Carrier-Booked Appointments Can Create a Better Flow in and Out Of Your Yard for Better Labor Planning and Cost Savings

One of the most critical components of ensuring the success of yard operations is identifying ways that will streamline processes, enhance labor performance, and translate into substantial cost savings. Carrier self-service appointments, also known as carrier-booked appointments (CBA),help your yards operate more efficiently by knowing who, how many, what, and when carriers will arrive for pick up or delivery.  When done right, CBAs can help with labor planning, and yard congestion, as well as the planning and picking inside the warehouse.  Appointments overall, and specifically CBA’s also can help your operation become a shipper of choice by efficiently processing the visits of your contracted and brokered carriers.  Many YMS systems today include an appointment module and some allow for carriers, customers, and other visitors to your operations to schedule themselves, including what time they will arrive and activity they will be doing while on site.  Using the right mix of tools for your inside staff, as well as outside vendors, carriers and visitors can help automate your processes, boost efficiency, minimize congestion, and help proactively plan, instead of reactively handle the traffic at your operation.

What are Carrier-Booked Appointments?

‍

How Implementing a Carrier Booked Appointment is Vital for Operations

When there is no longer a need for a clerk on the receiving or shipping side to remain in charge of every booked appointment, but instead simply monitor what is being scheduled, your resources can focus on higher priorities of the operation and yard.  Instead of spending unnecessary time and money on a clerk to answer phone calls and coordinate arrivals, more time and resources are available for more pressing matters that require undivided attention. With an automated appointment scheduling system, you can ensure your yard is better organized, and well-managed by your teams.

‍

Additional Benefits of Carrier Booked-Appointments

Carriers enjoy the ability to select arrival and pick-up times that work best for their schedule.  When providing carriers with the option to book appointments themselves, they will perform better with on-time arrivals and pick us. Now you can focus on processing the loads and arrivals efficiently to remain on schedule instead of forever playing catch up.

Spreading the task of booking hundreds of appointments to your carriers and customers and removing the task from your inside staff has incredible benefits, including helping significantly cut expenses.

• Improve carrier relationships – become a shipper of choice, save money
• Re-allocate your resources and staff to other tasks
• Plan labor requirements and reduce labor at certain times of the day or night
• Runa pro-active instead of a reactive operation
• Get ahead of the issues and challenges, and run smoothly
• Improve work-flows, in the yard as well as inside the warehouse
• Greatly increase throughput, site turn-around time, and decrease dwell time
• Reduce detention of drivers
• When the gate, yard, and visits to the door run well, the whole operation benefits

If you don’t already utilize scheduling of appointments and have extended that to allowing carriers and other services to book themselves through what is known as Carrier-Booked Appointments, it is time to look into what it would take.  Coupled with the features and functionality of a full-scale YMS system, you can elevate your staff, your operation, and your service to your customers to another level.  Soon, you’ll be hitting milestones that you never thought possible taking it to the next level.

‍

Learn More About Our Appointment System with Carrier Booked Appointments and Scheduling!

Having served the logistics industry for over 25 years, YardView is an expert at helping companies and operations take it to the next level.  With our best-of-the-breed, easy-to-use, and affordable Yard Management Software, coupled with features like Carrier-Booked Appointments as an option in our Appointment Dock Scheduling system, we help you get better. YardView’s YMS was created by operations folks, for operations folks, so we have a deeper knowledge of what it takes to deliver a software solution that truly works.

YardView’s yard management solution integrates with any system, including any WMS, TMS, RTTVP, ERP, and more. YardView has the best functionality of any YMS system on the market today.  These allow for better gate and operational throughput, accurate location and status of your assets, better-reporting metrics, and KPI’s, improving security, dock management, yard driver management via RF, carrier schedules, load management, planning, automating, and more.