Factors driving Digital Imperatives in Freight Forwarding

According to a recent study, approximately 92% of freight forwarders are facing the hit of digital disruption and adopting technologies to optimize their processes and add value to their customers’ service.

The freight forwarding industry runs on low margins which resulted in a lack of interest in investment in freight forwarding technology for decades. The pandemic crisis has forced traditional freight and logistics companies to review their business models. Now more than ever, there is a digital imperative in the freight forwarding and customs brokerage industry to sustain the business. Thus freight forwarders that shy away from technology are setting the tone to implement digital collaboration with cloud-based freight forwarding solutions to maximize value and achieve true digital transformation.

Automate manual operations: A modern freight forwarding ERP can easily automate operational processes, including shipment planning, carrier booking, document handling, customs, invoicing, and accounts. This helps in a significant reduction in back-office and operations costs by up to 40%, while reducing manual typing errors. Fully digital operations, using Freight forwarding software like Logi-Sys allows access to data from a single database to help to collaborate across functions.

Customer experience: The traditional manual quotation request and booking process are time-consuming and cumbersome and often require several interactions via email and phone. Moreover, filling in customs documents and processing shipping documents manually can be tedious. Nowadays, customers’ expectations influenced by the digital freight forwarders offering that provides end-to-end automation with the latest logistics ERP solutions won’t stand for incorrect billing, late deliveries, manual documentation filing, or a lack of visibility into their deliveries anymore.

Thus, the freight forwarders who are still relying on the traditional way of working should immediately start digitalizing operations to provide a better user experience. This includes improving the quotation and booking process, providing real-time visibility, customer portals, mobile apps, online document filing, and shipment data analytics reports.

Digitize finance functions: Digitalizing the finance and payment collection method using freight management software can yield up to 30% cost savings in finance. Automating sending of invoices and following up for payments with Freight ERP software keeps the cash inflow in check and also stops revenue leakages. Moreover, a freight ERP can manage the entire accounting process, determine tax liability, and file returns control cost, multi-currency, workflow approvals, and all other advanced report functions with a single click.

Collaboration across the ecosystem: Collaboration that allows devices, applications, data, products, departments, and stakeholders across locations to work together becomes the core of the freight business in the new normal. With automation, it is easy to create collaboration across the supply chain by keeping everyone apprised of shipment status in real-time and helping in the timely decision.

An agile approach to react faster to dynamic market demands with the latest freight & logistics software is not just imperative to survive but thrive in the years ahead.