LTL Flow Overview

Oracle Transportation Sourcing provides the ability to manage the end-to-end process for sourcing less than truckload (LTL) bids. The rating for LTL bids depends on SMC3’s Rateware XL so you can only run projects in geographies covered by Rateware XL. This limits all LTL sourcing projects to North America.

Shipment History

The first step in sourcing your LTL rates is to make sure you have a shipment history. First, you create a shipment set criteria and include constraints which Sourcing will use to build the shipment set which pulls shipment data from the OTM core product to the OTM Sourcing system. Then, you build the shipment set. A shipment set is a collection of OTM sourcing shipments which you want to process through sourcing.

The shipment history pages are located under Sourcing > Historical Shipments.

First, you define your demand.
Due to the way LTL rating is done, this requires your shipment history. That is, each LTL shipment. If your shipment history is not in Oracle Transportation Management, you can upload the data via CSV files. This will likely include the P_SHIPMENT, P_S_SHIP_UNIT, and P_S_SHIP_UNIT_LINE CSV files.
If you have uploaded your shipment history via CSV files, your next step is to define your shipment set criteria to group the shipments using the Assign Shipment Set action.
If your shipment history is in Oracle Transportation Management, this is where you begin. You define what constraints will find the Oracle Transportation Management shipments that match your demand via the shipment set criteria.

The following must be selected on the shipment set criteria:
1. Select a Mode Profile ID (transport mode) of LTL
2. Mark the Shipment Type as LTL
Next, you bring Oracle Transportation Management shipments into Oracle Transportation Sourcing. To do this, you run the action Build Shipment Set. If you have a large set of shipments to bring over, it is better to run the action in the background. The action will email you when it is done and you can continue working in OTM until you see the email.
If necessary, you can edit individual shipments as defined in Oracle Transportation Sourcing. The Ship Units tab allows you to see the ship unit and ship unit line information that is needed for LTL. You can work with only ship units or both ship units and ship unit lines.

Note: If you add or copy any Oracle Transportation Sourcing shipments, you will need to add these shipments to your shipment set using the Add to Shipment Set action.

Rate Lanes for Oracle Transportation Management Shipments

The Build Shipment Set action imports Oracle Transportation Management shipments into Oracle Transportation Sourcing shipments. The lane ID associated with the new Oracle Transportation Sourcing shipment is the lane specified on the Oracle Transportation Management rate cost.

When setting up rate lanes for LTL rates used to build your Oracle Transportation Management shipments, you have two options:

If there is only one discount across all zip code to zip code lanes, then one rate cost with a rate geography hierarchy of USA to USA can be created. Oracle Transportation Management shipments built with this rate cost will all be pulled into Oracle Transportation Sourcing with one rate lane which will be USA to USA. You can view the demand for each location to location pair using the Lane Summary Report.
If you want to specify lane specific discounts, then for your Oracle Transportation Management shipments you need to create one rate cost for each lane. Then, when the shipments are created in Oracle Transportation Sourcing, the lane ID from the rate cost for that specific lane will be specified on the sourcing shipment.

Lane Summary

Next, you need to build a lane summary which summarizes the demand (number of shipments in a time frame) that is expected for a particular lane. This is necessary for project creation at a later time.

A lane summary which is a spreadsheet representation of your historical lane volumes over specified periods of time. Each cell represents a number of loads which moved on that particular lane within a particular time period. Then, you build the lane summary and generate the lane summary reports which allow you to review the summary of shipments across the geographic region and time frames selected in the shipment set.

The lane summary pages are located under Sourcing > Lane Aggregation.

You start by creating a lane summary criteria.
1. Enter a Begin Date and an End Date.
2. Set the Shipment Type to LTL.
3. Specify a Time Period Size and First Time Period.
4. Select the Shipment Set ID for which you want to build the lane summary.
Run the Build the Lane Summary action. The process of building a lane summary aggregates your shipments as lane information. Since this is a potentially time consuming action, you can run it in the background.
Also, you can view the lane summary details.
View the Shipment History Report. With your demand aggregated, you can use the Shipment History Report shows all shipments that make up your demand.
View the Lane Summary Report instead of running the View Lane Summary action which is not available for LTL shipments.

Rates in Oracle Transportation Management

Define the costs that you want carriers to bid on using Oracle Transportation Management rates. A Sourcing rate record template is an OTM rate which allows you to utilize a sub-set of OTM's extensive rating capabilities. A rate is considered a Sourcing rate if you select the Sourcing Template check box on the associated rate offering. A rate record template is used in Sourcing to populate the CRT Configuration Details page.

Oracle Transportation Sourcing only supports a limited set of Oracle Transportation Management rating options. For details on setting up LTL rates in Oracle Transportation Management, see Setting Up SMC3 Rates. The rate offering and rate record pages are located under Contract and Rate Management > Contract Management.

Note: Rate records based on rate offerings marked as sourcing templates or sourcing rates will ONLY be used for Sourcing. They will not be used by OTM for shipment building or execution.

Specifically for sourcing LTL rates using discounts, you need to create two rate offerings and two rate records in Oracle Transportation Management as follows:

Base rate offering pointing to SMC RatewareXL
Rate record associated to the base rate offering
Master rate offering which is marked as a template
Rate record associated to the master rate offering. This rate record contains cost information that you will source to your carriers. This combination of master rate offering and the associated rate record will be considered the sourcing rate record template.

Let's review some of the information required by Oracle Transportation Management and Oracle Transportation Sourcing on these two rate offerings and their associated rate records.

As you define your rate records, you need to know how you want your carriers to bid:

Option 1: One discount per lane, disregarding weight breaks: including the column or a lane discount. Set the rate record up with a rate cost of discount. For example, 20% discount. Note that this is just place holder your carriers will enter their actual discount when bidding. This rate cost can also include conditions.
Option 2: One discount per weight break and lane: including the column or weight break discounts. Complete the Discounts section on the Attributes tab of the Rate Record manager to include your expected SMC3 discounts. Note that this is just place holder your carriers will enter their actual discounts when bidding.

Note: Oracle Transportation Sourcing does not support the use of weight break profiles in rate costs. Instead, you must use the Discounts section on the Attributes tab of the Rate Record manager.

Option 3: You can use the NMFC section on the Attributes tab of the Rate Record manager to define the NMFC ranges for your rate if necessary. You can combine this with the first two options.
Option 4: Set up accessorials for additional costs such as refrigeration cost, insurance cost, hazardous materials cost, fuel charge, etc. You can define accessorial costs with the any of the rate basis items supported for the LTL mode by Oracle Transportation Sourcing as mentioned.
Any combination of options 2, 3, and 4 are possible. For LTL rates, option 1 would not typically be combined with 2. You would either have option 1 or option 2, but not both.

For sourcing LTL rates without discounts, you can create a single rate offering and rate record pair as follows:

Rate offering with a Type of LTL which is marked as a sourcing template
Rate record associated to the master rate offering. This rate record contains cost information that you will source to your carriers. This combination of master rate offering and the associated rate record will be considered the sourcing rate record template.

LTL Base Rate Offering and Rate Record

LTL Base Rate Offering

The LTL base rate offering is required by Oracle Transportation Management if you want to use SMC3's RatewareXL. Since you will most likely use SMC RatewareXL when sourcing LTL rates, you must set up a base rate offering and an associated rate record.

For details on the required information, see How to Set Up an SMC3 Rate: LTL Base Rate Offering.

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's RatewareXL.

For details on the required information, see How to Set Up an SMC Rate: LTL Base Rate Record.

LTL Master Rate Offering and Rate Record

LTL Master Rate Offering

In addition to the information required for standard LTL master rate offering set up, you must specify the following for Oracle Transportation Sourcing.

On the Rate Header tab:

Service provider ID must be specified since it is a required field.
Note: This field is required by Oracle Transportation Management, but Oracle Transportation Sourcing will not limit you to this service provider.
Select the Template check box.

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.

In addition to the information required for standard LTL master rate record set up, you must specify the following for Oracle Transportation Sourcing.

On the Attributes tab:

First, follow the instructions on How to Set Up an SMC3 Rate: LTL Master Rate Record.
Specify a Source Geography and a Destination Geography.
Add NMFC ranges in the NMFC section, if required.
Specify SMC3 weight break discounts in the Discounts section, if required.

On the Rate Costs tab:

If necessary, specify a rate cost with a Cost Type of Discount and the appropriate Apply Discount __ %. It is not necessary to add a rate cost. If your rates will use SMC3 discounts, create these on the Attributes tab.
Note: A rate cost of discount will not typically be combined with SMC3 weight break discounts. You would normally use only one or the other, but not both in the same rate record.
You can also set up conditions for this rate cost discount. A condition will typically be based on the rate basis item of equipment.

CRT Configuration

Once the rate record template is created, the next step is to create the CRT configuration. The CRT configuration allows you to specify how you want both the rate attributes and the bid attributes to appear in the bid document that is sent to the carriers. This bid document is called a carrier response template or CRT. A CRT configuration ID is necessary for the generation of the carrier response template.

The CRT configuration page is located at Sourcing > Setup > CRT Configuration.

Create a CRT Configuration.
Specify a rate record template.
Edit the lane and rate attributes to make sure that only rows which you want your carriers to either see or bid on are listed in the final CRT spreadsheet.

Constraint Sets, Rule Sets, and Parameters

Create constraints and rules for exactly what costs can be sourced using constraint sets and parameter set. The constraint set and rule set pages are located under Sourcing > Setup. While the parameter set page is located at Shipment Management > Power Data > General > Parameter Sets.

Parameter Set ID. Sourcing specific parameters that apply to LTL mode are:
- ALLOW_HIGHER_BID
- CREATE INTEGER AWARDS (applicable when solving scenarios)
- PROCUREMENT_SOLVER_MAXTIME (applicable when solving scenarios)
- PROCUREMENT_SOLVER_PERCENT_OPTIMAL (applicable when solving scenarios)
Constraint Set. You can constrain based on the following:
1. Equipment Group Profile ID
2. Service Provider Profile ID
3. Mode Profile ID

Project and Bid Round

With your demand all defined and aggregated and your CRT configuration created, you are ready to define how you want to run your sourcing project and review your bid round. The project defines the information to be communicated for a particular bid. It also defines the contract period. The bid round defines the structure for the bidding process.

Project

Create a new project via Sourcing > Bid Creation > Project:

Complete all required fields on the Project tab.
Specify a constraint set which includes a service provider profile.

Make sure that service provider profile includes the carriers (service providers) allowed to upload bids. While a constraint set is not required, you should specify one so that bids can be uploaded against this project.
For LTL mode, the only option on the Project Details tab is to enter a rate record template ID.

The rate record template specified on the CRT configuration ID must match the rate record template specified on the project.

Bid Round

When you save a new project, the first bid round is automatically created by Oracle Transportation Sourcing. The bid round manager is located at Sourcing > Bid Creation > Bid Round.

Review the bid round. You may want to change some of the values inherited from the project. For example, you may want to change the dates when you accept bids from carriers. The default is 30 days from the project start date.
Specify a CRT configuration ID on the bid round.

Generate a Carrier Response Template (CRT)

The next step is to generate the carrier response template (CRT) from the Bid Round manager. The carrier response template or CRT is the MS Excel spreadsheet that you send to your carriers. Your carriers then enter their bids into the CRT spreadsheet. The CRT is generated from the bid round and uses the CRT configuration for content and formatting.

As you define your Carrier Response Template, you need to know how you want your carriers to bid:

One discount per lane, disregarding weight breaks: including the column or a lane discount, or
One discount per weight break and lane: including the column or weight break discounts

You can also collect information about how often each carrier can pick up your goods with the column Pickup Days Per Week. As information, you can display the NMFC Info column to show the NMFC rate as information you defined in your project.

The Create Carrier Response Template action has the potential to run for a long time so you have the option of running it in the background.

Select a bid round.
Click Actions > Create Carrier Response Template.

Bid Invitation

Prior to sending out the bid invitation, you may want to run some LTL reports. With your demand aggregated, you can use two reports to view it and share with your invited carriers.

Shipment History Report which shows all shipments that make up your demand.
Lane Summary Report which replaces the View Lane Summary action for LTL.

With the Carrier Response Template and LTL reports ready to go, you can invite your carriers to bid using the Send Bid Invitation action. The action checks that all carriers have a sourcing contact defined before running. Ensure that each carrier is appropriately set up in Sourcing so they can upload their bids.

Select a bid round.
Click Actions > Send Bid Invitation.

Note: If you run this action and remain logged into OTM; then open the bid invitation and click the View Lane Summary link, you will see an error. Please log out of OTM prior to attempting to view the lane summary.

Carriers Enter Bids in CRT

Once your carriers receive the bid invitation, they will then be able to enter their bid information into the CRT spreadsheet.

What your carriers enter into the CRT, depends on what you specified in the CRT configuration. See Editing the Carrier Response Template for pointers and notes on editing the CRT.

Typically for LTL shipments, the following columns in the CRT would be updated by your carriers:

Transit time
Pickup days per week
If you are sourcing by weight breaks, columns will include Min, L5C, M5C, M1M, M2M, M5M, M10M, M20M, M30M, and M40M Discount
Discount column if the discount is a single rate cost
For accessorials, such as insurance and fuel surcharge, the carrier enters the bid amount under the accessorial charge header. For example, if the accessorial name is FUELSURCHARGE, then that will be the column header in the CRT.

Carriers Upload and Review Bids

Once all bids are entered into the CRT, the carrier can upload the CRT. Typically, your carriers will log into Oracle Transportation Sourcing as a service provider to upload a CRT.

Uploading Bids

Carrier Uploading

Your carrier (service provider) completes the following:

Log into Oracle Transportation Management in the carrier's SERVPROV domain.
Click Sourcing > Bid Creation > Upload Bid Response.

Buyer Uploading the Bid Response on Behalf of the Carrier

If necessary, the buyer can upload the bid response on behalf of the carrier:

Log into Oracle Transportation Management in the buyer's domain.
Click Sourcing > Bid Creation > Upload Bid Response.

Manually Entering Bids

A carrier or buyer can manually enter bids as well. You can use the Copy Bid action to copy the bid details on the same or different lane to the specified or new bid round.

Checking if Bids are Properly Uploaded

The carrier can view the bid report via the View Bid Report action. The bid report allows a carrier to double-check if the bids uploaded via the carrier response template were properly saved.

Committing Bids

Once all bids are entered and double-checked, the carrier commits their bids. The buyer can also commit bids on behalf of the service provider.

Go to Sourcing > Bid Creation > Bid and search for bids to commit.
With one or more bids selected, click Actions > Commit.

The bid status will change to COMMITTMENT_COMMITTED.

When all bids are uploaded and committed, the carrier is done.

Committing Over 1,000 Bids

If you have a lot of bids (more than 1,000), you must run the action from the search page as follows:

Go to Sourcing > Bid Creation > Bid.
Enter the appropriate search criteria, such as Bid Round ID, on the finder page.
At the bottom of the page, click Actions > Commit.

You see a results confirmation page stating the number of bids found.
On the results confirmation page, click OK to change the bid status.

Bid Analysis

Next, you can check the progress of carriers entering bids. For each row in the bid response document, Sourcing creates a new bid. You can view and or modify these bids using the Bid manager. A service provider/carrier could log in using their SERVPROV user name and password to view and edit their uploaded bids. Also, a buyer can log in and review uploaded bids.

Analyzing Carrier Responses

On the carrier response analysis, you can check the status of carriers entering bids. For example, you can see the number of carriers without bids, number of committed bids and number of committed and included bids among other details.

Select a bid round.
Click Actions > Carrier Response Analysis.

Including Bids

You can then include bids by running the Bid Include action. The status will change to BID_IN_INCLUDED.

Go to Sourcing > Bid Creation > Bid and select one or more bids.
Click Actions > Bid Include.

Using the carrier response analysis action, you can go back and ensure all bids are in committed, as well as, included status.

Including Many Bids at once

If you have a lot of bids (more than 1,000) or you want to include bids across carriers, you can run the action from the search page as follows:

Go to Sourcing > Bid Creation > Bid.
Enter the appropriate search criteria, such as Bid Round ID, on the finder page.
At the bottom of the page, click Actions > Bid Include.

You see a results confirmation page stating the number of bids found.
On the results confirmation page, click OK to change the bid status.

Using the carrier response analysis action, you can go back and ensure all bids are in committed, as well as, included status.

Close the Bid Round

Once you receive all expected bids, you can close the bid round. Once the bid round is closed, no more bids are accepted.

Note: You do not have to close the bid round to run the solver.

Solve Scenario - Run 1

Next, you can run through a scenario for the first time. Your first scenario run is typically totally unconstrained to give you the cheapest price possible.

Note: You can manually add bids to an existing scenario. You can either use this to create a solution totally from scratch or just to add a few bids to an solution created by the Sourcing solver.

Note: Since LTL carriers must accept your goods, the solver algorithm awards each lane to a carrier completely (100%) or not at all (0%). This is different for LTL than other modes.

To run the Sourcing solver, complete the following:

To access the Scenario manager, go to Sourcing > Bid Analysis > Scenario.
First, create a new scenario.
Then, run the solver via either Sourcing > Process Management > Solve Scenario or Sourcing > Bid Analysis > Scenario > Actions > Solve Scenario.
And finally, review the solution detail and solution summary to see how the awards are broken down by carrier.

Solve Scenario - Run 2

You will probably want to run the scenario a second time.

Specify a Sourcing Rule Set ID: At this point, you might want to add some business rules to the solver and see how that affects your cost. For example, you might want to limit the total number of carriers you want to do business with across lanes.

Note that each lane can have exactly one carrier awarded. This is true even if the rule isn’t explicitly stated here. The total number of carriers across lanes is what you are after here.
Run the solver a second time.
When solving the scenario, you can choose to award backup carriers. This enables you to have backup rates ready to use in case the awarded carrier cannot be used.
View the solution detail and solution summary: You can now view the solution given your constraints and see that the backup carriers got awarded as well.
In addition to the Solution Summary action, you can also study and compare your solutions using reports. There are reports to break down the awards by carrier, lane, and compare to the cheapest carrier on each lane. To view these reports, go to Sourcing > Reports.

Manually Creating a Scenario and Adding Bids to the Solution

You can manually add bids to an existing scenario. You can either use this to create a solution totally from scratch or just to add a few bids to a solution created by the Sourcing solver.

For all manually added bids, the Fixed option on the solution detail record is selected by default. When this option is selected, the solution detail record is not replaced if the Sourcing solver runs.

To create a scenario and manually add bids, complete the following:

To access the Scenario manager, go to Sourcing > Bid Analysis > Scenario.
First, create a new scenario.
You can add bids to this new scenario using one or more of the following:
- From the Solution Detail Finder screen or Solution Detail results screen, click New to add a single solution detail record. You can use this method to add a single bid to a solution. This is not the easiest way to add multiple bids.
- From the Scenario Finder screen or Scenario finder results screen, select an existing scenario and click Actions > Add Bids to Solution to add multiple bids.
- From the Solution Summary screen, click Add More Bids to add multiple bids.
You can view a report showing the manual awards for each lane compared to that of demand and the total awarded. If the Fixed option on the solution detail record is selected, then the award is considered manual. To view the report, go to Sourcing > Reports and run the Manual Awards Report.

This report will only list the equipment group for lanes with a shipment type of OCEAN.

Build Rates

The final step in the sourcing process is to build rates. Before building rates, you must complete the following:

Mark bids as usable to build rates with the Set Bid Publish Status For All Bids or the Change Publish Status action.
Specify the chosen scenario on the bid round.
And finally, run the Build Rates action from the Project manager (Project > Actions > Sourcing > Rates > Build Rates).
The new rate offering and rate records are created as explained here.

Oracle Transportation Management Rate Offering

The following are specific for the rates built for LTL mode:

Rate Offering Type will be LTL - MASTER
Base rate offering, exchange rate ID, and tariff name are taken from the rate record template

Oracle Transportation Management Rate Record

Specifically for the rates built for LTL mode, the Discounts and NMFC grids are populated based on the published bid.