Live Demo
A search icon
Adeptia for the logistics industry

The Road to Smart Logistics

Simplify data integration, empower business users, and provide 360° supply chain visibility for your business partners.

Logistics Icon

Logistics

Logistics Icon
Logistics

Data Integration for Logistics Providers

Logistics providers face a growing list of challenges and opportunities. These include the increased globalization of trade, labor shortages, supply-chain instability and disruption, mounting pressure on predicting and meeting delivery times, and escalating security concerns.

Meanwhile, the rapid growth of e-commerce and rising customer expectations are driving demand for more efficient, faster, and more cost-effective delivery solutions. Some logistics providers have seen massive increases in the volume of small shipments. This, along with significant increases in cross-border shipments, highlights the need for greater agility and mastery of data integration to enable visibility, reliability, and predictability in logistics operations.

Logistics operators and technology providers need to enable frictionless data exchange along supply chains. The secure and accurate flow of data to stakeholders along the supply chain is nearly as important as the physical goods the data represents. Modern multi-enterprise data exchange means much easier and faster data integration implementation, AI-driven data mapping, business-user and customer collaboration, and simplified connectivity between business partners regardless of underlying applications and required data standards. That’s where Adeptia helps.

Integrate Any Data, Anywhere With Adeptia

Adeptia can enable non-technical business users to implement B2B integration of complex data formatted as XML, EDI, and any other content with any of hundreds of applications such as SAP, Oracle, and any other ERP, TMS, WMS, and/or LMS systems. You can interface directly with clients and suppliers as well as 3PL and 4PL providers, or use it as a 3PL or 4PL to quickly and easily integrate with your customers. All formats are supported, including sending and receiving EDI, XML, CSV, flat files, fixed position data, and so on, through secure transmission protocols, APIs, S/FTP connections, IDOC/BAPI, and even e-mail.

Adeptia for the logistics industry

Self-service Collaboration for Business and Customer Users

In any partner-management life cycle, onboarding a new trading partner is an important step. A business user from your team can leverage a self-service-based, collaborative portal to onboard partners 80 percent faster than traditional data integration methods. Once the trading partners are onboarded, users can exchange messages needed to ensure successful downstream processing according to the agreed-upon SLAs.

The resulting transparency and visibility enables users to set up projects and healthy trading partner relationships. These trading partner relationships are then maintained and managed through a central repository that enables your team to perform changes and add additional EDI relationships as part of that project.

Adeptia for the logistics industry

Orchestrate with Triggers and Maps to Process Inbound and Outbound Documents

Users can set up S/FTP and other types of secure file triggers to get data files from your clients. For example, you may want to implement a secure FTP trigger to get all available EDI 417 files from a given rail carrier’s secure FTP folder. You can use a single trigger to fetch all new messages from a specified FTP directory and traverse through sub-folders as needed.

Data mapping is often a labor-intensive part of B2B integration for logistics companies. The Adeptia AI-powered data mapper simplifies and alleviates the effort with context-based data mapping suggestions that get you faster results. You can use this for EDI, XML, and other data as source or target formats.

Adeptia for the logistics industry

Simple and Easy Workflow to Keep Things Moving

Adeptia’s logistics integration software combines process orchestration and workflow in a self-service model, thus empowering your business team to access data that they can view and edit, then submit the data back into the process flow after making the corrections – without external support.

Managers can view the list of pending workflow tasks and user performance in terms of how long it is taking to fix data issues.

In routing of data errors to human workflow tasks, the user that is assigned to the task can open the task from their inbox and view the data, make corrections, and resubmit the data for updates.

Adeptia for the logistics industry

Tracking B2B Documents with Ease

Having a real-time dashboard to track and monitor all your EDI messages is key to providing an effective and secured service to your rail customers. Adeptia provides multiple interfaces to show you the detailed status of each message along with the data and the transaction sets.

It also reports any errors related to invalid data with proper error descriptions. Transactions that result in errors can be clicked to drill-down to see which segments failed and see detailed error descriptions.

Adeptia for the logistics industry

Adeptia Streamlines Multi-enterprise Data Ecosystem Integration

Adeptia provides a online B2B data onboarding portal for your clients to send and receive business information through a web-based self-service integration base camp. Your business teams can set up pre-built connections for your trading partner network to consume through a secure B2B cloud platform with day-to-day IT data integration support. Clients have access to a dashboard to view message confirmations that your company has received their data successfully, and vice versa.

EDI Support for Logistics Providers

Logistics service providers need a constantly active integration interface with the freight carriers for exchanging EDIFACT, X12 messages and other data files. Having accurate data is the lifeblood of any logistics company, and its ability to effectively onboard, validate, and integrate inbound and outbound EDI messages is key to sustaining a successful business relationship with clients and freight carriers.

Coverage for all EDI transaction sets are available, including:

    • Air Freight Details and Invoice-EDI 110: Provides customer with an air invoice for transportation and other charges related to shipments, including original invoices, past due billings, balance due bills and revisions.
    • Motor Carrier Load Tender-EDI 204: Used by shippers to offer a truckload or less than a truckload shipment to a carrier.
    • Motor Carrier Freight Details and Invoice-EDI 210: Used by commercial truckers and other freight carriers. Typically sent from carrier to shipper, consignee, or third-party payment center for payment of freight charges.
    • Motor Carrier Bill of Lading-EDI 211: Allows shippers or any other organization responsible for contracting with a motor carrier to provide a legal bill of lading for a shipment. Considered to be an exact depiction of a shipment as agreed to by each of the trading partners.
    • Transportation Carrier Shipment Status Message-EDI 214: Used to provide status information on a shipment, including information on pickup, delivery, and any delays or exceptions.
    • Confirmation of Booking-EDI 301: Used by the carrier to confirm the details of a booking made by a shipper or freight forwarder.
    • Shipping Instructions-EDI 304: Used by the shipper or freight forwarder to provide the carrier with detailed shipping instructions, including vessel details, container details, and other shipment details.
    • Freight Receipt and Invoice (Ocean)-EDI 310: Used to solicit payment for an oceanic freight shipment.
    • Status Details (Ocean)-EDI 315: Used by the carrier to provide status information on a shipment, including vessel information, container information, and other shipment details.
    • Terminal Operations and Intermodal Ramp Activity-EDI 322: Used by the carrier to provide information on terminal operations and intermodal ramp activity.
    • Rail Carrier Shipment Information-EDI 404: Used by the carrier to provide rail shipment information, including rail car details, shipping information, and other shipment details.
    • Rail Carrier Freight Details and Invoice-EDI 410: Allows a rail carrier to send details or charges incurred during a rail movement to the freight payer.
    • Rail Carrier Waybill Interchange-EDI 417: Used to exchange rail waybill information between railroads and other transportation providers.
    • Shippers Car Order-EDI 422:  Used by the shipper to request the placement of railcars for loading.
    • Rail Industrial Switch List-EDI 423: Used to communicate railcar switching instructions between railroads.
    • Customers Reconciliation-EDI 750: Used by importers to file electronic customs declaration for goods entering the United States. Contains detailed information about imported goods including value, country of origin, and classification under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule.
    • Request for Routing Instructions-EDI 753: Used by the shipper to request routing instructions from the carrier, including information on mode of transportation, transit time, and carrier rates.
    • Routing Instructions-EDI 754: Used by the carrier to provide routing instructions to the shipper, including information on mode of transportation, transit time, and carrier rates.
    • Invoice-EDI 810: Used by carriers to invoice shippers for transportation services.
    • Advanced Shipping Notice (ASN)-EDI 856: Provides detailed information about a shipment, including packing information, carrier information, and shipment contents.
    • Warehouse Shipping Order-EDI 940: Used to request the shipment of goods from a warehouse to a specific location.
    • Warehouse Shipping Advice-EDI 945: Used to confirm the shipment of goods from a warehouse to a specific location.
    • Response to a Load Tender-EDI 990: Used by a motor carrier to accept or reject a shipment offer from a shipper. Usually triggered by receipt of a Motor Carrier Load Tender (EDI 204).
    • Functional Acknowledgement-EDI 997:  Used to acknowledge the receipt and processing status of other EDI transaction sets.
Logistics

Self-service Integration for Logistics Providers

Adeptia’s self-service integration approach enables logistics-focused firms to automate transaction processes and expedite the handling of complex EDI messages, minimizing chargebacks, delayed shipments, cancelled orders, and incorrect product costs.

By empowering logistics professionals to easily integrate all the information residing in the transactions in one place, it increases processing speed for enabling faster shipment and delivery. And because those professionals do not have to rely heavily on IT or other technical teams, the complete integration process takes around only a few minutes for completion. Consequently, order-to-cash and purchase-to-pay cycles will witness a steep rise, allowing organizations to foster much smoother relationships with partners and customers. For logistics suppliers, this will mean a more stable business situation due to more timely cash flows, and for the customers, this will yield delightful experiences and faster service. In short, Adeptia’s automated and self-service-based integration solution can help logistics firms utilize transactional data and manage EDI business relationships with third-party logistics companies and freight carriers.

This logistics integration solution comes with a pre-bundled list of EDI standards to process all message types at the speed of business. Along with its user-friendly dashboards, pre-built connectors, shared templates, AI-data mapping, and more, Adeptia provides real-time access to message transaction status, errors related to invalid messages and notifications.

There are several 400 series transactions for EDI, including the EDI 404 Shipment/BOL, the EDI 859  Freight Invoice, as well as the EDI 210 Motor Carrier Freight Details and Invoice, EDI 210 Freight Details and Invoice, and Car Location Message (CLM).

CLM is a specific type of EDI message that is employed by the railroad industry to track the movement of railcars. It’s basically an update of the location of rail cars delivered in a single record format, depending on the subject. For instance, there is a basic format, a destination format, flatcar format, ETA format, etc. These are typically fairly straightforward positional files but may contain a lot of code cross-referencing that can be mapped easily with self-service powered Adeptia Connect.

Check Out These Resources

Check Out These Related Articles From Our Blog

Cyril Driessen

The implementation of Adeptia fits perfectly with our business strategy because it enables us to differentiate ourselves from the competition in terms of quality and flexibility. The automation of manual order entry process with Adeptia has resulted in direct cost savings and quality improvement of the process.

Cyril Driessen

CEO, DeKlok Logistics

Adeptia testimonials