Track & trace update requests
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How to automate track & trace update requests
Failure to conduct track and trace comes with costly risks like product recalls, non-compliance penalties, and late or missing shipments. But an effective track and trace process requires constant manual oversight to catch and resolve discrepancies and often requires an increase in headcount.
With Parabola’s track and trace software, you can automate tedious work like pulling carrier and TMS data, and isolating shipments that are behind schedule. You can even identify shipments in exception scenarios and automate carrier outreach without typing a single email.
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We use Parabola to automate data transfer, billing reconciliation, and real-time alerts. With Parabola's robust and simple data connection features, we're able to save a ton of time and work – for both my team and the IT team.
Tracking and tracing shipments involves identifying shipments that have missed a milestone and contacting the relevant carrier representative. After emailing a carrier contact and receiving an update on a shipment, teams will typically push that shipment update back to their TMS, ERP, or other shipment tracking software. This process is designed to reduce the manual workload created when a shipment misses a milestone, ultimately improving the experience for the end-customer who has more real-time data around the status of their shipments.
- Import shipment data from your TMS, ERP, or other systems using steps like Pull from Netsuite and Pull from API.
- If you're working across multiple carriers, also import a carrier contact reference sheet that includes email addresses for specific contacts across carriers.
- Identify delayed shipments by comparing date fields to the current date/time using steps like Compare dates and Add if/else column.
- Use the Filter rows step to identify specific shipments that have missed milestones.
- Match shipments to the correct carrier contact using the Combine tables step, combining based on fields like carrier, mode, and region.
- Generate structured emails for carrier contacts using the Send emails by rows step, including details such as your shipment ID and shipment status.
- Creating a well-structured carrier contact reference sheet can be key to a dialed track and trace process. With a good reference sheet in place, you can join based on fields like carrier, mode, and region.
- Standardize shipment data early in the flow using steps like Standardize with AI to ensure consistent formatting across carriers.
- To take it a step further, create a second Flow designed to ingest email replies from carriers. Use steps like Extract with AI to pull key shipment details directly from the email body, and push those details to systems storing your shipment details.
- To start building your track and trace Flow, use the Template above and check out Parabola University.
- Learn more about how to set up an auto-forwarding rule in Parabola here.
