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Transfix and Rocket Shipping Collaborate to Elevate LTL Experience for Shippers

LTL

Transfix and Rocket Shipping Collaborate to Elevate LTL Experience for Shippers

Transfix, Inc. has announced a strategic partnership with Rocket Shipping to enhance it’s Shipper App, expanding its capabilities to include Less Than Truckload (LTL) quoting and tendering. This collaboration marks a significant milestone in Transfix’s multi-modal, source-to-settle platform, now offering Full Truckload (FTL), Intermodal, and LTL freight operations.

The partnership with Rocket Shipping brings deep LTL expertise to Transfix’s platform, offering shippers improved carrier management, issue mitigation, and competitive shipping rates. With this enhancement, users can expect faster onshore expert support, an upgraded LTL experience, and access to a curated network of high-performing LTL carriers.

Jonathan Salama, CEO and Co-founder of Transfix, emphasized the company’s commitment to leveraging technology to address real-world logistics challenges. He stated that integrating Rocket Shipping’s capabilities into the Shipper App provides customers with a comprehensive solution for their freight operations.

Gabe Pankonin, CEO of Rocket Shipping, expressed excitement about the partnership and the value it brings to shippers. He highlighted the combined efforts of both companies in optimizing freight operations through unique LTL expertise and competitive rates.

The update to the Transfix Shipper App, featuring LTL quoting and tendering capabilities, will be rolled out soon to all users. This collaboration represents a significant advancement in Transfix’s mission to streamline and simplify freight operations for shippers nationwide.

ivalua business procurement

10 Innovative Approaches to Enhance Procurement Efficiency in 2024

Optimizing procurement efforts can launch businesses into new realms of success. However, the steps between implementation and increased profits can seem murky even for the most experienced industry professionals. 

Use these tips to enhance procurement efficiency this year with innovative approaches that make finding, negotiating and purchasing goods much more manageable.

1. Consolidate Various Supplier Lists

Suppliers serve different purposes, so procurement leadership teams keep numerous lists. Although it may help keep suppliers organized by the departments they support, it can also make it more challenging to identify issues like maverick spending or overlapping suppliers.

Consolidating the lists into one software platform removes some of the administrative work. Leaders can filter them to get instantaneous answers. Maintaining secondary sourcing lists as purchasing backup options is even easier because procurement experts will keep track of their primary suppliers with less effort.

2. Conduct Frequent Educational Courses

Companies with long-term employees or high turnover positions would benefit from recurring educational courses on procurement processes. Informative videos or quick lectures would help eliminate the risk of human error caused by forgetfulness or communication issues.

Teams could watch a presentation on the current process to understand how to reduce overall procurement costs with existing company software that makes every expenditure visible in a single location. If they don’t use that software feature daily, it could be easier for team members to forget it exists and accidentally overspend because they don’t have the collective data in front of them.

Even a short training session once a quarter would remind team members of the information they need to solve problems in real time, use at-hand technology with confidence and remain as efficient as possible.

3. Work on Supplier Relationships

Negotiation and communication are two foundational parts of any procurement relationship between a company and a supplier. Noting the aspects of each one, such as negotiation patterns, will point leadership teams toward the relationships that need strengthening. 

Efforts like checking in frequently could build the trust or communication necessary for improved conversations regarding their services.

4.  Review Expectations With Suppliers

Leadership teams have expectations for their supply base. They set specific schedules and shipment amounts outside of negotiating purchase points. Procurement could become more efficient by reviewing those expectations with each supplier. 

Industry leaders will gain greater respect from suppliers by showing their dedication to each relationship and improving their workplaces simultaneously. Everyone benefits when suppliers and purchasers know what isn’t working for them and how they could improve their professional arrangements.

5. Remain Open to Solutions of All Sizes

Leadership teams should keep an open mind if supplier shipments still struggle to meet a company’s expectations or needs. Innovative approaches to procurement efficiency come together from new ideas of all sizes. A business may need to communicate with its suppliers earlier when placing orders. Team members could also change how they input them to avoid quantity or item selection errors.

Little details matter when problem-solving issues like these. Procurement experts could make purchase amounts and specifications more evident by arranging the request differently per email or highlighting the data on an order form. The changes would easily catch the supplier’s eye, creating an innovative approach without a total process overhaul.

Organizations can also find procurement solutions by consolidating steps and making tasks easier for employees. For instance, integrating procurement and accounts payable functions produces a single procure-to-pay process. With this strategy, leadership can reduce costs and streamline processes while enhancing procurement visibility. However, professionals should be aware of the implementation required to ensure all stakeholders support the solution. 

6. Use AI to Review Processes

Another innovative solution is to use artificial intelligence (AI) for procurement efficiency. The global procurement market will grow 11.1% through 2030, but only if the experienced professionals leading the way know how to wield advancing industry technology. AI simplifies the learning curve and gets employees on board with the technology of the future.

AI software monitors live data streams during each workday. When granted permissions, it tracks factors like purchasing orders to detect patterns that reveal inefficiencies. Leadership teams don’t have to spend as much energy searching through files and data sets for areas needing improvement when AI presents its findings automatically.

7. Try New Inventory Software

Updated inventory software takes the guesswork out of enhancing procurement efficiencies. Outdated programs could lack helpful tools like AI data analysis. They might also not use communication servers or platforms for daily collaboration with suppliers using newer software.

Installing new inventory management software could provide more accurate data for goods or materials before submitting purchase orders. It depends on what each company already uses compared to their competitors, suppliers and industry software trends. Given that the procurement software market will increase by $4.9 million through 2027, there are new programs available yearly that could solve developing inefficiencies.

8. Formalize the Procurement Process

Companies that have recently experienced growth may need to formalize each team’s procurement process to eliminate recurring errors. The word-of-mouth system that worked for a smaller team may be less effective when 10 or 20 more people join.

Team leaders can formalize the process with step-by-step, accessible outlines during the workday. Printed and digital copies would make each system clear, no matter an employee’s responsibility. Training would also need updates to include the formalized process. These efforts would make things understandable to new hires and those adjusting from previous procurement methods.

9. Strategize Market Analysis

Keeping an eye on local or global market trends is much easier with multiple workers watching assigned statistics. Procurement leaders should work closely with management teams or employees by giving each a specific market sector to watch.

They pay greater attention to a single market because it’s easier to track than numerous sectors. The company would gain more eyes on upcoming changes like the low-code platforms two-thirds of procurement companies already use to implement department-specific code for greater efficiency.

Team leaders could report their findings in weekly or quarterly meetings. Details like possible changes in procurement prices due to market fluctuations or high-demand shipment delays would become apparent long before they disrupted the schedule.

10. Reassess Cost Evaluation

Procurement managers can easily slip into habits where they look for vendors offering the lowest individual product pricing. Although that might work with budgets at the moment, the total acquisition cost might not benefit the company.

Managers could practice factoring in things like the cost of using each item and the financial loss regarding product disposal before finding the price point from a consumer’s perspective. Even if it means purchasing things for more money from different suppliers, overall profits increase when consumers get more competitive final prices. The ultimate sales boost would negate the increased supplier costs, resulting in more efficient budgetary decisions.

Enhance Procurement Efficiency Year-Round

It’s always a good time to reflect on procurement since efficiency is an ongoing process. These innovative approaches make it easier to obtain and maintain information on how to improve. Industry or company leaders should keep an open mind to trying new strategies to improve their purchasing processes, budgets and overall company performance.

ivalua business procurement

Ivalua Unveils Groundbreaking Generative AI-Powered Intelligent Virtual Assistant for Procurement Excellence

Ivalua, a prominent global leader in spend management, has introduced a cutting-edge generative AI feature integrated into its platform—a game-changing Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA). This innovative IVA, powered by Generative AI, empowers customers to enhance efficiency and make quicker, more informed decisions regarding suppliers, contracts, and expenditures.

The IVA stands out as a transformative force in procurement productivity, seamlessly integrating into daily operations and allowing teams to refocus on strategic initiatives. Engineered with a commitment to safeguarding customer data, IVA unleashes the potential of Generative AI while maintaining security.

While acknowledging the limitations of Generative AI, Ivalua emphasizes its transformative potential in expediting content-related tasks such as research, analysis, content creation, modification, and summarization. Ivalua has already curated a dozen concrete Generative AI add-ons covering a range of Source-to-Pay use cases, and this number is rapidly expanding. The distinctive advantage lies in Ivalua’s approach, offering a simple and powerful no-code extensibility of Gen AI within the Ivalua platform, allowing customers and partners to create tailored use cases without coding.

The unparalleled flexibility, coupled with Ivalua’s unified platform, facilitates the application of Generative AI to various processes, enhancing outputs based on access to comprehensive, high-quality data across sourcing, supplier management, contracts, spending, and invoicing. Additionally, Ivalua has developed AI orchestration services, providing access to best-in-class large language models (LLMs) from third parties like OpenAI on Microsoft Azure, along with open-source models fine-tuned by Ivalua on the Ivalua Cloud infrastructure.

IVA Powered by Generative AI offers out-of-the-box capabilities, including supplier research, category insights, legal assistance, RFP support, enhanced communications, improvement plan generation, and document interaction.

Pascal Bensoussan, Chief Product Officer at Ivalua, expressed excitement about IVA powered by Gen AI, stating, “Gen AI has the potential to significantly impact procurement and accelerate various activities within the Source-to-Pay process, freeing up time for more strategic focus. By enabling our customers and partners to build their own Gen AI-powered use cases, we anticipate faster and better co-innovation.”

digital procurement

How to Choose the Right Procurement Software for Your Business

Quality procurement software is essential for running an efficient operation. Your business’s purchasing process could be made incredibly simple if you select the correct software type. Whether you’re seeking an improvement in supplier management, increased visibility into spending, or just simple cost reduction, procurement software can answer all of these problems and more.

The trouble comes down to ensuring that the software that you choose is the best for your business. Let’s go through a brief framework for selecting the right procurement software for your needs.

Understanding Your Unique Business Needs

The first step in choosing the right software lies in a thorough analysis of your existing procurement processes. Ask yourself questions about who is involved, what kind of tasks need to be performed, and what systems you currently use.

It’s also beneficial to define a list of solid pain points that you can spot in your current process. This can be several factors, including:

  • Time-consuming manual labor
  • Lack of spending insight
  • Difficulty managing supplier relationships

When you’ve deciphered these pain points, the next step is to evaluate what goals and objectives you have for your business, both short-term and long-term, for growth, cost reduction, and supplier management.

Finally, consider what kind of financial state your business is in. What budget do you potentially have for selecting this procurement software? There are many factors to consider when determining this number: upfront costs, ongoing maintenance, and potential savings, to name a few.

Key Features to Hunt For

There are many procurement software out there, and each has its own unique array of features and benefits. If you want to get the most bang for your buck, seek out software that is all-encompassing and features order management, supplier management, contact management, and e-sourcing. Match your business needs with these software features and see what makes the most sense to invest in.

An important feature to consider, particularly for start-ups or small businesses, is scalability and flexibility in software. A reason why someone might want to use ProcureDesk instead of software like ProcurementExpress.com, for example, is because it is better equipped to accommodate changes in your business over a long period of time. If your business is well-established and doesn’t expect much future growth, though, you may not consider this factor.

Vendor Evaluation and Selection

When selecting your procurement software, it is important to first spend some time shopping around. Don’t jump onto the first option you see. Take the time to research and shortlist potential vendors based on their compatibility with your business. While everyone has their own set of criteria for a quality vendor, things like reputation, functionality, support, and pricing are all fairly universally considered.

A good way to see not only if a system works for you but also if a vendor is respectful and trustworthy is by requesting demos and trials of the software you’ve narrowed down to. More often than not, the vendor will allow this, and you can see firsthand whether or not the software is a good match for you and your business.

The Importance of Implementation

Once you finally have selected a procurement system for your business, one that you feel fulfills all of your business needs and is vendored by someone respectable, the next thing to consider is how you plan to implement this software. Implementation is an incredibly important, sometimes overlooked, step in successful software adoption.

A few things that are typically done when new software is being implemented are setting up a knowledgeable project team, setting a hard timeline for the implementation, and ensuring that the software has been fully tested and checked for potential errors before go-live occurs.

To take additional measures, provide user training to ensure that employees use the software effectively and maximize its benefits. In the months following implementation, be sure to provide ongoing support, whether that be through the form or technical support, or training updates. When these steps are utilized, continual success is nearly guaranteed.

Build The Best Business You Can

Though finding and using procurement software is a process that has quite a few initial moving parts and complex considerations, it is something that will be incredibly worthwhile in the long run for the efficiency of your business. The amount you’ll save in reduced costs and spending visibility will make this software pay for itself tenfold. Just be sure to conduct the proper research and take the time to slowly implement the change. Then, sit back and watch as your procurement processes improve exponentially!