The legacy mechanisms of the logistics industry are known for having tedious back-office processes and siloed data, along with a lack of operational and financial visibility, factors that as a combination, drain companies’ profits and increases consumer costs. Loop wants to ease up the pressure, through the technology’s helping hand.

Loop’s founders, Matt McKinney and Shaosu Liu, are Uber veterans. In Uber Freight, McKinney tackled the problem of building a new structure for the legacy transportation payment system, while Liu handled the building process of a software that can optimize a network of networks to build a more collaborative supply chain.

The assignments gave the duo a first-hand experience of the “legacy issues” bothering the global supply chain ecosystem, giving them the inspiration to come up with Loop, about which International Finance, in today’s episode of the “Start-up of the Week,” will talk in detail.

Redefining the next-generation supply chains

As per the Loop, enterprises require a more dependable data foundation to sustain high operational performance, free up working capital, and take strategic decisions with confidence. To enable this, the start-up, through its “Logistics Data Platform,” has automated 99% of freight and parcel audits to deliver efficient, accurate outcomes.

Loop stores important supply chain and spend documents (rate tables, manual calculations and invoice) in one platform, before automatically auditing every line-item on the invoice and identifying discrepancies in hours.

Another headache logistics players face is the “black box,” the event in which shipment, after leaving the dock, leaves businesses powerless to prevent delays or manage customer expectations. To address this, Loop, using the “click-to-porch visibility” approach, lets its online platform absorb over 20 billion scans annually across all modes and carriers, standardizing messy data into a single, accurate view.

With a wide range of custom dashboards and reports, logistics players get to track every package in real-time to monitor network velocity, confirm delivery status, and ensure their shipments are moving as promised. Loop’s predictive “at-risk” logic also flags shipments that are stalling, dwelling, or projected to miss their commit date, way before the carrier even reports a delay.

The start-up’s customizable dashboards provide a real-time command center for logistics operations, tracking critical parameters like on-time delivery percentages, carrier service levels, and dwell times.

When it comes to logistics companies securing the best possible terms and rates, Loop prepares them with data-driven insights and veteran carrier intelligence services. The start-up’s “parcel contract optimization” combines deep shipping data analysis with decades of industry expertise to secure better rates and maintains optimal contract performance over time.

Loop’s contract intelligence dashboards provide real-time visibility into a logistics company’s contract performance, breaking down costs by service type, zone, and accessorial charges to reveal optimization opportunities at a glance. Interactive analytics let the business drill down into specific contract terms, track realized versus contracted discounts, and monitor minimum charge utilization to ensure the business is maximizing every negotiated benefit. The start-up claims its contract intelligence and industry expertise delivering up to 50% post-audit savings for logistics players by optimizing their rates.

Loop’s contract intelligence dashboards come equipped with built-in tools, that show the client companies how proposed discount changes will directly impact their real-world financials. The “what-if” scenario modelling allows the businesses to simulate the precise impact of different discount structures or minimum charge adjustments against their historical shipping data. They get to see the potential savings or costs of the proposals, before agreeing to the terms and conditions.

Loop’s “Carrier Invoice Pay” streamlines global AP (accounts payable) process with accurate, seamless freight payments, with flexible (including custodial) options reducing administrative costs and improving working capital. No more of logistics professionals sorting invoices, chasing approvals and answering “where is my money?” calls from carriers, as the start-up takes over these repetitive functions, through its AI-native audit, which guarantees every invoice is 100% accurate before it’s approved. From there, Loop’s flexible payment solutions provide logistics companies the control, flexibility, and automation they want.

A full stack of cutting-edge tech

Loop’s “Control Suite” puts logistics players in command, with tailored policies assisting the industry players to get a real-time visibility into their financial health, network performance, and policy compliance. We are talking about a business automation an audit-related engine, that helps its users to seamlessly review their organizational rules for financial approvals, service-level enforcement and required documentation.

The heart of Loop’s “Control Suite” is the “Control Tower,” an operational and financial intelligence platform, that monitors shipment volumes, spend trends, and compliance performance in real-time, before identifying the root cause behind the failure of the company policies.

Another brilliant piece of Loop’s innovation has been its AI-native platform, “Loop AI,” that has been customised with various AI models and agents, to fix messy logistics data. This approach delivers what legacy systems can’t: comprehensive data capture, leading data quality, and a path to end-to-end automation.

“DUX,” Loop’s another AI-based solution for logistics businesses, uses high-quality data, creating a complete and accurate shipment data, helping supply chain teams to move from reactive exception management to proactive optimization method.

The post Start-up of the Week: Through AI, Loop redefines logistics industry appeared first on International Finance.