Event
Summary
Logility, Inc. recently unveiled something old and something new
in its Voyager suite of applications for e-business. Voyager
Select is billed as a highly scalable solution for determining
the total landed cost of a purchase by accurately choosing the best mode
and carrier for the order. Voyager Select calculates the least cost for
purchases based on numerous attributes and parameters, including weight,
product type, cube and origin/destination for small package/express, less-than-truckload
(LTL), truckload (TL), rail and intermodal shipments.
Advantages
for users of Voyager Select include access to accurate invoice expectations,
a geographic database containing more than 240,000 U.S. and Canadian locations,
and algorithms that calculate distance-based truckload and rail carrier
rates. Perhaps the most attractive feature of Select is the ability for
net market participants to call on it in real-time as a transaction is
being performed.
Voyager Select can be hosted on the net market's application server or
via an Application Service Provider (ASP), and can operate in one-to-many
and many-to-many architectures.
Market
Impact
Although
Voyager Select is just now making its debut, the product is an amalgam
of components drawn from existing logistics applications in the Voyager
suite. Like other vendors, Logility observed that while net markets today
facilitate buy and sell transactions, they do not necessarily allow participants
to achieve true cost savings. A buyer who finds a desired item at a good
price and completes the transaction may have overlooked how much it costs
to have the item delivered. Conversely, sellers that fail to accurately
estimate transportation costs have little guidance in setting prices and
maintaining margins. Though some net markets estimate transportation costs
for buyers and sellers, these often are based on inaccurate or incomplete
rate data and over-simplified transportation models.
Select
gives Logility much needed ammunition it can use in the Internet fulfillment
arena against competitors like i2 Technologies. i2 offers many
of the same features for calculating transportation costs in its FreightMatrix
platform for net markets. In spite of its benefits, FreightMatrix
suffers to some extent from its broader view of transportation modeling,
management, and optimization capabilities that are less readily applied
to individual buy/sell transactions. By keeping less pertinent transportation
planning components out of Voyager Select, Logility actually may have
created a better, more-focused product.
User
Recommendations
Users understand all too well the significant contribution of transportation
costs, but have only recently been presented with applications that can
make use of data realistic enough to produce meaningful results. Voyager
Select may prove to be a valuable weapon against high transportation costs,
but only for shipments within the U.S. and Canada. Because much of Select's
functionality was derived from existing applications, interested users
should, before making a decision to buy, consult reference clients who
have installed Logility's transportation solutions Logility cited Ingram
Micro, Sprint PCS, and American Freightways as clients that
have used Voyager Select functionality "for years." In addition to these
customers, other Logility customers that may have relevant insights
include The Robert Horne Paper Company, Eastman Chemical
Company, and American Greetings.