Analyst Insight: Service providers, couriers and retailers have been doing last mile for decades. But times are different now. Consider: omnichannel, Amazon's game-changing free and same-day delivery, and Sears creating an offering service for third parties. The last two years also saw disrupters who were previously unknown enter the logistics market. But traditional transportation technology firms are fighting back. 2015 will show dramatic changes in the market. – Ann Grackin, CEO ChainLink Research
SmartDrive Systems, a vendor of technology to improve driving performance and boost fuel efficiency, is partnering with Convoy Technologies, LLC, a provider of camera systems for the transportation industry.
The shift to online retailing over the last five years finally caught up to and overran U.S.-wide delivery capacity during last year's holiday season. According to Forrester Research, online retail sales will grow by an additional 60 percent over the next five years. This kind of sea change has stretched the ability of physical networks to keep up and the shortage of drivers had further exacerbated this situation. Instead, technology has become more important to meeting retailers' holiday delivery challenges by helping to improve the productivity of existing resources and offer a greater array of delivery services being demanded by consumers.
Globe Tracker International ApS, a vendor of technology for asset tracking, monitoring and data sharing, has entered into a strategic partnership with Total Soft Bank Ltd. (TSB), a provider of global port and maritime information technology.
LLamasoft and Chainalytics have formed a partnership to integrate Chainalytics' proprietary Freight Market Intelligence Consortium (FMIC) truckload data with LLamasoft and Chainalytics' mutual North American customers.
