5 Ways To Optimize International Logistics Costs 

Intermodal shipments travel via multiple modes of transportation, which can lead to higher freight transportation costs owing to poor visibility across multiple carriers, vehicles, and logistics movements. However, the urgent need for supply chain sustainability and the ability to consolidate consignments to save on freight costs are driving the growth trends in intermodal shipping. Recent research reveals that the global intermodal freight market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15.3% and reach USD 171.5 bn by 2030.

Further, the material handling requirements during long haul are negligible in intermodal transportation, which makes it better from the consignment safety point of view. However, the inability to maintain visibility across intermodal movements, lack of reliable status reporting, and inefficient freight management across multiple modes can escalate transportation costs.

Let’s find out how smart logistics management platforms can help you overcome all these challenges and ensure tight operational control over international shipments across multiple carriers and vehicles.

#1 – Automated Freight Procurement 

Freight procurement is one of the most challenging tasks owing to reliance on manual elements and third-party service providers. Bookings are mostly made based on previous partnerships, partial homework, and hunches. 

Automated freight procurement solutions offer in-built dashboards with diverse functionalities and integrated capabilities for smarter procurement and comprehensive management. Businesses can check prices, dates, availability, spots, and more in one place. They can check and compare prices across hundreds of shipping lines and set specific parameters for ranking and prioritizing them based on previous shipping experiences, costs, time, SLA, etc. Automated bidding is another excellent benefit of using such platforms. 

#2 – Automated Freight Negotiations

Manual freight procurement and rate negotiations are tedious, less efficient, and restrict you in terms of the shipping lines you can work with and getting profitable deals or bidding. On the other hand, automated freight procurement helps procure freight across three different methods – RFQ, Spot Inquiry, Spot Rates. Businesses can leverage the in-built smart query and automated negotiation capabilities for more profitable freight rates across multiple pre-integrated carriers and shipping lines. 

The automated freight management solutions also offer intelligent bidder ranking based on multiple factors, such as pricing, service reliability, delivery ETAs, etc. Further, the businesses get access to renegotiations, can automate bidding, and generate custom RFQ documents by syncing port pair-wise information from ERP systems. This directly reduces freight costs, and order-to-ship time and increases man-hours savings.

#3 – Real-Time Shipment Tracking

McKinsey reports that supply chain disruptions can incur organizations as much as 45% of yearly profits over a decade. Also, 80% of supply chain professionals focus on visibility to tackle these disruptions and make supply chains more resilient. However, achieving visibility over logistics movements in intermodal space is challenging owing to the number of disparate systems and multiple moving parts. This can easily lead to cost bleeds at any unprecedented time, which can also go unnoticed and unaccounted for, for a long time.

On the other hand, real-time shipment tracking is a powerful tool that helps businesses get automated updates for shipment status, such as automated alerts for key milestone events and real-time updates for logistical movements. Supply chain professionals can get all this information in one place without relying on multiple channels or questioning the reliability of the information. Every intermodal movement is recorded and conveyed automatically, and dynamic ETAs are triggered for better visibility over the entire supply chain.

#4 – Intelligent Carrier Management 

Manual management of carriers or logistics service providers is limiting in many aspects. Businesses are unable to get data as and when required and have to rely on individual carrier offerings in terms of services and technology for operations management. Further, the rapid surge in online shopping, quick deliveries, and cross-border commerce is pushing brands to think beyond standard logistics partnerships and establish multiple carrier partnerships. 

Thus, intelligent carrier management becomes all the more crucial for intermodal shipments. Advanced multiple carrier management platforms use in-built algorithms to allow the users to compare, prioritize, and select 3PLs based on specific criteria, such as service costs, consignment characteristics, volume commitments, capacity, area, etc. Further, businesses can manage, track, monitor, and evaluate every carrier based on individual performance via a single dashboard. This helps form the most profitable and strategic carrier choices that reduce overall logistics costs.

#5 – Digitized Documentation

Manual efforts in handling documents and regulatory filings can increase the order-to-ship time and make the overall shipping process inefficient and time-consuming. Automation-powered solutions for international freight management offer digitized documentation that helps manage and control invoice compliance. These solutions also have in-built checks for discrepancy monitoring and accelerated payment settlements to avoid delays/frauds in claims and invoice settlements. 

Businesses can also settle/manage/inquire bulk invoices for multiple vendors or service providers and reference any of them at any point in time, as all the data is stored in the system. Insights-driven workflow automation helps reclaim thousands of productive person-hours and also helps manage the documentation issues for customs navigation without impacting the delivery SLAs. 

Unlocking excellence and efficiency in intermodal logistics transportation is difficult without intelligent technology. Thus, investing in smart freight management solutions that can help overcome all the challenges by streamlining the processes and offering a centralized view of all the activities and shipments becomes crucial. These solutions can not only help reduce freight costs by 12% and inquiry processing time by 90%, but they can also help increase on-time dispatch by 12% and unlock 3-10 hours of savings per shipment.