The logistics industry has seen some significant changes and advancements in the past few years. A lot of the major businesses have moved from traditional management methods to advanced freight procurement strategies.
Considering how procurement management has helped businesses save a significant amount of money when purchasing services, freight procurement has proven to be a crucial factor in supply chain management.
In this article, we share six different tips that may help upgrade your freight management process.
Expert Analysts
To understand and analyze transportation and bid details properly, you need to hire expert analysts who can understand the intricacies involved in such a process. Having such smart experts is crucial as they can help gain some additional negotiation during the process.
Additionally, these experts can analyze current data from shipments and simulate multiple scenarios to understand the impact of different bid responses. This is necessary to always prepare your business to any ‘what if’ situation that might come it’s the way.
Focus on Demand
Focusing on the current demand is crucial in supply chains, as it can help prepare your business ahead of time instead of always trying to play catch-up with market demands.
When you gain the ability to predict requirements and demands ahead of time, you can work on strategies that can help reduce the overall price for your business. Having a progressive transportation planning is crucial to keep up with any new upcoming demands.
Details in the Data
When trying to analyze the spend data of your business, it is crucial to put your focus on the details that lie within the data itself. When analyzing spend data, consider looking for any additional charges that you might have to pay.
If you see such changes in the data, it might not be possible to evaluate them on a point to point basis. That is why it’s crucial for your information system to separate and evaluate individual equipment. Additionally, they should be displayed in their own categories.
Offer Flexibility
It is more beneficial to offer flexibility during the bidding process to other carriers, as it can provide you with a more efficient method that can benefit both parties.
For example, instead of bidding for induvial lanes from point A to B and for A to C, it would be better to bid for a single lane that might reach a pooling point and then the shipment can be split to reach both B and C.
Allowing such flexibility to carriers might sound less beneficial in the beginning but in the long run, it can benefit both your business and the carrier. It further helps save time as well.
Market Trends
Always stay up to date with the market trends, and evaluate when you should capitalize during the changes in the trends. This should help create a better advantage for your supply chain.
Further, having a flexible procurement process will allow your business to stand at a better position in the market and benefit from sudden changes in the rates from carriers. Not only your business will keep itself up to date, but it will also enable it to stay ahead of its competitors.
Automation
Having an advanced transportation management system that offers automation capabilities is absolutely necessary for logistics these days. Companies who have such transportation intelligence tools, utilize them to analyze carrier bids more efficiently and normalize proposal responses at various levels.
Freeing your staff from the repetitive manual work required in the procurement process offers them more time to work on building strategic relationships with other logistic personnel. This should also allow you to eliminate any chances of errors and mistakes during the processing.
