Working with FreshTrack: How Shippers and Carriers Onboard onto Morocco's Collaborative Logistics Platform

Introduction

Working with FreshTrack starts with onboarding — the practical sequence of connecting your systems, choosing an integration method, and validating the platform against a real shipment before scaling up.

This guide walks through what that process looks like for both shippers and carriers, so your team knows what to expect and can plan internal resourcing accordingly.

Note: this guide describes the general onboarding sequence for a collaborative logistics platform. For FreshTrack-specific screens, timelines, and account setup steps, your onboarding contact will confirm the exact current process.

Regardless of whether you’re onboarding as a shipper or a carrier, the sequence follows the same general shape:

Account and organization setup. Creating your organization’s account, defining user roles, and setting initial permissions for who on your team sees and manages what.

Integration method selection. Choosing how your existing systems connect — a lightweight API integration for real-time status and booking data, EDI for high-volume standardized document exchange with established trading partners, or a combination of both.

Data mapping. Aligning your internal systems’ fields — shipment references, status codes, location data — to the platform’s shared schema. This is the step most likely to take longer than initially scoped.

Pilot lane. Running one real, active shipment lane through the platform before expanding, to validate that data flows correctly and the visibility matches operational reality.

Go-live and scale-up. Expanding from the pilot lane to your broader network once the pilot has validated the setup.

Shippers typically move fastest through onboarding when they arrive with a clear picture of their current carrier and forwarder mix, the specific lanes they want visibility into first, and whichever existing TMS or ERP system needs to connect.

Identifying one representative multimodal lane — ideally one that’s given your team visibility headaches historically — as the pilot lane tends to surface integration issues faster than starting with your simplest, most predictable route.

Carriers onboarding onto a collaborative platform should be ready to share fleet and equipment data, define which dispatch or TMS system will feed real-time location and status updates, and identify the shipper relationships they want connected first.

Because carriers often work across multiple platforms and shipper relationships simultaneously, the practical priority is usually connecting the specific lanes and shipper partnerships generating the most volume first, rather than attempting full network connectivity in the first phase.

The choice between API, EDI, or both determines onboarding speed more than any other factor.

A lightweight API connection for core visibility data can typically be live within days to weeks. EDI connections with established trading partners — particularly large retailers with specific transaction-set requirements — typically take longer, given partner-specific data mapping and compliance testing.

The practical approach most teams use: start with API for immediate visibility, layer in EDI connections in parallel rather than as a blocking prerequisite.

For the fuller technical breakdown, see API and EDI Integration for Logistics: Connecting Your ERP to a Collaborative Platform.

The pilot-lane phase is where a defined point of contact matters most — not just documentation, but someone who can troubleshoot data mapping issues and confirm the platform is reflecting operational reality accurately before you commit broader volume.

Onboarding support that disappears after account setup, leaving data mapping and pilot validation entirely self-serve, is a common reason platform rollouts stall internally.

The fastest way to understand your specific onboarding timeline is to walk through your actual systems and lane mix with our team.

Request an onboarding consultation and we’ll scope a realistic plan for your organization before you commit internally.

Onboarding onto a collaborative logistics platform follows a predictable sequence — setup, integration, data mapping, a pilot lane, then scale-up — but the details that determine how fast you reach real value are integration method choice and how rigorously data mapping gets scoped upfront.

Starting with one real lane rather than a full migration is consistently the fastest path to a platform your team actually trusts.

References

1. Cleo, EDI vs. API and the Critical Role Each Plays in Ecosystem Onboarding — https://www.cleo.com/blog/edi-vs-api
2. Gartner, Market Guide for Supply Chain Visibility Software — https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3183220

Related reading: API and EDI Integration for Logistics · Logistics Platform vs. Point Solutions