Significant changes have occurred throughout the world’s economies due to the advent of digitization. The transportation sector is especially vulnerable to this problem. To achieve optimal results, transportation companies may digitally connect their physical and digital assets. As a result, businesses can streamline their supply chains by automating routine processes, making better decisions with the help of data analytics, significantly reducing errors, and increasing productivity.
The US economy is seeing its highest level of inflation ever recorded. Over the last year, the CPI has increased by more than 8%. Many people are highly concerned about this. When the economy is in a recession, companies across the board suffer from lower profits and fewer available jobs.
However, Forbes contends that digital products diminish both measured and actual inflation. Freight brokerages must remain abreast of all the innovations and advances in the digital realm as digital solutions boost productivity and increase supply chain efficiency.
Read on to understand better why digitization is critical in freight management and what you need to keep in mind to ensure you make your business recession-proof.
It is logical to anticipate that if prices continue to rise, consumers will cut down on their shopping, affecting the regularity with which particular items are purchased. People could also make bulk purchases, causing firms to cope with many product returns. Even when unexpected behavior is seen, businesses will still have obstacles that they have to overcome to maintain their profitability.
Digitization offers several data solutions allowing users to solve many transportation-related problems. Here are four pillar features that a freight technology must have to work at an optimal level.
- A Cloud Based System
A cloud-based transportation management system is critical to ensuring that data is accessible from anywhere as long as there is an established connection. Cloud-based systems offer various capabilities, including capturing orders and order management. This is an excellent feature for ensuring order life cycles can be successfully executed from anywhere.
Additionally, a cloud-based system should enable your business to identify and offer carriers their loads much faster using a carrier bid and tender tool. It should also allow users to connect and access a similar virtual workforce. This makes it easier for freight companies to communicate internally, manage documents and prevent loss.
Invoicing is critical to a successful cloud-based transport management system. Automating carrier invoicing ensures fewer manual tasks need to be accomplished, and order fulfillment can be faster.
Cloud-based TMS should ideally come with APIs, integrations, and plugins. The benefit of this capability is that you can expand your software by integrating third-party software to get the most out of your TMS.
- Real-time transportation visibility
Real-time visibility is critical in a TMS system. It is an essential aspect of a successful TMS and offers many benefits to freight brokerages.
Real-time visibility ensures that your business gets fewer penalties and saves more. Using predictive ETAs help your freight brokerage identify risky shipments, giving you time to counter the problems before they spiral.
Additionally, real-time transportation leads to increased operational effectiveness. Tracing and tracking are more manageable, communication is faster, and alerts can be automated. Real-time monitoring makes managing your fleets and improving your carrier relationships easy.
- Intelligent Carrier Network
An intelligent carrier network is especially vital in a recession market. Many freight brokerages are dealing with driver shortages, which are bound to worsen when capacity increases. An intelligent carrier’s network gives users access to a portal showing available loads and capacity. Users access a list of carriers to manage capacity even when there’s a shortage of drivers.
This tool also ensures that you can manage and build relationships with carriers. It essentially keeps a record of all the previous carriers giving those with a long association with your business priority while automatically building the new ones.
- Tools To Improve Business Intelligence
Digitalization in the transport industry cuts across the board. You can automate aspects like your fleet management, communications, and other management aspects of your freight business. Digitalization can, however, also happen in your physical assets.
Managing your business digitally will give you access to data. This data can easily be analyzed, providing essential insights that will lead you to better decisions and increased profitability. But innovations in the automation and digitization of fleets using Artificial intelligence and Machine learning are leading to massive disruptions across the industry.
Business intelligence is critical to keeping up with the peak season, especially when in a recession market. An excellent digital solution should help your business save time and increase productivity. Business intelligence tools will help your company improve customer experiences and save money by improving your business operations.
Benefits of Digitization for freight brokerages
- Any freight brokerage that wants to succeed in today’s industry must prioritize digitization. To a great extent, digitization facilitates accounting planning and dispatch, load matching, and enhances file management.
- Both asset management and fleet management become much more controllable, leading to an overall improvement in efficiency. Because of this, a firm will be able to reduce its fuel use and improve its attention to detail, ultimately saving both time and money.
- On top of that, the advent of digitization paves the way for enhanced communication. It is much easier for your company to become more efficient when your team and fleet can utilize a single gateway to validate and update information. This not only saves you time and money but also removes processes that are time-consuming and repetitive.
- Because the holidays are approaching, all stakeholders must maintain clear and prompt communication. Customers’ expectations of businesses continue to rise, and as a result, companies are under increasing pressure to fulfill them. The digital economy is essential in assuring the satisfaction of all parties concerned.
How Digitization Can Help Recession-Proof Your Business.
Digitalization is crucial for your freight business. Digital technology is the key to fighting inflation in a recession market. Even while the price of essentials such as gas and food continues to climb, the cost of buying products online is reducing year in and out.
Digitalization in a freight brokerage not only spurs productivity but also makes the supply chain more efficient and saves costs lowering the cost for consumers. This is a win when everything else around consumers increases in price daily.
Google CEO Satya Nadella says that in “an inflationary market, the software is the only deflationary force.” This shows digitalization’s importance, especially in a recession market for freight brokerages.
At Zuum we can help your freight brokerage transition more efficiently into digitalization. Contact us today for tailor-made digital solutions designed with freight brokerages in mind.
If you are interested to know what “Matt Tabatabai “CO-Founder & COO of ZUUM App “, “David Boatright,Chief Business Development Officer GLOVIS America”, and “Anthony Petitte, Director of Partnerships & Marketing, ZUUM App” think about this topic ,Check our webinar out.
