The Leading Supply Chain Solutions Provider: FourKites

Named one of Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startups, FourKites connects global end-to-end supply chains with the most powerful technology on the planet, helping customers and their customers work better together. As the largest visibility platform in the world, FourKites is tracking over 3 Million Shipments daily for its global customer base. FourKites’ massive network reaches 200+ countries and territories across road, rail, ocean and air, and includes over 458,000+ carriers and 98% of the world’s ocean traffic. Founded in 2014, today FourKites has 550+ passionate employees around the world, with offices in the US, Europe and Asia.

Your supply chain is a complex living organism, pulsing with cargo that gives life to your business — and there is a lot of cargo being shipped around the world. The total value of global trade is $28.5 trillion. It’s estimated that 12 billion tons of goods were transported globally via ocean shipments in 2021. There are more than 3.5 million truck drivers in the U.S. And Amazon alone has 525 million square feet of warehouse space. Not only is a massive amount of goods being shipped each year, but the immeasurable variables at play – carriers, weather, traffic, forecasting, politics, capacity – adds a significant degree of uncertainty in supply chains. In fact, supply chain is a bit of a misnomer. In reality, supply chains are massive, multifaceted tangles of complex networks — as a result, shippers face an equally massive and complex degree of uncertainty. And uncertainty in your supply chain network causes it to leak value through poor decision-making and frustrated customers and staff.

The root cause of this uncertainty? Data. And the difficulty of capturing the right data, at the right time and having the computational power to make sense of it all. Over the last decade or so, supply chain visibility has peeled back that fog to extract as many data points as possible from any unique elements that could impact the flow of goods. While successful, this has brought in a new challenge – how can you identify what actually matters and how can you operationalize your insights immediately?

Separating the Signal from the Noise

Humans are pattern-seeking creatures. We make sense of our world by comparing and contrasting the familiar. When a recognizable pattern emerges, our brain takes a shortcut to arrive at conclusions.

In the supply chain, patterns are also useful. Identifying them could answer questions like, “How do I provide an accurate and tight delivery commit date to orders?” Or, “What are my high-impact problems? What actions can I take, at a network-level that will allow my supply chain to operate most efficiently under current conditions? Where am I spending more than I need to?”

But supply chain patterns are so complex that our brains cannot assess them with a high degree of accuracy. What’s more, you might not have collected enough data from your supply chain to achieve a high confidence interval (if we think back to statistics class), helping you know if the insight isn’t just accurate but valid.

With the largest network of logistics tracking data and proprietary machine learning technology, FourKites’ real-time visibility platform powers data-driven insights and proactive risk management on your food and beverage shipments.

• Improve Customer Satisfaction: Deliver on time and in full, and give your customers full visibility along the way, with delivery notifications and live tracking dashboards.
• Lower Operating Costs: In food and beverage transportation, charges add up quickly. FourKites helps you minimize those risks by reducing dwell, optimizing labor planning and preventing product loss on temperature-controlled shipments.
• Reduce Waste: Eliminate wasted staff time on status calls and at the loading dock, with real-time notifications and unprecedented ETA accuracy for incoming deliveries.

FourKites is the only solution that gives you true end-to-end visibility with predictive ETAs and real-time status for shipments on the road and in the yard. No more workarounds and siloed systems… just agility, efficiency and beautiful collaboration.

Meet the leader behind the success of FourKites

Matt Elenjickal is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of FourKites. He founded FourKites in 2014 after recognizing pain points in the logistics industry and designing elegant and effective systems to address them. Prior to founding FourKites, Matt spent 7 years in the enterprise software space working for market leaders such as Oracle Corp and i2 Technologies/JDA Software Group. Matt has led high-impact teams that implemented logistics strategies and systems at P&G, Nestle, Kraft, Anheuser-Busch Inbev, Tyco, Argos and Nokia across North America, Western Europe and Latin America. Matt is passionate about logistics and supply chain management and has a keen sense for how technology can disrupt traditional silo-based planning and execution.

Matt holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from College of Engineering, Guindy, an MS in Industrial Engineering and Management Science from Northwestern University, and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. He lives in Chicago.

“From Day 1, we have been laser-focused on a singular mission to drive end-to-end supply chain orchestration, with visibility as the foundation. The future of supply chain visibility is here, and we’re continuing to push those boundaries every day.”