A decade ago, in her book Ninety Percent of Everything, author Rose George documented the time she spent traveling between continents aboard a cargo vessel. She attempted to shine a light on the international shipping industry, and highlight how this oft-overlooked sector influences nearly every aspect of the modern world.
Today, almost ten years after George’s adventures, many businesses are finally realizing their own reliance on the freight industry. Unfortunately, those same companies are often ill-equipped to turn that reliance to their advantage.
Importance of Freight Spend Management
The shipping industry does indeed touch ninety percent of everything in the world today, and as such, properly managing that part of your own business can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line. Whether importing goods or making deliveries to end-users, freight spending can account for a huge part of any budget. More than just shipping costs though, inventory levels and delivery times play a massive role in customer satisfaction and retention. Managing your company’s freight spend now is critical to surviving and thriving down the line.
Three Ways to Save with Freight Spend Management
At Zero Down, we offer three ways to manage your freight spend. And while each opportunity will provide savings and efficiency on their own, we recommend combining them together to fully optimize your freight shipping:
Freight Pay and Audit:
Our FP&A offering consolidates shipping invoices from all of your freight carriers together into one bill, simplifying the bill pay process and ensuring proper payment terms. On top of adding efficiency for your accounting department, our technology automatically combs through each invoice line by line to locate rate errors and over charges, maximizing your cost avoidance and stopping profits from leaking out of your supply chain.
Contract Negotiation:
For most shippers, shipping rates are the largest area of missed savings opportunities. And, for the first time in a long time, now is the perfect time to re-evaluate those old contracts. Using our best-in-class technology and contract expertise, we handle every part of the bid process for you, securing market competitive rates from your optimal carrier portfolio, letting you focus on what you do best.
Transportation Management System:
Selecting the lowest cost carrier for each shipment is the final piece of the freight puzzle, and that’s exactly what our industry-leading TMS allows you to do. Our system allows you to quickly pull together quotes from multiple carriers, print labels and BOL’s, and track shipments, all from one easy-to-use portal. Besides ensuring you find the lowest cost carrier, our TMS will also save your logistics department time and resources, putting even more money back in your pocket.
The shipping industry has become integrated into nearly every market around the world, and is truly a global force. With something so large and ubiquitous, it’s easy to just go along for the ride, and focus instead on other aspects of your business. But with the right logistics partner, there are concrete ways to manage your freight spend, and take back control. You didn’t start that company, or take that new position, to just go along for the ride. It’s time to step up to the wheel and steer.
If you want to learn more, reach out to us here.
