How Can Freight Forwarders Give More Visibility to Shippers

1. How Can Freight Forwarders Give More Visibility to Shippers? With the evolvement of transportation landscape – including the need of freight forwarders to remain alert in the dynamic market conditions, increased expectations of the forwarders to provide shippers with real-time freight visibility and the demand from customers to offer faster shipping – many supply chains are turning to advanced technology tools to control various aspects of international shipping operations. For decades, logistics companies have attempted to provide more accurate information about the movement of their client’s cargo to the client. The manual efforts have only proved to put more strain on the resources and employees, yet resulting in the gathering of only pieces of isolated data. Ever since the emergence of digital shipping visibility in the last decade, technology has gradually become a foundation for freight forwarders to better the supply chain strategies and bring efficiency in the logistics operations. Shipment Visibility – The New Normal Before we jump on to explain how shipment visibility helps shippers to improve their brand image and how technology contributes to it, let’s first define the term “shipment visibility”. In simpler words, it is the ability to receive real-time data about the status of the cargo while it is in motion at any given time and thus evaluate when it will reach the destination. Back when it was still a new concept, the logistics experts have leveraged shipment visibility to gain a competitive advantage by offering the shippers and customers real-time insights into their cargo movement. However with the concept becoming more popular, the customers have now come to expect visibility. According to a report by Project44, 70% of customers want the ability to track their shipment. With more and more shippers hearing from customers asking “where is my package?”, shipment tracking has certainly moved from the “value-added features” section to a “must-haves” column. Shipment Visibility across Transportation Modes & Geographies With the freight forwarders incorporating more unique and innovative modes of transportation to provide timely and cost-effective solutions to the shippers, creating visibility provides valuable

2. insights to improve the supply chain. Having access to accurate, comprehensive, and real-time data about the shipment – commonly known as high-fidelity data – helps the shippers to proactively fulfill the expectations. Many technological tools have been introduced in the logistics industry over the past decade that offers an end-to-end view of the entire transportation process of the company, covering all the modes and global networks. Ability to Leverage Shipment Visibility for Supply Chain Enhancement Tracking the real-time data has not only allowed the shippers to meet customer’s expectations but it has also helped in evaluating the current supply chain processes, locating blind spots related to the inbound shipment and identifying the highly efficient areas. Newer technologies, such as APIs, allow the shippers to transfer the information about shipment status to their customers through email and message notifications automatically, thus eliminating the need to call each of them manually. This is instrumental in bridging the communication gap and offering fulfilling customer experience. Moving forward, it is becoming indispensable for shippers to consider their freight forwarding partnerships based on the forwarder’s technological capabilities and visibility. It is only with the integration of future-thinking solutions – the first step to which begins by channeling efforts on shipment visibility – that forwarders and shippers can gain better control over the shipment process and transform their position in the industry.