Selecting the right carriers and finding the best prices in the logistics market is an intensive and time-consuming process. Not only for shippers, but also for carriers.
The ever-recurring cycle is a chore that, in many cases, both parties do not want. For shippers, finding the historical transport data, setting up the transport profile, inviting the right carriers and setting benchmarks are often among the challenging tasks in the freight tender process.
But the challenges of tendering are not limited to just the initial phase of a tender process. After the 'launch', other problems often come into play. Many a Tender manager struggles to 'run' tenders in a structured and orderly manner. Moreover, many do not have a functional platform that offers possibilities to communicate easily and decisively with carriers. Finally, analysing rates, setting up benchmarks and scenarios is a time-consuming task, which, moreover, is hardly passable or comprehensible in most (tender) software solutions. In short, setting up, writing and 'monitoring' freight tenders takes too much time and lacks much-needed structure.
Tenders...rely on technology
This is all because of the way we in the transport industry currently run our tenders. Where many components have been automated, (Track & Trace, TMS systems etc.) during tendering we still often rely on manual, Excel-based processes inherently associated with consultants because there is often not enough expertise in-house.
What is the key to a successful tender?
It's all about the basics. Start by creating a good, structural 'baseline'. For this, the following 4 points are important.
Data - Make sure you have good, 'clean' transport data.
Knowledge - Make sure you know exactly how carriers work. How does the industry work and who are the logistics players are in your industry? This may seem like an open door, but reality shows that in many cases companies still lack a lot here.
Process - Make sure you have a strong, comprehensive tender solution in place that controls and automates all facets of the tender process . In many cases, companies use systems that provide calculation and data solutions, but then fall heavily short in terms of communication. Think feedback, updates, new tender rounds, etc.
Time - Implement tendering into the business routine. Make sure it does not become the shunted away child of the organisation. Too often, a tender is plopped on someone's desk who already has a lot of hay to make. This obviously has a negative effect or the outcome of the tender.
In general, these four key points are often not carried out in an ideal manner, compromising the quality of tenders. By using modern freight tender software, companies can scale up the quality AND user-friendliness of tenders, bringing cost and time savings for both parties.
Pieter Kinds - CEO TenderTool
