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Metafora Alleviate Capacity Crunch With Lattis Link

Did you catch our Rapid Fire Demo at FreightWaves F3 featuring Transportation Insight's Lattis Link? We hope you did. But if you missed it, or just want a replay, we're here for you!

In this demo, we follow the lifecycle of a Parcel in the Lattis Link system. Lattis Link is a solution created by Transportation Insights with the software development help of Metafora.

Lattis is a network of first, middle, and final mile carriers and consolidation points that can operationally move a parcel from Shipper to Recipient anywhere in the U.S. Lattis Link is also a single set of APIs that makes accessing that capacity simple and easy. Lattis is a fully managed service with end-to-end visibility, integrating all relevant updates into a unified platform so that the end customer’s shipping experience is that or better than they would get when compared to a national carrier.

Presenters:

1. Dan Weiss, Senior Vice President of Parcel Innovation Center, Transportation Insight
2. Joel Bennett, Director of Product Management, Metafora

 

[Video Transcript:

Dan Weiss: Everyone watching this is probably more than familiar with the recent and current capacity crunch. With COVID, the rise in ecommerce, and strategies like UPS’s ‘better not bigger’ mentality -- parcel capacity is an issue facing all shippers today. Our industry has been dealing with an increase in shipments, a shortage of drivers, and rising customer expectations like faster and faster delivery.

Traditional consolidation services or hybrid services were offering a 3-10 day delivery expectation in non-peak times. This has only gotten significantly worse with the current capacity crunch. All of this has been affecting national and regional carriers and shippers. We were seeing more and more delayed packages, increased costs, and unhappy customers.

At Transportation Insight and Nolan Transportation Group, we knew we had to do something to help. Parcel is a foundational component to our business. With our parcel focus, our technology and our brokerage expertise, we knew we were uniquely positioned to create a solution helping shippers match their demand with capacity.

We came up with an idea to create Lattis Link. Lattis is a network of first, middle and final mile carriers and consolidation points that can operationally move a parcel from Shipper to Recipient anywhere in the US. Lattis is also a single set of APIs that makes accessing that capacity simple and easy. Lastly Lattis is a fully managed service with end to end visibility, integrating all relevant updates into a unified platform so that the end customer’s shipping experience is that or better than they would get when compared to a national carrier.

Lattis Link provides -- a diverse carrier network, consistency in terms of price and reliability, and helps shippers deliver on their promise to their end-customers.
We wanted to develop this app quickly and for a reasonable cost, but we recognized that we needed help.

CarrierDirect had the industry expertise we could trust and engineering excellence to be able to jump right in and assist with development, spend-management, speed-to-market, and launch of Lattis Link in the first year.

Joel Bennett: Let’s follow the lifecycle of a Parcel in the Lattis Link system. Our workflows are designed to integrate seamlessly with shippers and carriers existing operations. To this end, you will see a blend of API responses as well as actual data being uploaded and submitted in our platform.

To start out, our shippers will receive orders in their existing systems. From here, they can use our parcelQuery endpoint to identify if that shipment qualifies as a Lattis shipment. These qualifications are generally provided by the shipper based on an in-depth analysis of their parcel volume by the TI team to best understand where Lattis can provide value.

When a shipment hits our parcelQuery endpoint, as you see here, we send back a response that includes a success message as well as a rate. Because this endpoint is just an eligibility check, not an actual dispatch, our shippers can use this tool to rateshop against any other carriers if desired.

Once a carrier confirms that the parcel is eligible for Lattis, they can send the parcel payload to our parcelCreate endpoint which will process the shipment and return a label. Shippers can send their parcels to us through a direct connection to our API, through a Lattis integration with their parcel execution system, or through a CSV upload. For the purposes of this demo, we will upload the same shipment that we just rated via a CSV file.

As we upload the file, the Lattis system will identify the appropriate carrier to engage, create the parcel in that system, and return a custom Lattis label that contains all the necessary carrier and parcel information. Once Lattis receives confirmation of the parcel, the label is made available as well as a Lattis tracking number and tracking Link.

Here in the table we can view the label. These labels are created in ZPL format, can be scaled from 203DPI to 300DPI, and can be made available in PDF or PNG format upon request. The custom Lattis label has all the necessary information, in a format that is easy to read and still accommodates specific carrier requests and requirements.

From here, the shipper will be able to send the end user the Lattis tracking link through their own systems. During the parcelCreate process, shippers also have the ability to enable both email and sms notifications for the user. The tracking page is made live immediately after the label is created and can be accessed through our website from any user with a tracking number. Tracking events trigger real time updates, both in the Lattis application as well as on the public tracking page and through notifications. Upon delivery, users will receive a text, email and final delivery status will be reflected on the Lattis tracking page.

Dan Weiss: Lattis Link is live now with Japan's largest apparel retailer, shipping thousands of parcels a week within the US. Lattis Link picks up and delivers 6 days a week Monday through Saturday.

With the help of CarrierDirect, we support our customers and the recipient with both online visibility and 24/7 call center support.

If you’re interested in learning more about Lattis Link please contact us at www.lattis.com.

If you have something to build and could use help from industry experts and skilled engineers, we highly recommend CarrierDirect. When it comes to software development, CarrierDirect is available to guide, implement, and execute as needed.

Thanks for watching our demo that shows how Transportation Insight & CarrierDirect worked together to alleviate the capacity crunch with Lattis Link.]

 

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Metafora
Metafora
Metafora is the leading consulting & software development firm for transportation, logistics, and supply chain businesses. Metafora partners with carriers, shippers, and freight tech vendors to help you optimize your business and build software to fuel their growth. Welcome to the new way forward. Welcome to Metafora.

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