The Phantom Data Problem

Why Must It Be Eliminated?

Phantom data causes confusion, delays and cancellations for participants in the dynamic freight market. The experience also diminishes the perception that dynamic freight provides a highly-efficient, automated alternative to legacy, non-automated freight services. Consequently, phantom data negatively impacts the rate of adoption of dynamic freight services by the shippers, carriers and brokers and limits the operational efficiency, growth and profitability potential of DFMs.

Virtually every digital freight matching provider has load and capacity listings in their datasets that are not bookable
  • Incidents occur multiple times a day on many platforms
  • It can take up to several hours to recover and provide replacement capacity
  • Adds significantly to labor inefficiency
  • Negatively impacts customer satisfaction and loyalty
  • Undermines job satisfaction
  • Considered urgent by DFMs and their customers

All day, every day, phantom data undermines freight matching algorithms, limiting the ability to fully optimize. The more market share the DFM industry gains, the more phantom data will pollute their data sets, and the more their customer relationships with shippers, carriers, and brokers will be impacted.

HOW IS PHANTOM DATA ELIMINATED?

Phantom data has become a constant, nagging, ever increasing drag on digital freight matching marketplaces, platforms and load boards, because shippers, carriers and brokers commonly post their loads or available capacity onto several marketplaces at once in order to increase the odds of getting a quick match or to gain intelligence on pricing.

The purging approach is quite simple: When a shipping order that is matched to a driver-tractor-trailer becomes confirmed, the rest of the market must be notified in real-time to remove the available load and equipment. Yet, without a central data clearinghouse, there is no ability to provide notifications to DFMs that a load has been booked on another marketplace or load board.

DFMs add the ATR to their platforms and collaborate with us to configure the API/EDI connection – only 6 process steps required

The only way to eliminate phantom data from multiple platforms is via a central utility that serves the entire DFM industry—aka DFM Data Corp.

Our role is akin to a key function performed by stock markets, where only valid, purchasable shares can be seen by buyers. It is easy to imagine the chaos that would ensue if bids continue to come in for shares that are no longer available for purchase.

After our software is added by DFMs to their platforms, it automates the function of sending transactional data to DFM Data Corp as well as the receiving of notifications to purge already booked loads and capacity. The software anonymizes private information and preserves a record of the transaction to the blockchain.

PHANTOM DATA WILL SOON BE ELIMINATED FROM THE ENTIRE MARKET

Our platform brings the only realistic way to clear the path to 100% frictionless matches unencumbered by phantom data. However, it will requite the participation of virtually all DFMs to realize the full potential.

While we are ready to bring our digital freight data-sharing ecosystem into wide use, there is urgency to onboard DFMs as soon as possible because the problem of phantom data only gets worse with time.

The growing adoption of dynamic freight matching by shippers, carriers and brokers inevitably grows the density and impact of duplicated market capacity (aka Phantom Data) in every open market DFM platform dataset. This means more and more friction added to the customer experience, and more and more distance from the holy grail of fully-automated matches, fully-optimized marketplaces and maximized profitability for DFMs.

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