Peak shipping season is just around the corner! But with supply chains still reeling from the unrest of Covid-19, repeated bottle necks, strained shipping capacity and all-time high freight prices, it’s looking to be a tough season.
But challenging times like these present an opportunity to streamline your shipping processes and put in place digital solutions that will improve your strategy for decades to come.
Digitising your freight rate management will help you navigate with the turbulent market we’re all dealing with right now - and anything else that’s thrown at you in the future.
Here's how digitising your freight rate management can help you overcome today’s shipping crisis and ensure you come out of it stronger than ever before.
You can react to market changes fast using automation
When you’re constantly adjusting and then readjusting your rates to keep up with the frequent market changes we’re seeing now, you can be get bogged down by time-consuming admin. Constantly updating your freight rates and ensuring everyone has the right ones is slow – but if it’s not done, your team could end up using the wrong rates!
If you’re managing your freight rates on a digital platform, every time you tender and award new carriers business, your rates will automatically update – no admin required. Taking advantage of automation like this means you can tender more regularly, get better freight prices, secure freight during capacity shortages and still have time at the end of the day to focus on strategy.
Your entire team can access rates from anywhere in the world
If someone would have told you just two years ago that most of the world would be locked down and working from home for over a year, you’d probably have laughed in their face.
But after over a year of Covid-19, working from home has become the new norm. And even as the vaccine roll out means we can lift some of these restrictions, we all still need to be prepared to bunker down and work from home at any moment. This is especially true if your team is based internationally as each country is subject to different restrictions and many places are lagging behind with the vaccine rollout.
A digital freight rate management system centralises all your shipping data in the cloud, so your team just need an internet connection and their login details to immediately access all your freight rates. This means, they can from anywhere in the world and are prepared for more lockdowns or whatever else this market might throw at you.
Plus, everyone in your team can work on your rates at the same time, so your team can seamlessly collaborate from anywhere to overcome challenges when crises hit.
It increases visibility into your shipping data
A whopping 65% of procurement leaders state they have little to no visibility past their tier one suppliers. This is a problematic even in a stable market. But in the unpredictable market we’re experiencing right now, where you have to navigate frequent bottlenecks and capacity shortages, it can grind your shipping to a halt.
If you don’t have full visibility into your rates, how can you replan shipments and react to issues in lanes and ports fast enough to get your goods to customers on time?
Digitising your freight rates means you always have the most up-to-date rates all stored in one online location and they’re all standardised – so you can identify rates from all your suppliers in seconds. Plus, integrated digital analysis tools allow you to immediately dig into your freight data and get a transparent view of your suppliers – no matter what tier they are.
It empowers an agile freight procurement strategy
The best freight procurement teams all have one thing in common: they’ve gone agile. That’s because they’re able to adapt quickly and effortlessly to disruptions – which is invaluable in a market we’re seeing now.
The first step to implementing an agile logistics procurement strategy is ensuring all your freight rates are standardised and centralised digitally. Download the whitepaper below to learn everything you need to know about creating an agile freight procurement strategy and the six other steps to going agile.
About SHIPSTA
SHIPSTA powers smart logistics procurement with a digital platform that connects shippers and carriers to ensure a frictionless procurement process for spot and contract buying, entirely online. It automates complex tasks, provides unrivalled visibility and supports fast data-driven decision making.
Designed and built by experts in logistics procurement, SHIPSTA is bringing transparency, automation and efficiency to the global logistics industry. It is used by some of the world’s largest companies to respond to market volatility, control freight costs and manage risk. The company was founded in 2015 and is based in Mertert, Luxembourg and Hamburg, Germany.
