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Transfix Unveils RFP Manager for Effortless Freight Procurement: Revolutionizing the Source-to-Settle Process

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Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, News

Transfix Unveils RFP Manager for Effortless Freight Procurement: Revolutionizing the Source-to-Settle Process

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Transfix, Inc. (“Transfix”) has introduced RFP Manager, an innovative tool aimed at simplifying and expediting the traditionally manual and time-consuming RFP and freight procurement process. This all-in-one centralized solution, accessible through the Transfix Shipper App, empowers shippers to seamlessly navigate every step from sourcing to settlement in a single platform.

RFP Manager, the latest addition to the Transfix Shipper App, boasts a centralized dashboard featuring automated bid management, acceptance workflows, and robust analytics capabilities. Shippers can leverage this tool to collaborate with selected carriers at a fair market price, significantly reducing the time typically associated with running an RFP or mini-bid.

Through digitalized and automated processes, RFP Manager enables shippers to initiate an RFP within minutes. Brokers and carriers receive invitations to participate in the bidding process, accessing the RFP through a personalized portal link sent via email, and effortlessly submitting their bids.

Once the bidding window closes, shippers gain access to a comprehensive comparison of carrier bids, along with invaluable lane-level pricing insights, facilitating data-driven award decisions. Transportation professionals can then seamlessly execute freight within the Transfix Shipper App, streamlining the entire process.

Jonathan Salama, Co-founder and CEO of Transfix, emphasized the need for innovation in the outdated RFP process. He expressed excitement about bringing a product to market that not only empowers shippers and suppliers but also sets a new standard for freight procurement solutions.

Savar Sareen, Senior Product Manager at Transfix, highlighted the importance of market research and a robust beta program in developing RFP Manager. The insights gained underscored the significance of creating a product that not only streamlines the RFP process but also instills confidence in shippers to run RFPs more frequently, effectively addressing market volatility.

Transfix’s RFP Manager stands as a groundbreaking solution, promising a transformative shift in how shippers approach freight procurement, making the process more efficient, data-driven, and user-friendly.

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Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, News

Capacity Lane Scores from Tai Software and FreightWaves SONAR Provide Brokers Best-in-Class Market Data

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Tai TMS (Tai), a fully integrated, broker-friendly platform for freight management, and FreightWaves’ SONAR data intelligence tool, continue to empower freight brokers and 3PLs to make more informed quote decisions amidst current difficult market conditions.

The integration provides Capacity Lane Scores directly within Tai’s comprehensive logistics intelligence system, providing visibility into the most up-to-date market data and trend directions.

Since the SONAR integration first launched in March 2022, Tai’s one-stop Truckload Quoting page provides users with an instant view of Capacity Lane Scores which rank current capacity trends on a 0-100 scale (with 100 indicating the tightest capacity) for any given lane.

Additionally, brokers can see whether a Capacity Lane Score is increasing, indicating tightening capacity and increasing rates, or decreasing, meaning that capacity is loosening, and rates will likely drop. This data allows brokers to strategically decide when to request rate quotes and from which lanes, lowering costs and improving profitability.

The SONAR integration is one of Tai’s 500+ tool integrations that fully automates the FTL lifecycle, allowing brokers to go from quote to delivery without manual intervention. Capacity Lane Scores translate tender volume and rejection data into a relative measure of market capacity. A unique algorithm is used to produce these scores by detecting structural market pattern shifts and volatility in load balance and tender rejection levels. SONAR uses high-frequency data from a consortium of companies following standardized protocol to provide market insights in freight pricing.

With constant market swings and disruptions in the past few years, Capacity Lane Scores unlock key SONAR data directly within the TMS platform, allowing freight brokers to anticipate market trends in the same platform where they find coverage.

 

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Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

American Group Automating LTL and FTL Processing with Tai Software

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Tai TMS (Tai), a fully integrated freight broker platform for freight management and transportation, today announced that American Group, a shipping and logistics company providing a concierge-level transportation experience, is leveraging Tai’s automation and integration network within their operations to expedite time to value for their shipping customers. Roughly 50% of all LTL loads processed by American Group are fully automated, allowing their agents to spend more time winning business and finding capacity for their customers.

Tai is a leading partner with tools that span up and down a brokerage, from FTL to LTL.  Through Tai’s integration with HubTran, American Group was able to implement documentation and accounting automation into their daily operations. By leveraging this integration, American Group now has access to seamless and automated invoice processing, reducing the time and effort required for manual data entry and document management while mitigating risk of improper inputs.

All told, American Group’s Carrier Sales team can find capacity for their customers up to 70% faster on FTL than they could before adopting Tai. By combining Tai’s automation functionalities, American Group representatives can save up to 5 hours per week, per person. The power of automation is further exemplified in American Group’s use of Tai’s integration with FreightClaims.com, allowing the brokerage to automate the storage and processing of their freight claims and carrier communications.

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Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

How Is Digital Freight Forwarding Transforming the Industry?

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The freight industry has been forced to evolve, particularly as consumer spending habits have shifted in recent decades. Thanks to the internet, people can buy things from across the world and receive them quickly. That’s even more likely to happen with the use of digital freight forwarding platforms from industry professionals. Learn more about what digital freight forwarding is and how it has impacted the industry so far.

What Is Digital Freight Forwarding?

Digital freight forwarding involves using apps, databases, web platforms and similar tools to facilitate the movement, import and export of clients’ goods. It can include tracking shipments, improving communications between relevant parties, maintaining a paperless system for signing and keeping documents, coordinating steps and services between companies and more. 

This method brings numerous advantages, including more efficient, highly accurate shipments. Those outcomes can help companies increase competitiveness and react more decisively to challenging circumstances. 

However, it takes time and money to implement digital freight forwarding well. That’s why this approach is becoming more widespread but still hasn’t been adopted by all companies in the industry. Plus, people need time to adapt to most changes, so decision-makers may not see the expected benefits immediately. Those realities aside, digital freight forwarding makes good business sense for many of the organizations utilizing it. 

What is digital freight forwarding in a long-term sense? Many experts see it as the future and something decision-makers must pursue to keep up with peers. 

Promoting Better Productivity

Freight forwarders have detail-oriented jobs and they frequently deal with factors that are not wholly within their control. That reality requires these professionals to be excellent problem-solvers and remain flexible in uncertain situations. However, using a digital freight forwarding platform can reduce the number of issues cropping up in a given day. 

A 2023 survey found that focusing on digitalizing specific processes could have notable benefits. The best outcomes came when people used online marketplaces to source partners and equipment, live chat features to negotiate terms and conditions and container-tracking features to get live estimated arrival times. Together, those resources allowed people to save four working days per month or more than eight hours every week. 

Another takeaway was that online marketplaces allow freight forwarders to find partners in only 5-10 minutes. That means they save 170 minutes per new partner compared to those not using digital tools. 

Manual payments represent significant time spent, too. A third of people responding to the survey said each transaction takes approximately 10 minutes. Another 20% of those polled expressed frustrations while following up with people regarding manual payments. However, digital tools can speed up all aspects of the process, whether finalizing a transaction or providing an easily accessible record of everything that has happened. 

What is digital freight forwarding doing for companies’ employment needs? When organizations use modern platforms well, they may find they can complete the same duties with fewer people. That’s especially helpful when the workload ramps up and a company cannot feasibly hire more team members right away. 

Offering Better Visibility

A digital freight forwarding platform also makes it easier for people to see precisely where individual shipments are within the supply chain. Such insights give freight leaders more confidence because they can provide customers with the service they want and expect. 

In one case, a partnership between FourKites and Spotos brought predicted estimated arrival times and real-time location information to European customers. Since the content spanned shipments on the move or once they reached a stop, clients could get the details throughout the whole transit route. 

The platform also includes temperature-tracking data for perishable goods, such as medicines and produce. When people can get assurances that those products will arrive safely at their destinations in sellable condition, they’ll protect the bottom line and avoid preventable waste. 

When someone achieves improved visibility by using a digital freight forwarding platform, they can also prevent issues like fraud that could otherwise derail their business if undetected. Scammers pull off one of the most common forms of freight fraud by posing as legitimate entities. In other cases, they target specific professionals and pretend to be them, often taking over their phone lines and email addresses to do so. These criminals typically disappear as soon as they secure payment from victims. 

No single technology can prevent fraud. However, some can go a long way in thwarting it. For example, freight forwarders are working with technology companies to build blockchain tools. Those products provide an unalterable record of items and everyone associated with them. Brands dealing with luxury or in-demand offerings also use the blockchain to prove a product’s authenticity. 

Enhancing Operations

Professionals in this industry must think on their feet and track numerous trends to keep their businesses successful. The great thing about using a freight forwarding platform is that it helps people stay organized and responsive by giving them the reliable information they need. 

For example, staying on top of changes in freight forwarding indexes helps people understand how much it may cost to ship or buy specific goods. Labor disputes and inclement weather are two of the many factors that have caused recent pricing shifts. However, when people have real-time tools to track those changes, they’ll know the right times to find shipping partners and get goods moving. 

The digital documentation provided by many modern tools is also a significant money-saver. Estimates suggest electronic bills of lading could cause a $6.5 billion reduction in direct costs while facilitating up to $40 billion in global trade. Despite those benefits, many companies still use paper-based recordkeeping. That’s problematic for many reasons, including the fact that paperwork could get lost or damaged. 

What is digital freight forwarding doing to support better communications? Today’s platforms allow people to see a shipment’s real-time location through dedicated apps. Then, there’s no need to spend time writing an email or waiting on hold during a phone call to get the latest details. 

A new digital offering from DHL allows customers to only receive alerts about the events most important to them. They can also get those notifications as a daily digest rather than in real time. These options mean it’s easier for people to get the necessary information without getting distracted. They’ll streamline their operations as a result. 

Using a Digital Freight Forwarding Platform Is Good for Business

There are many reasons why people should strongly consider adopting a digital freight forwarding platform sooner than later. Doing so can help them get accurate information about shipments while avoiding slowdowns, cost increases and other unwanted events. 

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Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily, Technology

Advantages of Freight Auditing Technology: Your Frequently Asked Questions Answered

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Without freight auditing technology, how can businesses possess complete control of their global transportation spend? Unfortunately, the answer is that it’s near impossible. The addition of a best-in-class, tech-enabled freight audit and payment (FAP) solution will pull all the freight data captured via your tech stack to digest, cleanse, and normalize it. This empowers your transportation leaders to make informed decisions with critical business intelligence.

With supply chain tech becoming an integral part of shippers’ day-to-day lives in our volatile transportation climate, it’s crucial to understand the evolving software.

Benefits of Freight Auditing Technology

From the Internet of Things (IoT) enhancing connectivity and providing real-time insights throughout the supply chain to capturing and analyzing big data from end-to-end, there are more technologically driven tools to optimize your global transportation operation than ever before. Let’s take a closer look at some of the major advantages of having freight auditing tools at your disposal.

Real-time Insights

Adding a fully connected supply chain greatly benefits any technology-enabled freight audit and payment solution. When paired with adopting digital technologies like IoT, these software solutions supply real-time insights into every aspect of your transportation management operation. They’ll also streamline communications and future-proof your operations with predictive analytics.

IoT and Connectivity

Enhanced connectivity across your expansive logistics operation empowers visibility, allows for more agility when issues arise and reduces manpower through automation. A connected supply chain relies on adopting digital technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), which will only enhance your freight audit data.

IoT sensors allow for real-time, end-to-end visibility and are helpful in:

  • Aggregating carrier billing data via any transportation mode, providing new track and trace capabilities for shippers while allowing for a more robust freight audit
  • Automating inventory replenishment and data about consumption trends
  • Identifying trends in disruptions to eliminate bottlenecks or common issues, lowering freight costs
  • Streamlining communications between shippers and carriers, ensuring a more agile supply chain with the ability to minimize disruptions and delays 

Big Data Analytics

Big data analytics refers to tools, systems, and technology that organizes and mines datasets for meaningful insights. With new capabilities unlocked by the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, and artificial intelligence – even the largest unstructured data sets can be useful. For example, transportation leaders have all the information they need at their fingertips through automation and freight audit data integration.

Outsourcing Freight Auditing Technology

Many questions surround the benefits of a global enterprise outsourcing its audits to a freight audit and payment company. We’ve compiled frequently asked questions and provided answers so that you can make informed and intelligent decisions regarding your freight audit and payment process.

How Does Outsourced Freight Auditing Technology Work?

When you outsource your freight audit and payment operations to a third party, you trust a team of experts to work through burdensome, costly complications that accompany internal freight audits.

Issues that an outsourced FAP provider could address include the following:

  • Dealing with multiple carriers with differentiating procedures, freight rates, costs, and details
  • Tackling an insurmountable amount of FAP paperwork
  • Devoting various, valuable internal resources to a task that will take a large chunk of their time
  • Resolving mistakes, overcharges, and duplicate charges in a timely manner

What is an External Freight Bill Auditor?

An external freight bill auditor is a third-party company that inspects an enterprise’s carrier invoices for inaccuracies. As a result, they identify and minimize overpayments and inaccurate freight invoices, increasing cost-savings and improving freight spend data quality.

What Does a Third-Party Freight Audit Entail?

A traditional third-party freight audit process includes five steps: 

  1. Centralizing freight invoice data
  2. Categorizing and standardizing data
  3. Verifying charges and items
  4. Data analysis
  5. Reporting

This thorough review allows transportation leaders to cut costs, optimize operations, improve data visibility, and ensure accurate, timely payments. In addition, enterprises gain a competitive advantage by completing regular freight invoice audits.

Is an Outsourced Freight Audit Secure?

It’s difficult to entrust a third-party organization with vast amounts of data, compliance requirements, and a complicated network of freight costs. To mitigate this risk, look for a solution that prioritizes transparency and data security. In addition, seek out companies that are well known and trusted in the industry, possibly ones that have worked with transportation situations similar to yours. Not sure where to start your research? I highly recommend looking at testimonials and case studies.

Does an Outsourced Freight Audit Generate Reliable Data?

In one word: yes. 

By onboarding a freight audit and provider solution that uses technology to audit every freight invoice from your transportation operation, your company gains end-to-end visibility into the data generated by your logistics operation. Compared to a cherry-picking freight audit approach, your all-encompassing data provides a holistic, reliable image of your operation.

What Do Outsourced Auditors Do with a Company’s Data?

A tech-enabled, outsourced freight audit and payment provider takes all your electronic freight invoices and ingests, cleanses, normalizes, and connects the data from your disparate systems. They will provide centralized business intelligence while catching errors in carrier invoices and decreasing shipping costs for your organization.

Your freight audit and payment partner should supply comprehensive data management, which delivers a clear view of the current state of your transportation operation and potential future data. With a flexible master data management framework, which is easily customizable to your global enterprise’s needs, you can establish global pricing rules that are visible to all and seamlessly incorporated into your FAP process.

Find an Outsourced Freight Auditing Technology Provider

The days of manual, in-house freight auditing are over. In today’s volatile market, supply chain technology, automation, and end-to-end visibility are necessities – not luxuries. Finding the right partner to trust with your data operations may seem daunting, but a little research will go a long way. 

Josh Bouk is the President at Trax Technologies, the global leader in Transportation Spend Management (TSM) solutions. Trax elevates traditional Freight Audit and Payment (FAP) with a combination of industry-leading cloud-based technology solutions and expert services to help enterprises with the world’s more complex supply chains better manage and control their global transportation costs and drive enterprise-wide efficiency and value. For more information, visit www.traxtech.com.  

TMS
3pls, Archives, Global Logistics, Global Trade Daily

TMS – The Digital Disruption Enabler for 3PLs

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It’s clear that digital transformation is rapidly upon us in transportation and is changing the way managed transportation 3PLs and truckload brokerages are doing business. Advances in technology, adoption of APIs, and huge disruptor companies are evolving the market faster than most can keep up. This transformation is only accelerating.

Disruptive Companies Are Changing Customer Expectations

Uber Freight, Convoy, and Amazon Freight are examples of the new digital freight marketplaces (DFM). A DFM is designed to allow shippers to book truckloads in the spot market electronically – usually over an app or an API. It’s a service that gives real-time truckload quotes, electronic tendering, and real-time tracking. If your business is primarily a classic brokerage, then this affects you.

The DFMs are already changing the way many shippers do business. These marketplaces are not going to erase classic brokerage, but there is no doubt they will change it and the way that many are doing brokerage. Not that classic brokerage is going away anytime soon, but we are seeing a rapid evolution of customer expectations. Customers’ digital expectations for visibility, automation, tracking, quoting, and payment are now growing and will soon evolve into general requirements.

To be clear, only very few companies with deep pockets can set up a DFM. A mid-sized brokerage firm trying to compete with what Uber Freight is doing is unrealistic. Instead, companies can look at their own strengths and carve their own path. LSPs (3PLs and Brokers) have the opportunity to write their own digital transformation story or run the risk of remaining complacent in a changing world of digital technology.

What Is Your Digital Transformation Strategy?

Every LSP company should be asking themselves how they are dealing with digital transformation. As an LSP, the details of digital disruption are unique to your business model, and it’s important to have a plan. Yet many companies overthink the issue or feel it’s too large of a task to do anything about. History shows us that most winning strategies come from simple core ideas, not just massive disruptors.

Innovative companies know that disruption creates opportunity. And it’s clear that the digital transformation going on in transportation will create opportunities. Every LSP needs to look at their own business model, figure out what makes them unique, and carve a path. It’s ineffective to try to duplicate what the high-profile companies are doing. It would be like trying to replicate what Amazon did for retail. Competing against Amazon in retail is reserved for the very few, yet many have learned how to profit off Amazon by creating their own specialized fulfillment model. The same is true of the digital disruption going on in transportation.

Very few companies should be looking to compete directly against Uber Freight or Convoy. Yet all should be looking at their own model and chart their own digital transformation path. This is where transportation management software like 3Gtms is uniquely positioned to help. It is not the system that will turn an LSP into the next Uber Freight, but it will serve as the central platform – the intelligent system of record that allows flexibility in how an LSP executes its own unique business model. A TMS is the central point of an LSP’s transformation – it’s the digital disruption “enabler.”

Putting a Digital Transformation System in Place

When it comes to system structure, the key to designing a good environment starts at the core. And a successful core includes functionality and automation that supports business objects, workflow, intelligence, and integrations. For an LSP, that system is their TMS, as the TMS runs their transportation operations. Call it their “central rally point” for information or their “single source of truth.” A technology that connects customers, vendors, and carriers while serving as the platform to leverage digital disruption opportunities. A Fully Connected Transportation Management System goes beyond simple RESTful API integrations because it connects natively to other business systems and operates as an enabler for different technologies.

Leveraging a cloud-based TMS as a rallying point combines information from integrations with business intelligence for a total technology package. Turning data into business intelligence, workflows, and automation is more complicated than mapping fields. Most systems can use an API to map fields but lack functionality to determine rates/margin, find a distance, calculated drive times, chose equipment type, and most importantly, identify missing data and create this data when necessary. Technology has to be smart to execute on digital transformation opportunities. Exception-based management is a basic requirement as next-level systems look to manage as many exceptions as possible so users can focus on true issues and generate more business.

A solution like 3Gtms delivers the different integrations and technology required to build a successful digital transformation strategy. For example, the solution includes connections to load boards for TL capacity, mileage engines, tariff services for rates, OCR for paperwork and document management, ELD and visibility mapping services, carrier insurance onboarding, rate index data, informational portals, and many other features. It’s the robustness of the software in combination with the software’s integrations to create an actionable platform for LSPs to get ahead. The technology’s ability to scale is also essential, especially when maximizing opportunities created by larger DFMs.

This is where LSPs look at the technology puzzle they wish to solve. Identify customer needs, capture a larger target market, and expand business lines. What digital components do you need to meet these goals and grow your business? Is it time to explore outside of traditional silos? For example, brokers and distributors are doing more managed transportation while TL fleets are offering more 3PL services. Understand what your company does best and what your customers need, then write your own digital disruption story.

Embracing Opportunities to Digitally Disrupt

This brings us back to the digital disruption going on in the transportation industry. The opportunistic LSPs will carve their own path and realize that the key to growth lies in their core technologies. Leveraging a TMS to rally around will centralize their information and enable transportation execution regardless of their planned strategies. It’s here that 3Gtms is differentiated in the marketplace as a single platform that marries technical abilities and integrations in the LSP space. Because of this, 3G customers quickly realize the importance of having a central TMS and how this technology helps obtain their vision.

It’s an exciting point in the history of logistics as digital changes emphasize supply chain technology and the need to utilize digital strategies for success. As more LSPs upgrade their technology stack, they will be better positioned to leverage new digitally-driven opportunities. And by using a scalable platform like 3Gtms, they get advanced TMS functionality for today and all the tomorrows to come.

Are you an LSP trying to decide if you should leverage a TMS to meet your digital transformation goals? Use this checklist to see if any of your objectives can be solved by 3Gtms.

Examples:

-Do you need APIs and portals for customers and carriers to interact with you?

-Do you want to use TL automation to streamline processes?

-Do you need logistics exception reporting and automation?

-Do you need workflow and process automation?

-Do you struggle to connect your ERP, OMS, WMS, carrier, customer, and vendor data?

-Do your customers need simple portals for their CSR’s to quote?

-Do you use standalone load boards, visibility trackers, SMC3 rating, distance calculations, carrier tendering, OCR document management, or other disconnected systems?

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JP Wiggins is the co-founder and Vice President of Logistics for 3G. 3G is a leading provider of cloud-based end-to-end transportation management software (TMS) for omnichannel shippers, e-commerce companies, 3PLs, and freight brokers. Our solutions include 3Gtms, our multi-modal transportation planning, optimization, execution, and settlement system; and Pacejet, our advanced multi-carrier shipping software. For more information, visit 3Gtms.com.