Shipper Solutions

Download our Shipper Solutions brochure.

Tired of buying software that costs way too much and takes way too long to implement?

MercuryGate understands the risks of buying software and realizes you are under pressure by your company to prove value immediately. Therefore we let you implement our TMS solution which allows you to provide demonstrable savings and value to your company before you ever have to pay for anything! We want you to be up and running live in production and satisfied that the solution will meet your needs before paying us - that is how confident we are that you will be successful with our TMS solution!

As the complexities of transportation increase, companies are being challenged to keep costs low but at the same time meet ever increasing demands from their customers to improve the velocity of their supply chain. Along with the customer pressures are management pressures to better control transportation and ensure that revenue is realized at the proper time in the fulfillment process. Shippers have done a good job of getting a handle on the distribution and the inventory side of the supply chain and are now turning their focus on the ever increasing complex transportation side with the use of Transportation Management Systems (TMS).

rating tool screen shot

Figure 1: Easy to use rating tool to provide optimal carrier based on rates and/or route guide. Figure shows rates returned for all modes and the system may be configured to select the top carrier based on rates and/or route guide.

In the past, many shippers struggled with which carrier or mode to use for a given movement. Decisions were often made without the use of any tools and often with seat-of-the-pants determination. MercuryGate provides a TMS solution that takes the pertinent order information, determines the optimal carrier, and then automatically tenders the load to the designated carrier taking the guess work out of the shipping process for both inbound and outbound movements. As the freight moves tracking messages are received allowing the shipper to realize revenue based on actual events in the supply chain. Invoices are then processed from the carrier matching to the load indicating both what should be paid vs. what was invoiced simplifying the freight bill pre-audit process. And of course the entire transportation process is controlled by exception and management reports providing the transportation management team with up to the minute information about the performance of the transportation link in the supply chain.

configurable vendor dashbaord screen shot

Figure 2: Configurable vendor dashboard may be used to help enforce compliance for non-sophisticated users that are unable to send electronic messages or utilize a compliance web service.

By establishing a state-of-the-art, Internet-based, transportation and logistics technology foundation, you can do away with the people-intensive, highly-manual, and inaccurate processes typically found in your business. The MercuryGate TMS is an information system dedicated to capturing and monitoring of all the activities and events related to transportation and logistics. From this logistics "nervous system", real-time information can flow to your customers, your carriers, your brokers, and your vendors and their associated business partners in their supply chain as well as to you and your system — giving you the ability to monitor and manage your own business thus allowing you to continually improve your performance and profitability.

MercuryGate provides value by:

  • Reducing transportation costs
    • Optimizing shipments across all locations creating continuous move (tours) vs. pooling vs. multi-stop truckloads for inbound and outbound shipments
    • Optimizing carrier selection by rate/route guide priority for all modes including private fleet
  • Enforcing inbound compliance for all vendors
    • Enabling communication of the right carrier for the move via electronic messages, portals, or as simple as email
  • Simplifying your pre-audit functions for your carrier invoices
  • Providing a tool to manage and measure your carriers, your vendors, your customers, and yourselves
Robust KPI measurement reports

Figure 3: Robust KPI measurement reports help you understand how your vendors, your carriers, your customers, and how you are performing all aspects of transportation. These reports help you in a continual improvement process to streamline, reduce costs, and enhance your data quality throughout your shipping process.

We do the stuff you need to do....

MercuryGate's Transportation Planning and Execution capabilities manage the full cycle of activities for the latest practices in transportation management. The TMS ensures optimal freight moves by utilizing the right mode with the right carrier and at the right service level to meet both your needs and your customers' needs. Whether using parcel, less than truckload (LTL), truckload, rail, intermodal, air freight, or ocean, MercuryGate provides a single system and consistent customizable process for carrier determination and execution. MercuryGate receives orders and/or shipping requests electronically or manually, selects the optimal carriers and modes for shipments, tracks and monitors shipments, pays carriers and provides master billing invoices along with carrier and customer performance reports and other shipment function analyses. Shipments can also be consolidated across clients if products are compatible. MercuryGate also provides Web-based visibility and proactive notification of issues that arise during planning and transit.

MercuryGate's Transportation Planning and Execution capabilities offer the following primary features:

  • Procure and manage carriers
    • Manage contracts for all modes
    • Manage rates for all modes
    • Manage fuel determination for all modes
    • Support all mileage engines and versions
    • Manage accessorials for all modes
    • Manage service areas for all modes
    • Manage contacts for all carriers
    • Procure capacity and rates for all carriers
    • Uplift of rates for customers if desired
    • Pay carriers in multiple currencies
  • Ship freight
    • Inbound or outbound freight, domestic or international movements
      • Execute shipments across all modes
      • Manage purchase order or customer order
        • Allows multiple shipments with potentially different origins and destination to fulfill each order
    • Determine optimal carrier
      • Select optimal carrier based on service, rate, and/or route guide
      • Create spot quote to designated carriers
        • Send spot quote via email
        • Manage quote via private bid board
        • Post quote to public bid boards
      • Optimize loads
        • Realize significant cost savings using a simple, quick, and practical route optimizer, Mojo.
        • Compare multi-stop truckload to pool locations (cross dock for consolidation or distribution), to continuous moves (multiple pickup and drop)
        • Build loads centrally and distribute seamlessly to operational personnel
    • Tender load to selected carrier
      • Tender via email, EDI, XML, or web service
      • Automated tendering allows users to click and forget
        • Exception management alerts users to issues
    • Set appointments
      • Schedule appointments
      • Manage appointments via dock door scheduling
robust dock scheduling

Figure 4: MercuryGate provides robust dock scheduling allowing restrictions by mode, service, and direction (inbound/outbound).

  • Track load
    • Access data by any known reference
      • Means that there is no need to send around tracking numbers, etc.
      • Enables users to track all modes at a single place
      • Internal users, customers, or carriers may access data they have permission to see
    • Alerts users to issues
      • Alerts users to late shipments
      • Alerts users to shipments scheduled to arrive late
      • Alerts users to stale shipments – shipments that should have received a tracking message but have not
    • Allows responsible party to provide update by various tools
      • Provides electronic update capability (EDI, XML, etc.)
      • Enables collaboration via email
      • Allows collaboration via online portals
      • Allows collaboration via cell phones
  • Settle Load
    • Allows company to realize revenue when appropriate based on SOX compliance
      • Enables realization revenue when customer actually takes ownership of goods
      • Provides auditable process for revenue determination
    • Receives carrier invoice and matches to load
      • Provides visibility to rated vs. invoiced amounts
      • Assigns general ledger codes to charge details if desired
      • Alerts users to exceptions
        • Users identify what an exception is
      • Allows shipper to manage their own audit process including receipt of proof of deliveries
      • Loads unmatched invoices and rates allowing auditing
    • Enables freight accrual based on your company’s process
      • Allows users to manage the accrual process to the charge detail level if needed
    • Allows allocation to appropriate parties involved in the load
      • Allocate costs based on items, weight, mileage, etc.
  • Provide transportation intelligence
    • Operational reporting
      • Day-to-day shipment management
      • Exception reports
      • Audit reports
    • Tactical reports
      • Transportation spend
      • Accrual reports
      • Missed opportunities
      • Dispatcher KPI's
      • Carrier KPI’s
    • Strategic reports
      • Transportation spend by location, division, or any measurable entity
      • Lane analysis
      • Capacity analysis
      • What-if scenarios

Mojo – a route optimizer so simple anybody can do it (we can't say caveman)

MercuryGate's Transportation Optimizer tool Mojo was built and designed as a simple to use tool to reduce your transportation cost. Whether you are planning for a single location or you manage all your transportation from a centralized control center, Mojo will plan your freight movements. Mojo takes shipments from as many locations as you would like to consider (including vendors) and determines the optimal way to move the goods. In just a matter of seconds Mojo considers 1000's of shipments moved by multi-stop truckload scenarios, pooling scenarios, multi-pick and multi-drop continuous move options, LTL consolidations, etc. Mojo will not only show a cost savings option but also will tell you why a shipment did not optimize. No more guessing why this shipment was not added to a load, the optimizer tells you why. Mojo leverages your existing rates from the TMS and allows you to setup new rates to consider when you are evaluating potential carriers. Mojo is a very simple to use, practical optimizer that can use rates and shipments already setup in the TMS allowing the average transportation professional the ability to run the optimizer - no PHD required. Mojo even has a built in wizard that helps to tell you which parameters best fit your freight mix and constraints. Combined with MercuryGate’s strong analytics tool MercuryEdge, the transportation professional is armed with a powerful toolset to support even the most robust modeling/operational demands.

Mojo showing interactive map

Figure 5: Mojo showing interactive map with continuous move highlighted.

See all Shipper Solutions primary functions.