Solving Shippers' Supply Chain Pain Points

Shippers operating in today's often volatile supply chain environment must navigate a daunting array of complex challenges. Potential pain points are rampant.
Fortunately, shippers can turn to a variety of solutions and tools that can help increase capacity, control rates, enable visibility, manage inbound and outbound fulfillment of shipments, and improve freight auditing and payment processes - Cumulatively address those nagging obstacles that arise frequently.

Order management
For example, a lack of information about inbound orders can lead to additional labor costs for shippers throughout the supply chain. However, order management tools in a TMS software solution can provide shippers with full visibility to track and trace shipments and the ability to manage incidents.
This visibility includes views of purchase order fulfillment and creates the ability to quickly view shipment times with suppliers to schedule labor at the distribution center to execute outbound shipments.

Shipment Execution
When shippers struggle to find capacity from their suppliers, it leads to increased freight expenses and labor costs. Getting status updates about shipments also takes time and resources. Through the outbound shipment fulfillment tool, shippers can accept sales orders and interface with transportation management systems, with manual or automatic rates and automatic tagging of shipments to shipping providers. Shippers gain visibility into shipments, down to the part level, order number; receive alerts for shipments outside the delivery window; and control costs.

spot auction
Global inbound shipments have been in turmoil in 2021 and are expected to remain so for at least the first three quarters of 2022. Ocean freight, in particular, not only faces capacity challenges and longer transit times, but also faces extremely high rates.

Operating in these markets means relying heavily on spot auction tools and automated bidding solutions to identify and lock in the best rates that match capacity and shipping needs. Spot auctions can be executed for all modes in timed automation tools for inbound and outbound shipments.

contract management
Contract management is a necessary condition for successful end-to-end procurement and supplier performance and is arguably more critical than the "sourcing" stage of the end-to-end supplier engagement process. Contract management tools can improve business operations, control spending by better understanding spend and identifying future savings, help monitor and evaluate suppliers, and ensure compliance with clear rules and procedures.

Purchasing Tools
RFP Bids/Tenders One tool from multiple transportation providers that provides the ability to run multiple modes globally and build missions and campaigns. Shippers can build generic bids and quickly view low-cost providers. They can also reward and assign a percentage of the carrier-requiring lanes to multiple providers.

Freight Audit and Payment
Technology-based tools can help avoid early payments (driving cash flow), double payments and late payment penalties, while ensuring shippers take advantage of payment terms. They also provide data for future rate negotiations and provide valuable visibility into supply chain costs.