Connecting the Dots: OneRail’s Comprehensive Last Mile Solution Goes the Distance

In today’s world, customers want complete transparency in their interaction with a brand, and the last mile experience can make or break their relationship with a company. Issues in route optimization, missed deliveries, contactless payments, incorrect deliveries, or no proof of delivery can create enormous challenges that can completely ruin the customer experience, and brand loyalty. Thankfully, all these hurdles can be easily tackled with an advanced last mile delivery fulfillment solution. This solution will provide you with better visibility and control over the last mile and streamline options for maximum efficiency.

Globally, there are various companies delivering excellent solutions to manage last mile delivery, but OneRail stands out from the rest. OneRail is the comprehensive last mile delivery fulfillment solution, combining top-tier API technology with the human element of a massive national courier network of 8.2 million drivers and a 24/7 exceptions management team that can change delivery outcomes in real time. The company was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Orlando, Fla.

CEO & Founder Bill Catania gave this interview exclusively for The Silicon Review.

Q. How does data help you in the evaluation of industry developments?

OneRail is hyper-focused on the optimization of supply chain and transportation processes. So our approach with customers starts before they become customers: We use their data within our platform to simulate what the cost of a fully optimized supply chain looks like, as well as the financial impact on OPEX costs, on hard transportation costs, and on new efficiencies gained from connecting dots that have never been connected before. We get granular with our customers’ data — from warehouse level to store level to fleet operations, dissecting data and determining where time is being spent. We’ve had customers who’ve shown us they’re spending 16 minutes to manage an order, and we’re able to take that down to two seconds by fully automating the process and unlocking that value.

Q. Can companies use their own fleet with your platform?

Absolutely. A good portion of our value assessment is determining their own fleet vs. external fleet capabilities. Many of our customers have their own trucks and make financial decisions based on which fleet is optimal to use. For example, if you’re only using own-fleet assets for a couple of hours during the day, maybe you don’t need those assets, or maybe you need fewer assets. What we’ve seen is that a hybrid approach of utilizing our own fleet, while tapping into our national network of over 8.2 million drivers, unlocks the most efficiencies, yielding the lowest cost of transportation — taking that a step further, we have the ability to provide the capability of assembling a route instead of doing hot shot deliveries, or batching all the orders together and putting them on the same truck. By optimizing all corners of the last mile, we’re reducing miles driven, which feeds right into the sustainability initiatives we have planned for the year ahead.

Q. What security measures have you implemented to secure your solution?

This is another aspect that sets OneRail apart: We’re SOC 2 compliant, we’re aligning to the guidance outlined within the ISO 27001 and NIST SP 800-53 standards, and we follow Microsoft’s Best Practices. We also follow CIS standards, CISA standards, DISA standards and COBITTM standards. We’ve really gone the extra mile to build layers of data security and privacy into the platform. After all, we become the tech interface for the shipper, which takes a great deal of burden off the carrier company. A carrier company that doesn’t want to make the investment in security certifications can leverage OneRail as a partner and still be able to work with sophisticated shippers that have those data security requirements.

Q. How do you deal with the never-ending change in digital transformation?

There’s only one way — architecting a platform for the future. OneRail is architected on the Microsoft Azure platform to be mode-agnostic. We are multimodal, so our capabilities span all shipping modes. If a new shipping mode emerges, it would only necessitate a change in our micro-services; we wouldn’t have to change our data model one bit. Related to that, we’re also agnostic to use case. Customers ask us if we can do warehouse to store, and we can do any permutation you can think of — it’s just another node in the sequence. It’s essentially limitless. We’ve architected our solution so there’s no bottleneck, just like any API-first platform.

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Any new services ready to be launched?

Yes! We’re about to dive into warehousing, and we’re activating the first iteration of our built-in Warehouse Management Systems (WMS) capabilities to provide that service. So we’ve got the tech component, our micro-fulfillment centers, and a flex labor force for the loading, labeling, and unloading of product, initially to support our activation for an exercise equipment company, for which we’re starting with 50 nodes. We’re also planning to launch WMS for an international audio brand whose majority of revenue comes from around a dozen products. One of the biggest problems all product manufacturers face is out-of-stock items. We’ll stock those SKUs in our micro-fulfillment centers and monitor the inventory at local Walmart stores, so we’ll know which items are about to be out of stock. Once the inventory threshold hits a certain point — because we’ll be able to view it at the store level — we’ll activate a daily replenishment shipment, so they never run out of stock.

If there are 27 Walmart stores in Atlanta, for example, we’ll put our nodes closest to where those are. We’ll aggregate our WMS just like we aggregated our couriers, matching the node based on what the capabilities are. It’s the same logic we used to build our courier network. Having the ability to flex the placement of the nodes to where the inventory is will be a game-changer. So we’re excited for what’s ahead, and we’re truly focused on solving the whole problem, connecting the dots for our customers. With our new comprehensive fulfillment, we’ll optimize the location of inventory and couple it with transportation to create a real-time end-to-end fulfillment experience.

“By optimizing all corners of the last mile, we’re reducing miles driven, which feeds right into the sustainability initiatives we have planned for the year ahead.”

Prior to founding OneRail and digital coupon pioneer M-Dot, Bill founded motorsports site RaceFan and has raced at Daytona International in the ARCA Racing Series.