Logistics Doesn’t Need To Be A Soap Opera
Setting up an ocean freight shipment is kind of like a soap opera.
Scene 1: Freight forwarder emails their rate request for 1 x 40’ container from Chicago to Shanghai to the entire pricing department at Acme NVOCC.
Scene 2: Not knowing which of their colleagues is working on the rate request, the entire pricing department starts working on the rate request. Each member of the NVOCC’s pricing team comes up with a different rate based on the carrier, trucker and other vendors they are most comfortable working with.
Each member of the pricing team emails a different rate back to the freight forwarding customer, unaware that they’ve just spent the past hour or more competing against each other for the same piece of business.
Scene 3: The freight forwarder gets multiple quotes back from the same company and instead of accepting any one rate, they cherry pick the best container rate and the best trucking rate and the best transit time and go back to the NVOCC with a counter offer to any or all members of the NVOCC’s pricing team.
The Grand Finale: NVOCC pricing team gets back to work, showing their skills as adept service professionals, and ultimately come back with a matching rate and service level. Not surprisingly they find the right combination of service and price inside their very own office! It was right there the whole time.
So let’s think about this in terms of time & money:
- The NVOCC had multiple people answering a quote for the same customer. Just on one quote request that adds up to multiple man hours.
- By not optimizing the quote based on price AND service level the NVOCC had to re-do the quote at least once.
- Above all, by sending in multiple quotes, often with slight price variances, the NVOCC competed against itself. As if there isn’t enough competition in the market!?
We see this problem daily. And it’s often common to forwarders and NVOCC’s, as many shippers do the same thing with their forwarders.
Here at ColoadX, we believe freight shipping shouldn’t be a soap opera. After decades in the business, and having spoken with so many NVOCC’s and forwarders, we know you agree.
For us, logistics isn’t just about getting a lower rate or a few more orders. It’s about a better way to do business in which the value of a logistics business is enhanced, not drained away by manual processes.
Age-old business processes and price-discovery mechanisms like email and phone calls are fine up to a point. But do you know how many quotes you’re actually converting into bookings? Do you have the analytics to tell you how many of those bookings were quoted on repeatedly by your pricing team? Do you know if you underpriced your winning rate quote? That’s right, underpriced. You may have the best rate in the market and not even know it because of a lack of benchmarking data or pricing analytics. Was your rate competitive, but you lost a booking due to transit time?
These are solutions that every logistics business needs to be competitive, and we’re bringing them to your desktop now so that you can stop competing against yourself and start growing. We invite you to sign up and see CoLoadX in action here.
By: CoLoadX on May 9, 2017, 2:56 p.m.