Case Studies > How FourKites Helped Unilever South Africa Overcome Border Delays in a Pandemic

How FourKites Helped Unilever South Africa Overcome Border Delays in a Pandemic

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

Africa

Country

South Africa

Product

FourKites Real-time Transportation Visibility Platform
FourKites Secure Shipments
FourKites Notifications & Alerts
FourKites Custom Geofence

Tech Stack

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Customer Satisfaction
Productivity Improvements
Digital Expertise

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Fleet Management Systems (FMS)
Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
Networks & Connectivity - Cellular

Applicable Industries

Consumer Goods

Applicable Functions

Logistics & Transportation
Warehouse & Inventory Management

Use Cases

Fleet Management
Predictive Maintenance
Supply Chain Visibility
Real-Time Location System (RTLS)

Services

System Integration
Training
Software Design & Engineering Services

About The Customer

Unilever is a multinational consumer goods company that began its search for real-time transportation visibility in 2018. The company aimed to empower its employees to plan proactively, optimize internal processes, and collaborate more closely with customers. Unilever's objectives included receiving predictive visibility into real-time location and estimated time of arrival (ETA) for shipments, providing proactive communication to key stakeholders about delays in critical monitored shipments, reducing manual workload, improving carrier performance, and reducing wait times at customer facilities. Unilever South Africa, a regional branch of the global giant, faced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with cross-border shipments due to increased wait times and new checks at the borders.

The Challenge

One of Unilever’s biggest challenges during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was establishing end-to-end visibility on carriers hauling cross-border shipments. Border crossings are traditionally a difficult challenge for supply chain and logistics professionals, and this was no exception for Unilever’s South Africa team. South Africa shares a border with six other sovereign nations, two of which are located entirely within South Africa itself. To make matters worse, the country was hit particularly hard by COVID, with a unique strain of the virus arising relatively early on. All of these obstacles escalated an already-difficult situation into a crippling challenge. In normal times, the average wait time at South Africa’s borders is between 4 to 6 hours. With the onset of COVID-19, these wait times skyrocketed to more than 10 hours a day due to congestion and new checks at the border. With delays at the borders increasing and demand for consumer packaged goods on the rise throughout the greater Sub-Saharan region, the Unilever team needed a solution, and they needed it fast.

The Solution

Unilever leveraged FourKites’ Custom Geofence capability to bolster its limited resources with proactive, predictive data. Using this solution, Unilever created custom zones around border crossings and ports of entry, configuring FourKites to automatically issue alerts to team members whenever a shipment entered, exited, or had been delayed at a border for longer than a specified time. This allowed Unilever’s team to make targeted decisions and limit their attention to shipments that were in danger of being delayed or that were experiencing major delays at border crossings around the country. These alerts helped the Unilever team to identify the cause for the delay (if any) and reschedule the appointment time with the customers based on any known delays. Using FourKites’ custom zones helped Unilever overcome a difficult situation by providing border visibility when a truck arrives, waits, and departs from the border. Additionally, Unilever configured FourKites’ Notifications & Alerts to automatically alert employees when a truck’s wait time at a facility exceeded 4 hours, enabling them to take appropriate action based on the notifications and reduce driver wait time at the facility. By recording not only planned entry and exit times but actual timestamps for updating Completion of Delivery (CoD) events, FourKites made it possible for Unilever to eliminate the highly manual task of gathering entry and exit information from employees’ workloads, and instead let employees focus on more value-add tasks.

Operational Impact

Unilever South Africa’s Transport Team now leverages the FourKites platform daily to optimize their work, which has improved communication and collaboration across teams.
Over 2,500 targeted notifications for elevated facility wait times have been sent from FourKites to the Unilever team, enabling both immediate corrective action and historical trend analysis.
Proactive customer communication on load status and delays, which provides total visibility on shipments.
By implementing FourKites’ end-to-end visibility and 24-hour tracking updates, the Unilever team was able to reduce outbound calls made to carriers, drivers, and transporters seeking shipment updates, as tracking information was now readily available.

Quantitative Benefit

Unilever South Africa had visibility into 80% of their shipments in FourKites by September 2020.
Average wait times at South Africa’s borders increased from 4-6 hours to more than 10 hours a day due to COVID-19.