Friday Focus: Expertise-on-demand
What if you could tap into information you need, at the right time, to make the right comparison, route cargo to meet supply chain demand and create a quote? asks Bryn Heimbeck
We’ve all had moments when we’ve wondered why it is so hard to get something done. Take rate changes for example. The individual rates are not complex nor are the components. And a change is not hard to understand. So, why is it such a complicated process to implement a rate change through a global organisation?
At the heart of the issue is a new way of managing global supply chains using modern expertise-on-demand decision-making tools.
There is too much to know at any one time; information that needs to be known by everyone, everywhere, at any time.
We’ve moved beyond the point where a user can reliably count on their memory or page after page of a spreadsheet to guide them. What if you could tap into just the information that you needed, at the right time, to make the right comparison, route cargo to meet the supply chain demand and create the quote?
The issue is that there are too many rates that can be changed and each change has many components. The average mid- to large import or export contract has hundreds of lanes per contract, while the average NVOCC or forwarder has millions of rate combinations and components. Multiply this by the number of carriers under contract and it becomes obvious why spreadsheets and email are simply inadequate.
In addition, today’s global organisations are far flung and the information on the changing market needs to be disseminated accurately throughout the organisation in order to leverage the changes that are happening in the market. And, leveraging is exactly what the carriers bidding to get new cargo routed their way want to happen, but it just can’t move quickly enough given all of the other competing demands on the time of everyone involved in the supply chain.
Meanwhile, the operations and accounting people need to know what rate to accurately apply.
Expertise-on-demand, using rate optimisation software, provides a standard platform in which everyone in a global organisation can function.
Employees are free to think about how to get the job done while the machines are leveraged to assist them in gathering and comparing widespread, diverse, and constantly changing information. Everyone is on the same page as soon as the rates are in the system. This applies to new rates as well as current rates with the ability to show forward filed accessorial changes.
Technology must be leveraged to rapidly administer changes so that the impact of a new rate on a new lane, or the change in one carrier’s accessorial charges is immediately visible. And that change needs to be presented to the many users worldwide when they need it.
Bryn Heimbeck is founder of Trade Tech
