Sign up today to get a glimpse or read more about shipper visibility here. 

Published on March 12, 2021