MercuryGate acquires Cheetah Software Systems, in move geared toward meeting changing customer needs

Earlier this week, Cary, N.C.-based SaaS-based transportation management system (TMS) provider MercuryGate International Inc. announced it has acquired Westlake Village, Calif.-based Cheetah Software Systems, a provider of logistics optimization services.

A purchase price for the transaction was not disclosed.  Mercury Gate officials said that bringing Cheetah into the fold will enable the company to extend its TMS platform in order to deliver a last mile, parcel, and less-than-truckload (LTL) offering—and an enhanced fleet management capability—able to adapt, automate, and communicate real-time movements.

And they added that the autonomous and adaptive features of Cheetah’s logistics platform meshed with the MercuryGate TMS automated workflow processes can enable shippers to adapt and respond to evolving customer needs and fluctuations in demand based on live changing events.

“The Cheetah acquisition extends MercuryGate’s TMS platform to deliver both a last mile, parcel and less-than-truckload (LTL) solution and an enhanced fleet management capability that adapts, automates and communicates movements in real-time,” Joe Juliano, MercuryGate President & CEO, told LM. “Cheetah is part of MercuryGate’s ongoing strategy to advance our industry leading smart transportation platform.”

When asked what the biggest benefits of this deal are for MercuryGate's shipper customers, Juliano explained that with the addition of Cheetah’s autonomous and adaptive logistics capabilities to MercuryGate’s TMS, MercuryGate customers with assets can capitalize on real-time visibility for every load, road, supply, demand and transportation mode from the first to the last mile and every step in-between automatically saving costs and delivering customer satisfaction.

“Consumers now make their online purchases based on speed of delivery, changing the transportation chain to a pull model from the historical push model. For the transportation industry the ability to build and dispatch an optimized route plan is just the start,” he said. “Consumers now make their online purchases based on speed of delivery, changing the transportation chain to a pull model from the historical push model. For the transportation industry the ability to build and dispatch an optimized route plan is just the start.”

Looking at this deal from a competitive perspective for MercuryGate, Juliano noted that MercuryGate is one of the first to offer a start to finish view of the transportation supply chain for carriers.

“Together we will be in a stronger market position because of the autonomous and adaptive capability the platform provides and visibility and flexibility particularly at the street level routing and rerouting level,” he said. “Our solutions build and dispatch optimized route plans, instantly planning around all unique variables and constraints providing planners with the control to assess impact and analyze route alternatives. With industry-leading automated route optimization, dynamic real-time information across the supply chain and dynamic re-optimization autonomously based on live changing events such as residential appointments, businesses can adapt and respond to evolving customer needs and fluctuations in demand.”

MercuryGate’s TMS is now positioned to perform the following capabilities through this acquisition, including:

• seeing and solving supply chain disruptions autonomously and adaptively from the first to the last mile for all transportation modes;
• enabling Smart Transportation within urban locales across the country and around the world with a network of final mile carriers including drone providers;
• performing street level routing in real time for maximum efficiency;
• analyzing and optimizing routes before and during delivery;
• enabling easy reverse logistics/returns;
• eliminating black holes in the delivery of valuable goods—essential for frontline needs during the current pandemic;
• demonstrating the use of the product through simulation; and 
• giveing customers full control within a singular platform to manage each segment eliminating costly waste and delays while improving visibility and upside unlike the limited piece parts of our competitors

“Global e-commerce, sophisticated supply chains and interconnected logistics networks result in numerous smaller transactions that are more time-critical,” said Cheetah Founder and CEO Bobby Darroll in a statement. “Many organizations in the retail, food and healthcare industries whose deliveries can be life-critical must move more orders in a shorter timeframe to more customers at a lower cost, while adapting to frequently changing conditions automatically.”