Rate Preference

This page is accessed via Contract and Rate Management > Contract Management > Rate Preference.

The Rate Manager allows you to manage rates for inbound and outbound goods for all transportation modes, including truckload and less-than-truckload, vessels, rail, and air. A rate is considered a contract between the user and a service provider or a user and their clients. The Rate Manager stores information about effective and expiration dates, freight limitations, accessorials, and the rates themselves. Rates can be defined or limited by weight, volume, distance and commodity. In addition, a rate can model most industry practices such as deficit ratings, base and excess discounts, minimums and surcharges.

Note: Alternatively, you may choose to enter rates automatically via integration.

One or more rate records can be associated with a single rate offering. While the offering provides general contractual details, the record defines a cost for service between one location and another. A record relies on an associated rate offering for much of its information but can override some of the data in the offering, if necessary.

After you define a rate offering or record, you can use the data when qualifying an order. Once pickup and destination locations are provided, an itinerary is chosen and the order is released, the shipment is matched with one or more qualifying rates. Rates qualify when:

• Rate constraints for weight, length and other units are met for the order and the itinerary.
• Time constraints for the order are met.
• Optional constraints, such as those requiring special equipment or services, are met.
• Geographical requirements are met.

Rate Preference

Rate Preferences allow you to configure which rates should be used for a specific lane or rate zone.

Note: Oracle Transportation Management only considers your rate preferences if you configure the corresponding parameter.

Note: Oracle Transportation Management disregards your rate preferences if you provide a specific service provider or rate offering on the order base or within a shipment as work (SAW).

The transport mode is important for rate preferences since Oracle Transportation Management considers all applicable rates for transport modes with no rate preferences defined. Oracle Transportation Management considers:

• Only preferred rates for transport modes with preferred rates defined.
• All applicable rates for the remaining transport modes where you have not defined a preferred rate.

For example, when building a shipment, three rates meet the shipment requirements:

• Rate A goes by air
• Rate B goes by truck
• Rate C goes by truck

You have only defined rate C in rate preferences. In this case, Oracle Transportation Management only considers rates A and C, and picks the cheapest of the two.

• Oracle Transportation Management considers rate A since there are no preferred rates defined for air. Rate preferences do not allow you to exclude rates for transport modes that are not defined in rate preferences.
• Oracle Transportation Management skips rate B since it does not belong to a preferred rate for truck loads.
• Oracle Transportation Management considers rate C since it belongs to a preferred rate for truck loads.

If you activate rate preferences in power data but no rate preference exist in Rate Manager, shipments are built as if rate preferences are not activated. The one exception is the Show Preferred Only check box in the Change Service Provider action.

Rate Preferences and Active Tables

Oracle Transportation Management implements data security via the Oracle Database feature Virtual Private Database (VPD). VPD provides an ability to dynamically append where conditions to SQL statements at runtime. Oracle Transportation Management uses this capability for its external predicate functionality and for cross-domain visibility. By default, a “where” condition is appended to a SQL statement for each table in the SQL. These additional where conditions can have an adverse affect on performance.

Depending upon your particular setup in Oracle Transportation Management, these where conditions may be unnecessary. A capability has been implemented to control which tables have where conditions appended for Rate related queries.

The properties below provide a way to set an active table for VPD.

When the xxx.useActiveTable property is on (i.e. true), and you specify the activeTable (in this case RATE_GEO), it means that VPD will append where conditions only on the RATE_GEO table, and not on any other table in the query. At times, this option of querying performs better for the query.

The properties are:

• glog.business.rate.ratefinder.activeTable: This property is used to specify which table to add as the active table for the VPD when searching for rates by lane.
• glog.business.rate.ratefinder.useActiveTable: This property is used for enabling or disabling the addition of an active table to the VPD when searching for the rates by lane and by zone.
• glog.business.rate.ratefinder.preferredRatesByLane.activeTable: This property is used to specify which table to add as the active table for the VPD when searching for preferred rates by lane.
• glog.business.rate.ratefinder.preferredRatesByLane.useActiveTable: This property is used for enabling or disabling the addition of an active table to the VPD when searching for preferred rates by lane.  
• glog.business.rate.ratefinder.preferredRatesByZone.activeTable: This property is used to specify which table to add as the active table for the VPD when searching for preferred rates by zone.  
• glog.business.rate.ratefinder.preferredRatesByZone.useActiveTable: This property is used for enabling or disabling the addition of an active table to the VPD when searching for preferred rates by zone.
• glog.business.rate.ratefinder.RateGeoFinderSession.activeTable: This property is used to specify which table to add as the active table for the VPD when searching for rates by zone.

Rate Preference Definition

1. Enter a Rate Preference ID and a Rate Preference Name for your Rate Preference Definition. You can use these fields to find rate preferences.
2. Enter a Perspective. This determines if the rate preference will be used for buy-side shipments, sell-side shipments or all shipments.
3. You must select either a Lane ID or a Rate Zone Profile ID for rate preferences to work. This tells Oracle Transportation Management in what geographic region the rate preference is valid. If you have multiple lanes defined between a pair of geographic points, you only need to select any one of them.
4. Select an Effective Date and an Expiration Date to define when your Rate Preference Definition is valid. If your Rate Preference Definition expires, Oracle Transportation Management behaves as if your Rate Preference Definition does not exist.
5. Select the Rate Offering IDs you prefer to have Oracle Transportation Management use. Click Save to associate a Rate Offering ID with the Rate Preference ID.