5 Tips to Improve freight forwarders Tender Management
In this article, we share 5 tips to help freight forwarders and Logistics service providers maximize their odds when competing in Transportation RFQs. The freight tender process is a double-faced process. First, it holds the opportunity for freight forwarders and carriers to gain new business. On the flip side, it is an utterly time-consuming practice demanding many internal resources. Not to mention that guarantees of new business are non-existing in a highly competitive environment.
5 Habits That Will Improve Tender Management for Freight Forwarders
1. Paint a clear company profile to be competitive
Often you have lanes and geographical area’s where your freight rates are the most competitive. Know what your strengths are and upon that, decide which tenders you want to participate in. Not every bid is necessarily a good fit, so focus on where you have the best chance to win. In addition to that, your company probably has a particular transportation/industry types that suit your operation portfolio. Don’t underestimate the value of your experience. Knowing what you do best makes it easier to add a new business that fits in with your current operations. Adding similar volume to what you already do well adds beneficial scale.
2. Top of the mind: strategic relationships
The key point to keep in mind in this is to be responsive and supportive. Freight RFQs are time-consuming for the issuing party too. Shippers appreciate prompt responses and not having to chase down suppliers. Needless to say, being prepared and organized with your freight rates and contracts makes this a whole lot easier and potentially advantageous over the competition.
3. Know the trends in the market
Tenders represent a contract to move freight in the future. As any freight forwarder knows, international shipping rates are dynamic – with countless market forces adding or changing fees and surcharges all the time. Anything you can do to anticipate cost charges, the better your ability to protect your margins.
4. Get organized with (accurate) rates
Calculating the right freight rates is not always a walk in the park, so make sure you have the systems and process to be accurate. On top of that, it requires substantial time and resources for tender management. Bottom line, having your rates and contracts organized and accessible is fundamental. International shipping is too complex for companies to manually manage and calculate rates when responding to bids. Freight forwarders need technology to support the process.
5. Make use of best practice technology
Not only the freight rate management is difficult and time-consuming. Distribution and communication are difficult aspects for forwarders too. Our advice: Manage your carrier participants via a best practice (logistics dedicated) tool that allows you to communicate effectively with colleagues from other branches and subcontractors. With regards to the operational side, manage your rate cards online and make sure you use an effective and intuitive tool to run your reports, analytics and scenarios automatically (independent, on the fly). This saves time and resources and allows your people to focus on their core jobs rather than building complicated Excel templates.
Freight Forwarders and internal freight tender management
This part of our blog I have reserved for both a critic note as well a severe observation. First, logistics management is increasingly important to a companies bottom line. Inherently, this is becoming more complex to companies shipping on a global level. As a result, forwards should really relish best practice procurement. Currently, this is not happening at all. Besides the many different systems, often legacy systems, the internal setup of forwarders is in need of an upgrade. Let’s break it down. Many different offices, branches, and satellite offices are involved with freight tendering, yet an all-around solution is not in place. Subsequently, bids and tenders received are not centralized. This is causing trouble with the internal distribution of freight tenders, confusion and heavy workloads for personnel and having thousands of customers keeping e-mail lists of your people.
We are talking to many logistics professionals in the industry, and this is clearly becoming a problem for many forwarders (small, mid/sized and large!). Please visit our freight forwarder page to learn more about our specific solutions for freight forwarders, or contact us via info@freightender.com to get in touch with our solutions division. The logistics community can achieve enormous savings if only it’s customers use a decent freight sourcing tool!
More Freightender Freight Sourcing content
– 5 simple freight tender tips carriers and forwarders should share with their clients
– Run smaller and targeted freight tenders instead of large commoditized tenders
– Empowering logistics consultants with new tender technology
4 quick tips from our CEO
On top of the 5 tips shared earlier to enhance (internal) freight tender management, here are 4 general tips for all parties involved in freight tendering.
- Manage your carriers via a tool
- Communicate effectively via that tool
- Manage your rate cards online
- Let the tool run your reports, analytics and scenarios automatically
For more tips, tricks and insights for logistics, please visit the LinkedIn page of Pieter Kinds, CEO of Freightender. He shares his thoughts and blogs on a regular basis, covering topics such as freight procurement, freight audit and payment and freight rate management.
About Freightender E-sourcing for Logistics
Freightender is the fastest growing cloud-based transport tender platform. With our platform, you make your freight tender processes much easier and highly automated. Tender frustration, poor results, frustrated carriers and questionable calculations will belong to the past. Freightender is a dedicated logistics sourcing platform designed to make freight procurement easy and straightforward.
The aim we have at Freightender is to make tendering truly easy to use, in the cloud, driven by automation and deep logistics insight. Being used by thousands of carriers it is the tender platform that is the most intuitive, the fastest growing and the highest rated by both shippers and carriers in the world. Executing Air, Road and Ocean tenders on a regular or annual basis? Drop us a note and we are happy to set up a demo!
