FAQ – C3 Reservations

Functionality

• How will the stakeholders be notified in the case of an appointment cancellation/rejection?

  C3 Reservations includes an email notification feature that allows to send customized email content to your stakeholders (e.g. suppliers, carriers, vendors, purchasing, customer service, schedulers, etc.).

• Most other appointment scheduling systems that I have seen only handle inbound receiving. Does C3 Reservations deal with outbound appointments?

  Yes, C3 Reservations handles outbound appointments. Any specific site can be setup to handle inbound and/or outbound appointments. All of the constraints that can be used to define an inbound shift can also be used to define an outbound operation.

• My carriers often bill me for driver detention. How can I monitor if my carriers are on time for their appointments or not?

  In order to monitor your carriers’ compliance, you can use the built-in Carrier Report Card which provides direct access to a carrier’s performance against it’s own past and even against other carriers. Can’t find the information you need in the built-in report card? No problem! Our fully customizable reporting engine allows you to extract the exact data that you want. You can then create your own report cards based on this data and using a familiar tool like Excel.

• What does the vendor do if it knows that it will not be able to ship the product that it initially set the appointment for?

  If a vendor or carrier knows that they will not be able to make an appointment or even if they realize they will be shipping less product than initially intended, they can very simply go to the web portal and request an amendment to their appointment. As part of the amendment process they will be requested for a reason code and they will also be able to request an alternative date if relevant.

• How will my carriers know if I make a change to an existing appointment? Do I need to call them?

  No, you do not need to call or email your carriers or vendors when you change an appointment. When the business makes an amendment to the appointment a system generated email will automatically be sent to all the parties involved. This includes, the vendor, the carrier and the business as well.

• How does the system calculate the duration of the load?

  Duration can be handled in one of two ways. First, its possible for a user to manually set the duration on each appointment. If duration is a factor in your operations, then the system will adjust the length of each slot to reflect this constraint. The second way is by setting up rules that automatically calculate the duration of an unload based on any property of an appointment (PO, type of load, carrier, supplier, destination, or any other). This is obviously the best approach as it ensures consistency in calculations and rules can be adjusted at run time.

• How complicated is it to change the system labels, fields & naming so they are pertinent to my business?

  The labels and fields that appear on the screen can be modified to fit the terminology that is used by your business. Our product specialists will sit down with you and establish what are the proper terms that need to be put onto the screen for your business. This is a service that is included in the regular configuration of the system.

• Please describe how your software’s allocates timeslots?

  The allocation of timeslots is done by the validation of the PO/booking details provided in the request (e.g. truck type, pallet count, commodity, supplier/carrier) against the shift set up for a given site/warehouse/date (e.g. truck type restrictions, standing appointments, reserved times, max pallet counts).

• Does C3 Reservations support multiple sites?

  Yes, C3 Reservations not only supports multiple sites it also supports multiple warehouses at each site.

• Please describe how your software provides data in a timely manner in order for DCs to utilize delivery data to optimize DC resources?

  DC users have a direct access to the system and can therefore plan their workload based on booking schedules and pallet counts updated in real time.

• Please describe how your software manages capacity constraints at the DC for incoming deliveries and prioritize bookings accordingly?

  Capacity constraints (e.g. number of bookings, pallets, lifts) can be set up at the time slice and shift level. Color coded indicators show how a shift’s workload evolves and can help schedulers prioritize last-minute/special requests. Constraints can optionally be configured to activate/deactivate over time to adjust to the demand.

• Please describe how your software manages ‘no show’ when a booking does not arrive?

  Appointments can be flagged as ‘no show’ manually (with optional reason code and comment) and/or automatically after a configurable delay following their planned Scheduled Time. No Show events can trigger email notifications to the various parties involved. Special reports can also be generated to trace this compliance aspect (e.g., Number of No Show bookings, by carrier, by month).

• How can an organisation build intelligence around dock scheduling activities?

  C3 Reservations includes a flexible built-in reporting tool to which users can be granted a read-only, edit or admin access. Reports can be created and exported directly from the application.
  Customers may also choose to schedule a daily extract of their data to be used for integrated reporting with their other systems.