At Trimble’s Insight Tech Conference September 23-27 in Las Vegas, Trimble Transportation rolled out a series of product and customer announcements to an assembled 1,600 transportation and logistics customers and partners.
Next Generation Logistics Partnership
Trimble announced a partnership with transportation solution provider Next Generation Logistic, to make Trimble’s Engage Lane solution available to Next Generation Logistics’ customer base of shippers through the Trimble Transportation Cloud. Next Generation Logistics is a leading TMS provider whose Dynamics TMS®, managed transportation services and real-time APIs are used by hundreds of shippers, bringing Trimble’s Engage Lane capabilities to its customers.
The integration creates a dynamic, lane-level procurement process through a streamlined workflow from start to finish: from order tendering, to bidding, to awarding freight and fulfillment.
Customer Win: Dart
Also announced was the addition of Eagan, Minn.-based Dart Transit Company to the rost of companies using Trimble’s Instinct driver experience and Video Intelligence fleet management solutions. Dart will implement the Trimble technologies across its fleet of more than 1,000 trucks to create a more connected driver and fleet management experience, while improving the safety, compliance and efficiency of its fleet.
New Appian Functionality
Attendees at Insight also were the first to learn of new functionality for Appian, a cloud-based solution for multi-stop, multi-vehicle route optimization that improves asset utilization, on-time deliveries and customer service.
Appian Daily Planner modernizes the planning experience, streamlining and optimizing the complex routing needs of multi-stop mixed and private fleets. By combining a configurable interface with the proven Appian optimization algorithm, Appian Daily Planner empowers fleets to transition from static, batch routing to a real-time planning approach – saving time, money and miles in the process.
Appian Daily Planner also adds enhanced asset visibility, enabling dispatchers and fleet managers to adjust and optimize routes in real time—tracking planned versus actual route progress, while ensuring drivers and route plans are meeting customers’ delivery constraints.
In a video interview at the event, Trimble Director of Sales Susana McLoughlin provided a functions-and-benefits overview of the product and the new cloud functionality in the product.
“We're very excited to announce the official launch of our next gen routing, the web solution Appian Daily Planner. Yeah, so it's very exciting for us,” McLoughlin said. “It's something that we've been working very hard at. What we've done … is, we've really taken our more analyst persona users and kept the capability they use in our legacy, on-premise, very robust application. But we're really migrating more of our workflow tools and our daily operational routing tools into the cloud so that we're presenting users with a much more modern, user friendly interface so that it's easier for them to get in and out of the application and build their routes on a daily basis.”
Tenstreet Partnership for In-Cab Fuel Insights
Trimble announced the expansion of an earlier partnership with Tenstreet which brought their True Fuel® solution to Trimble customers in an effort to help fleets better manage their fuel costs and consumption. At Trimble Insight Tech Conference, the company revealed True Fuel is now emedded in the Trimble Instinct in-cab ecosystem of applications designed to support drivers.
True Fuel combines real-time, in-cab driver coaching with automated fuel efficiency insights. Transportation companies benefit from this unique real-time coaching the enables teams to make adjustments to driving behavior and fuel consumption immediately rather than after the fact.
Making Many One
In the wake of the $2 billion acquisition of European logistics provider Transporeon, there was plenty of focus at Insight on how this and earlier acquisitions are being absorbed into the business, and what they mean for current customers and those joining the Trimble family through these transactions.
“We think that at Trimble, we're uniquely positioned to execute on our connect and scale strategy, given the breadth of our capabilities and the ecosystem approach that we're taking to market,” Trimble CEO Rob Painter said in an opening session. “When we do that, that's giving you a level of visibility that we think is unmatched to have relevant information on your location, status updates your workflows, as well as compliance. What this connection is doing is delivering real time insights to unlock different tiers of efficiency … It's easy to say the word strategy--strategy is ultimately the art of making choices. So let's talk about some of those choices. Because last year, I said our commitment is to do what's right for the long-term benefit of this business. Over the last four years since 2020, we've put over $2 billion into research and development at Trimble. This year is going to be closer to $600 million.”
The connect-and-scale model is visible throughout Trimble, including in the Trimble Maps product line. In a video interview at Trimble Insight, Trimble Maps Director of Strategic Accounts Dwayne Lazarre shared an overview of the product line. For Lazarre, the connect and scale approach provides an incremental and minimally disruptive way for the industry to go through crucial digital transformation.
“We have, I'd say 90% to 95% of the for-hire fleets out there utilizing our products, in some sense,” Lazarre said. “We can't say, hey, timeout, folks, you got to forklift this and put this in. … What we're really doing is you're trying to get folks to think of this as a platform. So if you had an on-premise solution, we want to give you a pathway to get that in the cloud.”
Trimble Maps meets the definition of a platform—more than a suite of functionality, but an ecosystem of partners that build on the Trimble Maps Development Platform. This enables creation of partner web, mobile and Windows-based applications.
