There are a lot of freight forwarders who describe themselves as “tech-enabled,” but how true that is for most of them? A lot of companies tend to over-promise when it comes to what their freight management technology has to offer. The front end is what a customer sees and ultimately values, but it’s hard to know what most forwarders are doing on the back end. Despite how far today’s technology has come, many shipments are still quoted, booked, and tracked through phone calls and emails.
Having automation on your side is crucial because there’s a huge amount of pressure placed on logistics departments these days. Shippers need streamlined tools that help them get their jobs done faster and better in order to stay ahead of the competition. From increasing the accuracy of your invoicing, to running online rate queries, to instantly booking and tracking shipments, leading technology like GAMA’s customer-facing platform eliminates mundane manual tasks, enhances communication with customers, and automatically provides up-to-date rates.
It also has the ability to integrate and centralize data across multiple modes and carriers in addition to digitizing important documentation, including BOLs and PODs, saving freight forwarders and their shipper customers a lot of time. With a top-of-the-line TMS and advanced online portal in place, companies can focus more on scaling their business and improving their customer service without having to take on more employees. The ROI behind the right logistics technology stack practically speaks for itself.
Booking LTL shipments, for example, no longer has to be a difficult and drawn-out process once you get rid of redundant data entry and significantly reduce the time it takes to quote freight prices and prepare the paperwork or packaging. Forwarders who offer customers online quoting tools will also see a noticeable decline in the number of phone calls they receive. Meanwhile, other metrics such as a company’s quote-to-book ratio may start to rise as more and more shippers realize the newfound benefits of a simplified, streamlined customer experience.
Customers want real-time status updates on their shipments and to be able to pay invoices online at their convenience. So, providing technology that includes features like one-stop tracking for ocean, air, TL, and LTL helps them avoid unnecessary interactions with service providers on their end as well. Managing a shipping operation is complicated enough given all the moving parts involved in the process. Anything that brings the varying pieces of the data puzzle together in one easily accessible place and minimizes the constant back-and-forth between different parties and systems is a major asset that’ll be well worth the investment in the long run.
At the end of the day, there are several ways modern logistics technology can help forwarders that they and their customers may not even be aware of because few recognize the advantages increased visibility and improved data flow provide when they themselves are in the dark. Click here to learn more about how GAMA’s pre-built APIs and carrier connections can do all the heavy lifting when it comes to data management, so you don’t have to.
