Traffix
Revolutionizing the 3PL Sector with Technology

The proliferation of e-commerce activities alongside the increasing demands for on-time and accurate deliveries are creating a paradigm shift throughout the Logistics industry. According to the supply chain research company, Armstrong & Associates, the North American Logistics industry market will exceed $1.1 trillion by 2022. To keep up with this growing demand, 3PL service providers help their customers improve their inbound/outbound transportation coordination, fleet management, and warehousing services, while providing live-tracking capabilities and real-time updates of their freight for greater safety and accountability.

Understanding this need, TRAFFIX—one of North America's longest-serving transportation specialists—is on a mission to help customers meet all of their logistics needs with a set of sound technology-driven 3PL services. The company’s comprehensive transportation solutions include FTL and LTL dry cargo, temperature-controlled services, specialized, over-dimensional and project logistics, and many others, which help deliver freights with utmost security and reliability across North America.

In an interview with CIOApplications, Marc Knoop, the CTO of TRAFFIX provides insights into the company, the challenges that their clients are facing, and how they are helping businesses by delivering unimpaired Logistics solutions.

Please tell our readers about the history of the company.

TRAFFIX was founded by Chuck Snow and Ann Mary Snow more than 40 years ago. Since then, our company has always tried to address the existing challenges in the market. Our ability to adapt and respond to the changing environment has helped us maintain a steady growth rate over the years. Today, we have offices in Milton, Toronto, Montreal, Oakville, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Detroit, Nashville, and Mexico.

Our company, at present, works as a logistics broker. We call ourselves matchmakers because we pair consigners with the right carriers to help them get their job done at the right time. We have three designated teams to carry out our services. The first team collaborates with Customers who need their freight moved to certain places. The second team then manages the relationships with many Carriers who facilitate the freight movements, and the third team is our support group who are active 24/7 to continuously communicate with both the parties.

How are you catering to the diverse needs of your clients?

Client expectations have drastically changed over the last few years.

Today, it's all about sharing the right information to the right people at the right time. Everyone wants real-time or near real-time updates on a load that's available for pick-up or delivery. As such, we and our carriers have started using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to share information between multiple systems seamlessly. Also, through API integration between multiple applications, we can provide our clients with real-time updates on their freight. Our cloud-based architecture makes our solutions easy-to-use and enables us to introduce new solutions and services to our clients with a short turnaround time.

In a nutshell, we can offer a rounded service to our customers, and our goal is to make everything simple for our clients and trucking carriers, be it placing an order, tracking, or dealing with paperwork. The technology we leverage not only supports our mission but provides us with a myriad of opportunities to serve our clients better.

Please tell us about organizational culture, and your strategy to cope with the current situation.

We are an employee-centric organization that provides everyone with growth opportunity. Our team is the best of the best, with extensive experience in each of their given roles. Our focus on employees positively reflects on their work as well as their interactions with customers. Even within the Covid-19 pandemic, we have not skipped a beat. On Monday our team was in the office, and on Tuesday they were at their dining room tables. We implemented a suite of virtual platforms, which allow secure connectivity to our virtual desktop, servers, applications,. This allows our employees to work from home (or anywhere) safely and continue to serve our clients better.

Could you share a client success story?

Over the years, we have emerged as a trusted name in the industry. Today, we cater to a vast clientele across different industry verticals. For example, one of our clients was looking to move smaller packages, instead of truckloads. The routing arrangement of the project was complex, with thousands of pick-up and drop locations everyday. The client also required a real-time picture of the entire delivery process and detailed automated reporting, which in turn they pass along as part of the product offering to their customers.

We were able to build a cloud-based architecture to interface with this customer's API. It included shipments that were en-route across a vast network of disparate regional couriers. This enabled us to get real-time updates from each driver on location and shipment status. More importantly, it did not require us to procure any hardware since everything was built on the cloud, and allowed us to complete the project within a shorter timeframe.

What does the future hold for your company?

We will always be focused on growth, be it by investing in technology, people, or a new line of business. Six months back, one of our employees presented to the Board the idea of moving into the courier space. That is the example I provided earlier. We found the business case to be feasible, and gave a try. The results so far have been terrific, and we envision significant expansion into this space. Along with this, we will introduce new solutions in the market that will help us address the ever-changing needs of our clients. Most of our ideas come from our incredible staff and listening to customers, it is my team’s job to build the bridge between the “idea” and reality.

Many parts of the logistics space have a lot of opportunity to improve from a technology standpoint. As a customer- and employee-centric organization, we want to revolutionize this sector through the incorporation of cutting-edge technology. So, TRAFFIX is always looking for new ways to innovate, make business easier and more efficient.