Tender freight: The eight steps that changed freight procurement

How can freight tendering become more efficient, cost-effective and rewarding for your business? Well, the answer lies in eight (simple) yet complicated steps.

Ok, that sounds very complicated and does not make any sense you might think. Well, it actually does. The eight steps we are going to walk through in this blog, are in fact rather simple and comprehensive, provided that you use adequate freight procurement software that shifts the (logistics) complexity of tendeing completely to the background.

1. Baseline creation

The freight tender process starts with gathering the raw shipment data. It’s important that the data is of decent quality, as good as possibly can be collected because this will shape into shipment profiles.

2. Shipment profile creation

After the analysis and the creation of these shipment profiles, a clear view of needs will be visualized by the tool. Different profiles have different requirements and possibly distinct rate cards. The importance of the quality of the shipment profiles is honourable because this will secure that the suitable logistics service provider can be selected and invited.

3. Questionnaire creation

The third step of our e-sourcing solution is to guarantee that all business requirements are clear. Let’s face it, a good questionnaire is rather important for setting up a quality transportation tender. Every Tender is different and comes along with its own specifications, certifications, equipment and other needs. A clear and transparent freight tender is the result, making sure that it is clear for logistics service providers what is required.

4. Rate Card(s) creation

One of the most important things to succeed with your freight tender is ensuring that all business requirements are covered. The creation of good and solid rate is THE ingredient for this. Because Freightender is a Dutch start-up coming from freight auditing experts,  we understand the importance of not letting any room for interpretation when filling these out. That way it is easy to make an objective analysis of the rates provided by all the carriers selected for the tender. There will also be no surprise additional fees later on. If there is no room for interpretation, everything is clear to everybody.

Watch the video below to see how easy it is to create a clinical rate card for air shipments using Freightender Freight Sourcing Software in the cloud.

5. Send Request for Quotation (RFQ)

What seems simple isn’t always in the world of freight tendering. Sending the RFQ is one of those things. The key is the quality of your carrier database. Your requirements must meet the capabilities of the right carrier. The better the match between the two, the higher the quality of the later on tender result.

6. Create Tender Shortlist

Time to analyze! The returned rate cards and questionnaires from the invited carriers need to be scrutinized. For example; carrier number one may be the cheapest on a single lane, but carrier number two may cheaper when combining multiple lanes. This expert insight you simply don’t get when running your freight tender over the phone and in Excel. Based on your own research, carriers can be selected for during multiple rounds.

7. Freight Tender impact analysis

After all logistics service providers have answered the required questions (questionnaire) and rate cards are filled it, it is time for the final analysis. Because not all logistics service providers are the same, and not awarding a single carrier for a single lane, could have an effect on the pricing of other lanes. Therefore, choosing the cheapest carrier is not always the best option.  That’s why we enabled users of Freightender with a thorough impact analysis tool.

8. Get the right approvals and award!

After the final negotiations and the internal processes are finalized, the carrier that fits the profile can be awared and the freight tender is finished.

More about Freightender – Freight Sourcing in the cloud

Freightender was found by Dutch logistics veterans that have a burning passing for logistics optimization and bringing down logistics costs. If you’d like to learn more about freight tender efficiency, please contact us for a free live demo of our tool.