How to Set Up an SMC3 Rate

SMC3

With Oracle Transportation Management you can use external rates provided by SMC products like RatewareXL. RatewareXL performs rate lookups and calculations while using multiple tariff tables. Then Oracle Transportation Management can request those rates and make them part of rate offerings within the Rate Manager.

The request calls can be made from OTM to get the rates via:

Web service (via the OTM external rating engine ID of RATEWAREXL and RATEWAREXL WITH CARRIERCONNECT): Here OTM uses SOAP protocol to communicate with external rating engine to get the rates. See Setting up SMC3 Rates section for more details.

There are additional properties that are relevant. See glog.RatingEngine Properties.

CarrierConnect

CarrierConnect is another licensed product from SMC3 which offers calculation of transit time between two locations. You can use the following rating engines with CarrierConnect:

SMC3 WITH CARRIERCONNECT (on-premise): This socket server application helps the shippers to determine transit time and rates for LTL carriers. For CarrierConnect, In addition to setting up SMC3 rates below, the glog.RatingEngine.Rateware.NewAPI property must be set to True. The default is False. Additionally, the service provider must have a valid SCAC code.
RATEWAREXL WITH CARRIERCONNECT (web service): This web service, coupled with RateWareXL and Carrier Connect XL3.0, is used for calculating the cost of the LTL shipment and getting transit time based on SCAC code in two separate calls. One call is made to Carrier Connect XL 3.0 for getting the transit time and the second call is made to RatewareXL for getting the rates. Oracle Transportation Management makes two calls separately to Carrier Connect XL 3.0 and RatewareXL. From the response of Carrier Connect XL 3.0, Oracle Transportation Management gets the movement type (Direct or Indirect) and the transit days. Based on the movement type, OTM has to send the correct set of discounts to SMC.

For both the engines SMC3 WITH CARRIERCONNECT and RATEWAREXL WITH CARRIERCONNECT, in the directions below, the Master is set up to provide a discount for the SMC3 rates returned at a Lane level. If you purchased the CarrierConnect product from SMC3 (in addition to the RateWare product), Oracle Transportation Management provides the ability to differentiate the discounts on a lane depending on the movement type, i.e. whether the source and destination locations on the shipment are serviced directly or indirectly. Points that are serviced directly typically receive a higher discount than indirect points. This option is only available if you licensed both the RateWare and CarrierConnect products. If you have both, then the rates returned to Oracle Transportation Management from RateWare indicate if the Source or Destination or Source and Destination locations on the shipment are Direct or Indirect points.

Following are the CarrierConnect XL movement type designators:

DIRECT – originating carrier is in control of a shipment for the entire transit time
INDIRECT – shipment is handed off to a different carrier in transit
PARTNER – shipment is handed off to a partner carrier in transit
CUSTOM – adds flexibility for a carrier to designate a special type of movement type that is different from DIRECT, INDIRECT, or PARTNER

To discount based on movement type, you then define different rate record details with different discounts using rate basis indicators:

SMC3 Destination location routing flag (null, Direct, Indirect)
SMC3 Source location routing flag (null, Direct, Indirect)

Note: In case the discount for a particular movement type is not defined then Oracle Transportation Management will look for a discount which doesn't have any movement type associated with it. For example if the movement type returned by CarrierConnect XL is INDIRECT and there is no discount defined for INDIRECT movement type, then the default discount will be applied, i.e. the discount with a blank movement type.

Note: For RATEWAREXL WITH CARRIERCONNECT, if you have taken all of the steps required to bring in Direct and Indirect points from CarrierConnect, you can also bring in transit days from CarrierConnect via RateWare by setting the Rate Service Type to EXTERNALTRANSITDAYS.

There are additional properties that are relevant. See glog.RatingEngine Properties.

Setting Up SMC3 Rates

When creating LTL rates for SMC3, you need to create two rate offerings and two rate records in Oracle Transportation Management as follows:

Base rate offering pointing to SMC3's RatewareXL
Rate record associated to the base rate offering
Master rate offering pointing to the base rate offering
Rate record associated to the master rate offering

Note: When setting up a new SMC3 rate using an NMFC class code, NMFC class codes need to be created in the Public domain.

The rest of this section details requirements for setting up these two rate offering/rate record pairs.

LTL Base Rate Offering

The LTL base rate offering is required by Oracle Transportation Management if you want to use SMC3's RatewareXL. Minimally, you must include the following on the LTL base rate offering.

On Rate Header tab:

Select an Offering Type of LTL-SMC.
Leave the Service Provider ID field blank. Since the offering type is LTL-SMC, you cannot enter a service provider ID.
Complete the required fields of Rate Service ID and Version.
Select a Transport Mode of LTL.
Specify an Exchange Rate ID as expected by SMC3 RATEWAREXL.

Note: To use Oracle Transportation Sourcing for LTL rates, you must use RATEWAREXL.

On Attributes tab:

Select a Rate Distance ID since this is required.
Select L – Ship Unit Lines for Package Count is determined by.
Select an External Rating Engine ID. The following rating engines can be configured:
- RATEWAREXL: This is a web service call to get rates.
- RATEWAREXL WITH CARRIERCONNECT: This is a web service call to get rates and transit time. Here also, you have to choose Rate Service Type (in the Rate Header tab) to EXTERNALTRANSITDAYS to get the transit time details. Additionally, the service provider must have a valid SCAC code.
- Note: For more information, see List of External Rating Engine IDs.
Enter the Tariff Effective Date.
Specify a Tariff Name as required by your SMC3 RATEWAREXL setup.

Note: If you create a rate offering type that uses the rate attribute "SMC3 RATE SHIP UNITS", you can use the ship unit weight instead of line item weights whenever there is a National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) code supplied directly on the ship unit.

Note: You can include a discount structure to be used when determining the base cost on either the LTL-Master or the LTL-SMC rate offering. If discounts are present on both rate offerings, the discount on the LTL-Master takes precedence. See SMC Discounts for more details.

LTL Base Rate Record

Create a rate record from the LTL base rate offering created above. No cost information should be included in this rate record as it will not be used by either Oracle Transportation Management or Oracle Transportation Sourcing to create costs. However, it is required by Oracle Transportation Management for SMC3.

Minimally, this LTL base rate record must include the following:

On the Lane Info tab:

Specify a Rate Offering ID of the LTL-SMC base rate offering created above.
Select Country for both Source Geo Hierarchy and Destination Geo Hierarchy.

On the Attributes tab, enter USA in both of the resulting Country fields.

On the Rate Costs tab, do not input a rate cost.

LTL Master Rate Offering

Minimally, you must include the following on the master rate offering:

On the Rate Header tab:

Select an Offering Type of LTL - MASTER.
Service provider ID must be specified since it is a required field.
Select a Rate Service ID and Version since they are required fields.
Transport Mode of LTL.
Specify an Exchange Rate ID as expected by SMC3 RATEWAREXL.

On the Attributes tab:

Enter a Rate Distance ID since this field is required.
Enter the Base Rate Offering created above.
Select L – Ship Unit Lines for Package Count is determined by.
Specify a Tariff Name as required by your SMC3 RATEWAREXL setup.
Note: If you create a rate offering type that uses the rate attribute "SMC_USE_GROSS_SHIPUNIT_WEIGHTS", you can use shipment weight instead of ship unit or ship unit line weights whenever there is a National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) code supplied directly on Master rate offering (Attributes tab) with ‘Specified Commodity’ option being selected.

LTL Master Rate Record

Create a rate record from the LTL master rate offering created above. This LTL master rate record will be used by Oracle Transportation Sourcing as the rate record template. As a result, it must include all costs that you want your carrier to bid on and that you may want to transform into Oracle Transportation Management rates later in the sourcing process.

Minimally, this rate record must include the following: