Tech Spotlight: Automating Logistics Coordination With Fero.Ai

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is becoming more and more common today; we have the virtual assistant Siri for our iPhones, Google Assistant for Androids and Alexa for Amazon. As we get accustomed to having AI assist us on a daily basis, we can expect more innovations like these in the future.

In fact, AI has also arrived in the logistics and freight space, with Fero.Ai leading the way. Meet the mastermind behind the world’s first Intelligent Virtual Assistant for the Supply Chain.

Who is Fero.Ai?

Fero.Ai is a Dubai-based startup in the log-tech space that provides automation to logistics, freight, and supply chain business transactions through TiA, an “Intelligent Virtual Assistant” to mimic multiple roles in your sales, pricing, customer service, and operations department. By integrating high-end technologies like AI, ML, NLP, Computer Vision into their Transport Management System (TMS) or Distribution Management System (DMS), as well as their unique software for creating a 2-sided marketplace, they offer businesses better supply chain operations. 

Fero.Ai‘s success in integrating new technology and innovations into logistics caught the attention of the tech titan, Microsoft. In 2020, Fero.Ai was selected as part of the “Microsoft for Startups” program as well as being one of the few selected of a pool of 3000 applicants for the Microsoft Growth-X program – one that aims to accelerate high-tech B2B startups and help them leverage their scale and innovation. 

The prospects for Fero.Ai sure look promising. Just this month, Fero announced its successful completion of a pre-Series A round where it raised $1.1 million. This new funding comes from a boutique institutional investor as well as various other prominent angel investors. In addition, big logistics players such as DSV, Gulftainer, and Bolloré Logistics have also engaged Fero.Ai to further optimize their logistics and automate freight transactions.

‘Alexa’ for Logistics Company

Although it was newly founded in 2018, Fero.Ai has already accomplished many outstanding achievements regarding its technological solutions. The first and foremost achievement that cannot be ignored is their invention of TiA – a voice and chat-enabled Transport Interactive Assistant that can provide support for the logistics and transport process. 

Just like Amazon’s Alexa, TiA listens, understands, talks, & messages over various messaging platforms. Through TiA, businesses can erase inefficiencies caused by human dependence on coordination. Be it rate discovery or quotations, all tasks can be monitored in one single window, allowing employees to execute a freight transaction from end to end without having to switch to any other software or technology. 

(Image Source: Fero.Ai)

By applying TiA to the existing Freight ERPs, over 2 million interactions including emails and calls relating to a full freight transaction from rate exploration to tracking, reporting, and invoicing can be automated. With TiA, unnecessary communication will be reduced, which leads to faster processes and as a result, more orders to be handled effectively. It is estimated that TiA has helped Fero’s clients save approximately $18 million. 

Empowering Business Functions with Automation

Indeed, logistics is a fragmented market with no real tycoon who can actually hold a majority of market shares. Take, for example, in the road freight sector, the six biggest top carriers can hold less than 5% market share in areas like Europe. Most of the market share in the industry is owned by various small and medium providers. 

Therefore, visibility and communication between different providers are vital to complete a full freight transaction. Through its automation process, TiA can help tackle the challenges of ‘Errors’, ‘Inefficiencies’, ‘Managing evolving freight transactions’, and ‘Unnecessary and repetitive communication and human interaction’, all of which have been hindering the logistics landscape for many years.

Fero.Ai’s COO, Carolin-Carmen Neubauer shared, “Visibility and communication between internal and external parties are critical albeit very difficult as shippers, transporters and freight forwarders use various transport management and delivery management systems.” 

As part of the company’s technology ecosystem, Fero.Ai also offers three additional Transport ERP products: FAST (freight aggregation software for trucking), TAME (trucking automation management ERP), and DASH (delivery automation software hub). 

There is no doubt that Fero.Ai is a force to be reckoned with. Given its scale and success in just a few years, we are truly eager to see what they can do in the years to come.

In the meantime, do keep a lookout for more tech spotlights coming your way! 

About Fero.Ai

We at Fero.Ai are a cloud-based Ai-products Company and we have created TiA, the World’s 1st Intelligent Virtual Assistant for Supply Chain. TiA listens, understands, talks, & messages over various messaging platforms, just like Alexa built for Logistics enterprises. TiA is executing Transport Rate Exploration, Transport Contract creation, Transport Order Creation, Invoicing, Transport Fleet Management and smart analytics. 

At Fero, we realised that the $9.3trn per year global logistics industry wasn’t reaping the benefits of smart software automation, which, if deployed correctly, would not only increase turnaround times but reduce the sector’s exposure to the risk of human error.

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