DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF TRUCK AND CONTAINER MANAGEMENT FOR A LARGE-SCALE TRANSPORTATION COMPANY

Handling more than 7,000 truck and container trips per month across Northern and Southern Vietnam, our customer needed a more scalable way to coordinate high-volume transportation for multiple shippers and nationwide routes. Previously, dispatching, fleet data, container and trailer information, and customer billing were largely managed through Excel and separate operating flows.

Smartlog Transportation Management (STM) was implemented to centralize dispatch management, fleet operations, and billing on one platform. The solution brought North–South operations together, reduced dependence on manual processes, and created a more standardized foundation for large-scale 3PL transportation management.

ABOUT OUR CUSTOMER

Our customer is a large-scale 3PL transportation and logistics provider, serving multiple shippers across a nationwide delivery network.

Operations cover both trucks and containers in Northern and Southern Vietnam. Based on three months of operating data, the company handled more than 7,000 trips each month, creating significant coordination requirements across vehicles, drivers, containers, trailers, customers, and routes.

OPERATING CONTEXT

Before Smartlog STM, around six dispatch staff across the North and South managed operations largely through multiple Excel files.

The team had to receive orders, consolidate and split shipments, assign routes, and allocate vehicles manually. Truck and container operations also followed different workflows, while fleet information, driver data, container and trailer numbers, and customer-specific billing formulas were maintained separately. 

As shipment volumes increased, this fragmented model made transportation management increasingly complex and resource-intensive.

KEY CHALLENGES

High shipment volumes across multiple shippers and routes

Large order volumes, multiple customers, and nationwide delivery routes created a long sequence of manual tasks, from order consolidation and splitting to route and vehicle assignment.

Separate workflows for trucks and containers

Truck and container dispatching were not managed through a unified process, making dock planning and vehicle allocation harder to coordinate efficiently.

Fragmented fleet data and complex billing

Vehicle, driver, container, and trailer information was spread across multiple files. At the same time, different customer billing formulas had to be calculated manually, increasing workload and dependence on Excel.

SMARTLOG’S APPROACH

Smartlog implemented STM as a centralized transportation management platform, bringing together three critical areas: dispatching, fleet management, and billing.

Centralized dispatch management

STM consolidates order receiving, shipment consolidation and splitting, route planning, and vehicle assignment on one platform, reducing reliance on fragmented spreadsheets and separate operating flows.

Unified fleet and transport asset management

Vehicles, drivers, containers, and trailers can be managed within the same system, providing a more consistent data foundation for both truck and container operations. 

Standardized billing and North–South operations

STM supports the customer’s complex billing requirements while bringing operations in Northern and Southern Vietnam onto a single platform, enabling more standardized management across regions.

RESULTS

Following implementation:

• Northern and Southern operations are managed centrally on one STM platform.

• Operational manpower requirements were reduced by 50% compared with the previous manual model.

• The project recorded a 100% on-time, correct-location delivery rate within the tracked scope, although no pre-implementation baseline was available for direct comparison.

• Dispatching, fleet management, and billing moved from multiple spreadsheets toward a more centralized operating model.

BUSINESS VALUE

For a large-scale 3PL provider, complexity comes not only from shipment volume, but from managing multiple shippers, vehicle types, routes, transport assets, and billing rules at the same time.

Smartlog STM reduces this fragmentation by creating a common platform for transportation operations. With North–South activities managed in one system, the business gains a stronger foundation to standardize processes, improve resource control, and scale operations without increasing management complexity at the same rate.