Skip to main content

Analytics: Visibility performance metrics explained

Learn what's behind the tracking performance metrics, how they're calculated and what can you do to improve them

Florian Ransmayr avatar
Written by Florian Ransmayr
Updated over 2 weeks ago

Table of contents:

➡️ Data availability

➡️ Tracked and Untracked

➡️ General transport metrics
Number of transports, Allocated, Tracked, All stops visited, All stops visited in real-time, All stops ETA

➡️ Context specific metrics

Stop visits: Visit, Visit real-time, GPS visit, Event visit, Smart stop visit detection

GPS quality: Allocation timeliness, Transports with GPS, Average GPS pings/hour, GPS consistency, GPS ping lag

ETA presence: Number of stops, Stops with ETA, Stops with external ETA

The Analytics - Tracking Performance feature provides a comprehensive view that ranges from quick health checks to detailed insights, all consolidated in one place, focusing on if and how well transports were tracked.

This documentation explains how the tracking performance metrics are calculated, helping you identify the most relevant ones for your needs.

It starts with the fundamental distinction between tracked and untracked shipments, presents key metrics like "all stops visited" over time, explores detailed elements such as "GPS frequency," and shows how this data is aggregated across customers, carriers, transports, lanes, and other dimensions.

Note: Improvement suggestions in the metrics description vary depending on your role in Visibility:

  • Customer refers to the transport creator, who can be either a shipper or carrier functioning as a "Logistics Service Provider" (LSP).
    You will see the 🏭 symbol in the relevant suggestion.

  • Carrier refers to the assigned carrier on this transport, which can be the same as the executor or, in case of subcontracting, the subcarrier.
    You will see 🚚 symbol in the relevant suggestion.

Data availability

In general, only transports that are in a final tracking state will be available in this report. See the Number of transports section below for details and an example.

For more information on data availability periods and how deletions or expired retention periods affect this report, see this article.

Tracked vs. Untracked

This key performance metric determines whether a transport has received tracking-relevant data.

Tracking-relevant data includes:

  • GPS pings

  • Static arrival/departure events

  • Transport completed events

  • External ETAs

A transport is considered Tracked when any of these data types are received.

Without any of this data, the transport remains Untracked.

Example

Out of 10 total transports:

  • 4 have received GPS updates ✅

  • 3 have stop visits confirmed by arrival/departure events ✅

  • 2 have received events "​documents.​printed", which neither confirms a stop visit, nor completes the transport and nothing else 🔴

  • 1 received an external ETA generated from a carrier in-house system ✅

→ (4 with GPS updates + 3 with arrival/departure events + 1 with external ETA) ÷ 10 total transports = 80%

Why care?

No tracking means no visibility — it's that simple 😃

How to improve?

If this metric falls below your target, first verify that carriers are properly onboarded and have begun providing Visibility (either through allocation or via interface from their in-house system):

  • 🏭 Is the carrier onboarded?
    → Check the Carrier Network view to see your carrier's onboarding status. When the status is not Onboarded, remind your carrier to finish the process.
    ​

  • 🚚 Have you fully onboarded to Visibility?
    → If using a GPS provider with Visibility: Navigate to Vehicle Management - Integrations and verify you've successfully connected a GPS provider. Then check if your expected vehicles appear under Vehicle Management - Dedicated vehicles. Confirm that the Time based status is showing Active.
    ​
    → If sending GPS/Events data directly from your in-house system: Coordinate with your IT department to confirm the data connection has been established.
    ​
    → If you're providing Visibility through subcontractors, onboard them and instruct them to follow the same steps above to verify their vehicle availability.
    ​

  • 🏭 Has the carrier started to provide Visibility?

    • Examine the Carriers table, sort by the number of Transports in descending order, and review the Allocated (tracking initiated) and Tracked (tracking relevant data received) metrics. If these values are 0 or nearly 0, the carrier hasn't begun providing Visibility.

    • If the Tracked number is significantly lower than Allocated, there’s likely a problem with vehicles not transmitting tracking relevant data. To further investigate you can check the vehicle’s health status with the licence plate lookup tool: Visibility Control Center - License Plate Lookup. If you’re sending GPS data from your inhouse system, collaborate with your IT department to sort out any issues.
      ​
      Note: If multiple license plates show different statuses, instruct the assigned carrier to check the vehicle health in Visibility: Vehicle Management - Time based status. For subcontracted transport, the carrier should ask the subcontractor to check instead.”
      ​
      Keep in mind that a transport can be Tracked without being Allocated when only arrival/departure events are received (see Allocated definition here). In such cases, the Allocated metric does not apply.

General transport metrics

General metrics provide an overview of transport tracking performance within a specific timeframe.

These include the number of transports, tracking initiation status (allocated or not), stop completion, real-time tracking performance, and ETA availability. When aggregated at carrier or customer level, these metrics help identify potential areas for improvement.

Number of transports

Definition: Number of transports in a final tracking state (Completed, Cancelled). This excludes transports that have not yet started tracking or are currently being tracked.

Example: Out of 10 total transports:

  • 5 have all stops visited (Completed)✅

  • 3 encountered tracking issues (Cancelled)✅

  • 1 has not yet started tracking (Untracked or Upcoming)🔴

  • 1 is currently being tracked (Tracking)🔴

→ 8 transports (5 completed + 3 cancelled) appear in the report.

Allocated

Definition: The percentage of transports that either have a vehicle allocation (see here for more details) or have received GPS data from an in-house system.

Note: A transport is not considered "allocated" if only arrival/departure events were received without additional data. If this level of tracking meets your needs, this metric isn't relevant.

Why care?

Beyond merely tracking transport via static arrival and departure events, initiating tracking through vehicle allocation or direct GPS data from in-house systems is essential for generating calculated Visibility data. This is the first step toward obtaining an ETA, checking on-time status, or simply viewing the vehicle's current location.

Note: If an allocation was provided in a timely manner or not can be measured with the Allocation timeliness metric.

How to improve?

Carriers typically provide vehicle allocations for Visibility tracking. Examine how this data is currently provided and explore automation possibilities (see here for more details).

Example:

Out of 5 total transports:

  • 2 had a vehicle allocated✅

  • 2 received GPS data via an interface connection from an in-house system✅

  • 1 only received arrival/departure events🔴

→ (2 vehicle allocated + 2 GPS data from interface) ÷ 5 total transports = 80%

Tracked

See here.

All stops visited

Definition: Share of transports with all stops visited (For the "visit" definition, see here)

Why care?

When all stops are tracked in Visibility, it indicates successful tracking initiation, proper data transmission, and correct stop locations. If this number decreases, you may not fully benefit from Visibility because one of these elements is likely malfunctioning.

How to improve?

If not all stops are being visited and this metric is below your target level, investigate these key areas:

  • 🏭/🚚 Allocation sufficiency → Check the allocation metric. Unallocated transports typically won't have all stops visited (except when using static events only).

  • 🚚 Data reception → Verify whether GPS data or events were received for the stops. If not, identify the data provider and review the transmission process.

  • 🏭 Stop location accuracy → Ensure addresses are clearly defined and positions (in case you provide those directly) are accurate. Consider creating Places for your frequently used locations.

  • 🏭/🚚 Timeslot accuracy → Confirm that all stop timeslots reflect actual schedules. This affects when Visibility starts and ends tracking.
    ​Note: Although customers should provide accurate timeslots, carriers can also refine them if needed. For more details, see here.

  • Additional factors may apply.

Example:

Consider 5 transports in total, each with 2 stops:

  • 1 transport has no stops visited🔴

  • 1 transport has only the first stop visited🔴

  • 3 transports have all stops visited✅

→ Calculation: All stops visited (3) ÷ Total transports (5) = 60%

Note: The "All stops visited" metric generally aligns with the "Completed" transport state that you can see in other views in Visibility.

All stops visited in real-time

Definition: Percentage of transports with all stops visited in real-time. For the real-time definition, see here.

Why care?

Real-time tracking of all stops not only ensures complete route coverage but also enables immediate monitoring, notifications, and response to potential issues as they occur.

How to improve?

If you see a gap between the All stops visited and All stops visited in real-time numbers, check if there are any blockers in data transmission as described in the Visit - Real-time metric below.

Example:

Consider 5 transports in total, each with 2 stops.

  • 3 transports have all stops visited, but the real-time criteria was not met🔴

  • 2 transports have all stops visited in real-time ✅

→ Calculation: All stops visited in real-time (2) ÷ All transports (5) = 40%.

All stops ETA

Definition: Percentage of transports where all stops had at least 1 ETA calculated

Why care?

ETAs calculated for all stops on a transport route show that GPS data arrived on time and in a suitable format for accurate calculations. When the score falls significantly below 100%, it indicates the GPS data was either outdated, delayed or missing for some part of the transport.

How to improve?

Verify whether there's a decrease in the Allocation Timeliness metric, as this could confirm the root cause.

Example:

5 transports in total, with 2 stops each.

  • 1 transport had no ETAs calculated at all due to missing data🔴

  • 1 transport had an ETA for the second stop, but not for the first stop🔴

  • 3 transports had ETAs for all stops ✅

→ Calculation: ETA for all stops (3) ÷ All transports (5) = 60%.

Note: Visibility typically calculates ETAs based on GPS pings. If GPS pings are received with a delay (meaning the ping is outdated), Visibility may not be able to perform the calculation.

Context specific metrics

These metrics are organized into three specific categories: Stop visits, GPS quality, and ETA presence.

Stop visits

Measures how many stops were visited, whether such a visit was tracked in real-time, if the visit was detected based on GPS data or event and more, all based on the tracking data (GPS/events) Visibility received.

Definition of a stop visit: A stop has either arrived, departed or arrived + departed events. Those events are created based on GPS data near the stop (see here for more details) or based on these events directly being sent on a transport stop.

Note: Although Visibility can continue tracking a transport when a stop visit cannot be confirmed, these instances are not classified as stop visits. For more information, see here.

Why care?

Stop visits are essential for Visibility as they provide detailed insights into the movement and status of vehicles or assets at specific locations. They help optimize on-time compliance, improve customer service by ensuring timely deliveries, and can even verify compliance with regulations. Overall, they contribute to comprehensive visibility and control over logistics and transportation operations.

How to improve?

If you notice a low share of stop visits, check the following:

  • 🏭 Correct stop locations: Confirm that the location of stops is correct (by having precise address data - see here, or use of the Places feature - see here)

  • 🏭/🚚 Provide accurate & narrow timeslots: Avoid having full-day or longer windows as this might be problematic for tracking start and end times.
    ​Note: Although customers should provide accurate timeslots, carriers can also refine them if needed. For more details, see here.

  • 🏭 Confirm that the stop sequence on transport level is correct, which means having an aligned transport plan and actual execution. Check if you get a lot of "Stops visited in different sequence" warnings.

The following metrics include all stops across all combined transports. For more information, please review the examples provided for each individual metric.

Visit

Definition: Share of stops that were visited. See above for more details.

Example: 4 transports with 2 stops each = 8 stops in total.

6 stops visited:

  • 2 of first

  • 2 of second

  • 1 of third

  • 1 of fourth transport

→ Calculation: Visited (2+2+1+1) ÷ All (8) = 75%

Visit - Real-time

Definition: Share of stops visited in real-time.

Our system captures and shares visit event information in real time. A Real-Time Stop Visit occurs when we receive a live notification (through GPS pings or direct arrival/departure events) showing a vehicle at a planned stop.

For a visit to qualify as real-time, two conditions must be met: (1) The underlying GPS/Event data must have less than a 10-minute delay, and (2) the vehicle allocation must have occurred before the stop visit was captured.

(1) Stop visit:

  • GPS case: The GPS ping lag is less than 10 minutes.
    Example: We received a GPS ping at 10:35, but the GPS ping effective timestamp was 10:20 → Not real-time, because it exceeds the 10-minute delay threshold.

  • Event case: The event lag is less than 10 minutes.
    Example: We received an event at 12:27, but the event effective timestamp was 12:15 → Not real-time, because it exceeds the 10-minute delay threshold.

(2) Allocation timeliness:

If allocation occurs after the stop visit is captured, the stop is not considered visited in real-time.

Example: Vehicle allocation happened at 12:45:00, but vehicle history data shows it arrived at the stop at 12:10:00 → Not real-time.

Example: 4 transports with 2 stops each = 8 stops in total.

5 stops visited, but only 4 of those in real-time

→ Calculation: Visited in real-time (4) ÷ All (8) = 50%

How to improve?

🚚 Depending on your GPS/Event data source:

a) If using a GPS provider with Visibility: Contact your provider to investigate causes of delayed data transmission.

b) If sending GPS/Events data directly from your in-house system: Collaborate with your IT department to enhance the data stream and eliminate transmission delays.

GPS visit

Definition: Share of stops visited by GPS

Example: 4 transports with 2 stops each = 8 stops in total. 6 stops are visited.

  • 4 are visited by GPS ✅

  • 2 are visited by event 🔴

→ Calculation: GPS visit (4) ÷ All (8) = 50%

Event visit

Definition: Share of stops visited by event (arrived/departed)

Example: 4 transports with 2 stops each = 8 stops in total. 6 stops are visited

  • 4 are visited by GPS 🔴

  • 2 are visited by event ✅

→ Calculation: Event visit (2) ÷ All (8) = 25%

Smart stop visit detection

Definition: Share of stops visited by “Smart Stop Visit Detection”.
More info on that, see here.

Example: 4 transports with 2 stops each = 8 stops in total. 6 stops are visited

  • 4 are visited by GPS out of which

    • 1 was based on "Smart stop visit detection"✅

  • 2 are visited by event🔴

→ Calculation: Smart stop visit detection (1) ÷ All (8) = 12.5%

How to improve?

If you notice a high percentage of smart stop visit detections, check the following. Keep this as close to 0% as possible:

  • 🚚 Data reception → Verify that GPS data was received sufficiently—long enough and frequent enough to detect the stop visit. If not, identify the data provider and review the transmission process.

GPS Quality

Measures the percentage of transports with GPS tracking, timeliness of allocation provision, GPS update frequency, and GPS consistency.

Why care?

GPS data forms the foundation of all Visibility features. Poor underlying data limits Visibility's value. To maximize benefits, we need high-frequency, consistent GPS data that starts early enough in the transport journey.

How to improve?

🚚 Depending on your GPS data source:

a) If using a GPS provider with Visibility: Contact your provider to investigate causes of inconsistent or infrequent data transmission.

b) If sending GPS data directly from your in-house system: Collaborate with your IT department to enhance the data stream.

Note: The system excludes GPS signals from stationary vehicles in the following metrics to accommodate necessary stops such as driver rest periods.

Allocation timeliness

Measures whether a vehicle is allocated to a transport before the journey begins. This allows us to track the vehicle's progress early, providing visibility throughout the entire transport.

A timeliness score of 100% indicates that the vehicle was allocated in a timely manner, which usually means before the vehicle departed from the first stop. A lower score means that portions of the transport weren't tracked in real-time due to late allocation.

For example, if a vehicle is allocated two hours into a four-hour transport, the score will be 50%.

Transports with GPS

Definition: Any GPS is present for the transport (at least 1 GPS ping)

Example: Out of 5 transports

  • 4 transports received GPS data ✅

  • 1 transport has only arrived/departed events. 🔴
    ​
    → Calculation: 4 ÷ 5 = 80%

Average GPS pings/hour

Definition: Average GPS pings per hour received for a transport.

Example:

  • A transport takes 4 hours.

  • The vehicle is not moving for 1h

  • There are 30 GPS pings

→ Calculation: Frequency is: 30 ÷ (4-1) = 10 pings/hour

GPS consistency

Definition: Consistency of GPS pings received over the whole transport time.

The transport time is divided into 15 mins intervals. At least 1 GPS ping inside a 15 min interval is considered consistent. Count of consistent intervals against all intervals.

Example:

A transport takes 5 hours: From 13:00 - 18:00

  • 13:00 - 14:00, we get GPS every 5 minutes ✅

  • 14:00 - 14:45, the vehicle was standing still, no GPS was received ✅

  • 14:45 - 17:00, we again get telemetry every 5 minutes ✅

  • 17:00 - 18:00, quality of GPS worsened and there was a long gap 🔴

Calculation:

  • 4 intervals per hour, 5 hours = 20 intervals.

  • Intervals where vehicle was standing still: 3 (14:00 - 14:15, 14:15 - 14:30, 14:30 - 14:45)

  • Intervals that were consistent: 13

→ Calculation: 13 ÷ (20-3)) = ~76.5%

GPS ping lag

Refers to how current ("fresh") the GPS data is when received by the system. This metric helps evaluate the quality and timeliness of your location tracking. It's measured in seconds, representing the delay between when a GPS ping is timestamped and when it's actually received. The lower the lag, the better the performance

Example:

A vehicle transmits a GPS ping at 12:10:30, but it's only received at 12:10:45 in Visibility. This results in a 15-second delay.

Note: You can currently view the GPS ping lag metric in the transports table.

ETA presence

This metric shows how many stops had sufficient data for Visibility to calculate an ETA and whether external ETAs were also received.

Why care?

ETA is a central Visibility feature that helps optimize various logistics processes—from loading operations and yard management to customer service. When stops lack an ETA, it indicates that underlying data was either missing or insufficient for calculation.

How to improve?

For Visibility depends on several key factors to be able to calculate an ETA for a stop:

  • 🚚 Good GPS data quality (see above)

  • 🚚 Timely GPS data delivery (e.g., a first stop can't receive an ETA if GPS data arrives too late)

  • 🏭 Accurate stop locations (precise address data - see here, or use of the Places feature - see here)

  • 🏭/🚚 Narrow timeslots (instead of full-day or longer windows)
    ​Note: Although customers should provide accurate timeslots, carriers can also refine them if needed. For more details, see here.

  • 🏭 Valid stop sequences (with aligned transport plan and execution)

If any of these factors fails, the ETA will be compromised or unavailable.

Number of stops

The number of stops on a specific transport or, if aggregated over time, across all transports combined.

Example:

  • 4 transports in total

  • 3 stops per transport

→ Calculation: 4 * 3 = 12

Stops with ETA

Share of stops having an ETA (calculated by Visibility or external).

Example:

  • 4 transports with 10 stops in total

  • 8 stops have an ETA

→ Calculation: 8 ÷ 10 = 80%

Stops with external ETA

Share of external ETAs from all ETAs

Example: 4 transports with 10 stops in total.

  • 8 stops have an ETA

  • 2 are external ETA

→ Calculation: 2 ÷ 8 = 25%

Did this answer your question?