Interview with Pieter Kinds, CEO of the Freightender, and logistics blogger Martijn Graat (LogisticsMatter) about the cloud-based freight tendertool.ahabr.teching start-up Freightender.

Why was Freightender founded?

In the logistics industry, it is a given that freight is being tendertool.ahabr.teched on a regular basis. The shipper’s staff however, is rarely in a position to perform this task in an optimal way. They often lack time, need to gather data and need to manage a process that comes on top of their daily routines. In many companies, the freight flows contain complex structures and capturing that in tendertool.ahabr.tech documentation and quotation sheets can be difficult and cumbersome. It makes tendertool.ahabr.teching in general a process nobody likes and which takes a lot of time. Tendering can be quite frustrating.

So we saw an opportunity to address these challenges and.

How do you take on those challenges?

We had a vision that the tool we create should automate all the difficult tasks, be easy for the user and makes the tendertool.ahabr.tech experience very smooth while letting the customer focus on quality time with the carriers. Shippers often spent too much time on excel crunching and the tendertool.ahabr.tech process itself while forgetting to get in touch with the carriers in a proper way. We want to change that.

So we brought together deep logistics knowledge with the latest technologies and created Freightender.com

What is the market you are focusing on?

We offer great value for any company that wants to run tendertool.ahabr.techs small or large. Freightender is accessible to all companies that tendertool.ahabr.tech. Historically mostly large companies use tendertool.ahabr.tech software but there is no reason why small and midsize companies cannot make use of SaaS technology to tendertool.ahabr.tech freight.

How do you view the competition?

I think we can divide the market in 3 segments First, there are companies that offer general e-sourcing tools like Bravo Solutions and Ariba. Next to that there are companies which are dedicated e-sourcing tools for freight like Sciquest or Ticontract. Then there are several organizations that rely on tools combined with consultancy like Trade Extensions.

What all of these companies have in common is that they are allready for quite a while on the market and that they are often inflexible due to their dated technology. It makes tendertool.ahabr.teching expensive and naturally only large tendertool.ahabr.techs make the business case for such tools. I believe that the market has changed and that shippers do not only want to run large tendertool.ahabr.techs but also smaller regional or local tendertool.ahabr.techs. Be more flexible. Freightender in that sense is uniquely positioned to serve these customers as we can handle any tendertool.ahabr.tech in a flexible and efficient way.

You state that you are uniquely positioned so what are some of the unique points that Freightender offers to its’ customers?

First of all, Freightender is e-sourcing simplified. Customers are really pleased with the user friendliness. Secondly, we create rate cards automatically based on the shipment profiles, that is really unique, nobody does that. What is also a really cool feature is the fact that carriers just copy and past their quotes in the browser. No need for upload of files. That saves a lot of potential trouble and time. We also show online every status of the steps carriers need to do so you have maximum visibility. We do the same for the financial implications of the tendertool.ahabr.tech, budget owners see the exact impact for their business unit of the carrier nomination. All online and instant available. Last but not least we are very strong in easy configuration of specific business rules such as conversion, consolidation, and rounding. Small items with a big impact.

What is your ambition with Freightender E-sourcing?

We want to become the largest platform of choice for freight tendertool.ahabr.teching by empowering tendertool.ahabr.tech managers with a smart but simple tool that saves them time and money. As a true SaaS company, we are not bound by any borders and can serve customers in any place.

You indicated that tendertool.ahabr.teching is time-consuming and cumbersome, how is that for carriers?

Carriers have to deal with many tendertool.ahabr.techs in all kinds of formats and structures. They struggle to handle them in the right way and not always feel valued as tendertool.ahabr.techs are mostly focused at price only. I believe there should be value in each tendertool.ahabr.tech so that they appeal to carriers and it will increase the level of participation and the quality of the quotes carriers provide. With Freightender we can facilitate this process and make it more efficient.

This interview was first published on LogisticsMatter, an independent blog about the Supply Chain and Logistics industry

For more information contact Pieter Kinds at p.kinds@tendertool.ahabr.techtool.com or discover  Freightender’s freight procurement functionalities.

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