Why Staying With the Same Legacy Freight Auditor Is Likely Compromising Your Profitability

Your freight audit and analytics solution plays a vital role in managing your transportation spend. From identifying duplicate charges to eliminating overpayments to ensuring you get the best carrier rates, your freight auditor can impact profits on every shipment. However, there is so much more to profitability than just shipping costs, and today’s enterprises should be expecting greater input and actionable supply chain intelligence from their freight auditor. 

Modern freight audit and analytics solutions can provide complete supply chain visibility on demand and empower your operations, logistics, C-suite and finance teams with the intel and tools to make smarter business decisions faster. If you haven’t upgraded to a modern freight audit and analytics company, complacency and legacy technology are likely compromising your company’s profitability. Maybe it’s time that you audited your auditor.

Here are 3 key criteria on which to audit your current freight auditor:

Technology

Your freight audit and analytics company should be committed to continually reinvesting in the future of supply chain technology, including AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) capabilities. AI and ML have the computing power to generate, process and analyze vast amounts of data. They can enable freight audit companies to recognize and track patterns in shipping so they can find efficiencies and recommend lower cost options, such as consolidation programs. AI can also provide predictive intelligence so your freight auditor can get to know your customer demand data and help you make better decisions to reduce your distribution costs.

Work with a freight auditor that is always thinking ahead to what the market will need in the future. Ask your current auditor what their technology capabilities will be in the next 2-5 years. Make sure they have plans in place to always provide you with the best freight audit and analytics technology, or you could lose competitive advantage to rivals that are receiving better intel.

Analytics

Look at your freight auditor’s website and marketing materials. Are they sending the message that they are a fantastic freight audit and pay company? Are they concentrating solely on how they can catch billing errors? If they are not marketing their data analytics capabilities, that’s likely where they are lacking.

The only way to make intelligent supply chain decisions is by analyzing real data that comes from your own day-to-day operations. Good freight audit and analytics software includes customizable, interactive dashboards that give you full supply chain visibility and tracks the KPIs of your choosing. It should not only help you select the most cost-efficient carrier and discover patterns of incorrect charges but also to visualize how expenses are affecting overall cost of goods sold in real-time. Ultimately, your freight audit and analytics solution should help you benchmark and improve your supply chain to maximize profitability.

Business Approach

Your freight auditor should have a continuous improvement mindset. They should partner with you to the betterment of your business, including scenario modelling and suggesting process improvements. You have a lot on your plate, from transportation to warehousing to customer fulfillment and more, and you should be able to lean on your freight audit and analytics company for on-demand supply chain reporting. If you’re working with a freight auditor that doesn’t respond to your need for custom reporting and analytics, you’re missing out. 

At Orca, we see ourselves as your partner, not a service, and that’s why we are happy to hold quarterly business reviews, walk you through year over year comparisons and run scenario modelling – such as projecting cost savings by relocating a DC. We help you get actionable insights from your data to streamline your processes and identify opportunities to be leaner and more profitable. We can even build out new reports for you within a 48-hour turnaround – reports that you can use every day to keep your supply chain optimized.