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The United Kingdom boasts the most advanced eCommerce market in Europe and is a leader in online retail. And this is one of the primary reasons behind the growing freight and logistics industry in the UK which is expected to grow at a CAGR of 2.5% between the 2020-2025 period.
While the eCommerce boom is fueling the freight and logistics industry in the UK, it’s also making it restless as consumer demands have evolved. They’re now looking for faster and more flexible deliveries, posing a challenge to the logistics and retailers to meet the rising demands.
However, numerous last-mile logistics and less-than-truck load providers are popping up in the market to meet the above challenges and to offer the best possible customer experience leading to a highly competitive space.
This calls for the adoption of more efficient technological solutions, such as smart freight management software in UK, that help retailers automate redundant processes, scale up their delivery systems to meet the rising demands, and increase their market share.
Below, we discuss different factors contributing to the growth of the freight management market in the UK, along with the possible challenges a smart and technological solution can solve. We also share some critical features to help businesses opt for the best freight management software in UK.
Because of its leading position in the online retail and eCommerce industry, the logistics industry in the UK is expected to reach a whopping $642.32 billion by 2027. However, with the growing freight and logistics industry, customer preferences have also shifted towards free and faster deliveries of their shipments, creating pressure on the logistics companies to meet the rising demands.
This pressure of meeting the rising needs has created a competitive landscape in the market, which further demands smart and automated freight management software in the UK to help businesses improve their customer experience, overpower their competitors, and increase their market share.
Below, we share the key growth drivers in the freight management industry in the UK that are also fuelling the demand for better freight management solutions.
The eCommerce market in the United Kingdom has been showing double-digit growth in the last 3-4 years and is expected to grow by 12.24% to touch $285.5 billion in 2022. In addition, more retailers are going online, and online food delivery platforms are popping up, boosting the growth in domestic as well as international freight segments.
However, while this growth is promoting the freight and logistics industry, it’s also forcing the logistics and freight operators to opt for systems that are more efficient, reliable, and come with smart capabilities.
The goods that are transported all across Great Britain rely heavily on land transport. For instance, about 89% of all goods transported by land are moved by road, and 98% of Great Britain’s agricultural and food products are transported using road freight (trucks). Moreover, 98% of all machinery and consumer products are also transported by road freight.
All this is because the road transport system has a more extensive network as compared to other freight modes. This network allows for door-to-door delivery, which promotes the growth of the eCommerce sector. In addition, truck turnaround time is less, which means better efficiency. However, this brings concerns for sustainability, efficient resource consumption, etc.
The government in the UK aims to reduce the carbon footprint and increase the overall sustainability in the transportation sector. However, this calls for in-depth research, development, innovation, and adoption of technology to realize sustainability goals.
While the market calls for a reliable, flexible, and smart freight management solution, there are some core challenges that such a solution should address and overcome.
UK’s freight network is pretty comprehensive, geographically diverse, and involves all modes of transport, from roads and railways to canals and aviation. However, at the same time, it’s operationally inefficient because of the lack of cross-modal visibility at the system level.
Lack of visibility often leads to freight being transported in non-sustainable or non-environment-friendly ways, considering the costs, speed, and reliability. However, this issue can allegedly be solved with an integrated end-to-end freight management software that offers complete visibility over the freight network.
The transport sector in the UK is the highest contributor to domestic greenhouse emissions, producing around 99 metric tons of CO2 in 2020. However, the government is taking steps to transition to sustainable methods of transport, which supposedly requires massive technological advancement.
Smart technological solutions such as end-to-end freight management software in UK could help with better route planning, optimizing the journey distance, reducing emissions, and supporting the transition to Net Zero emissions.
The freight and logistics sector in the UK supports manufacturing and sales at an international level by around £400 billion. Because of a contribution this big, it’s crucial for the freight businesses to offer competitive and cost-efficient prices to support UK’s economy at the global level.
However, because of rising fuel prices and cross-modal inefficiencies, the operational costs are pretty high, leading to costly logistics. But technology-based data-driven solutions are expected to improve operational and fuel efficiency and thus bring down the overall logistics costs.
Inefficient collaboration and communication among stakeholders often lead to high logistics costs, delays in deliveries, and an inefficient supply chain. However, a freight management system that could ensure communication and effective collaboration among all stakeholders via unified stakeholder management can solve the issue.
Manual elements are involved in various aspects of the freight and logistics industry. For instance, several businesses manually send RFQs for bidding, which is an efficient method as there are only so many vendors a person can send RFQs to.
However, businesses can deal with such issues using a smart and automated freight management system. Reliable freight management software will help them automatically send RFQs to multiple vendors for bidding and automate all the redundant tasks that require human intervention delivering better efficiency.
Due to the poor adoption of smart solutions, there’s a lack of intelligent planning and orchestration across the supply chain leading to operational inefficiencies, information silos, wrong predictions, and overall higher complexity.
However, a smart orchestration platform that enables automation and intelligent planning could help deal with this issue by offering you more visibility across the supply chain, automating redundant tasks, and achieving dynamic workflows.
One of the most important features that you must look for in freight management software is an integrated management system. A smart interface for integrated management is basically a single dashboard to manage, monitor, control, and track the operations and assets, making it easy to keep a hawk’s eye view on everything.
The freight management software must also offer smart route and asset optimization. With the smart route and asset optimization, businesses can find the most efficient and optimal route for delivering shipments saving time, fuel, and cost. This reduces the overall turnaround time while ensuring deliveries are orchestrated and allocated efficiently.
Additionally, with smart route and asset optimization, businesses overcome issues such as U-turns, enhance vehicle capacity & utilization, track their shipments in real-time, and send automated alerts to customers informing them of the shipment status.
There are several off-the-shelf solutions that offer specialized services such as tracking of shipment or just route planning, leaving the majority of tasks reliant on human elements.
However, it is important to make sure that the freight management software that you choose offers end-to-end freight management services. Everything from freight procurement, shipment tracking, and route and asset optimization to digital documentation, RFQ, returns, and invoicing should come with a single software. This way, you won’t have to opt for different software or platforms for additional services.
Handling documents manually is how most freight and logistics companies operate. However, this is an inefficient method because, often, certain documents go missing or are outdated, especially when they’re required at borders delaying the border-clearing process and timely deliveries.
If your freight management software comes with the perk of digitized documentation, you can access all the documents whenever you can and ensure they’re valid and up to date. This will speed up the border-clearing process, ensuring faster and more timely deliveries.
Every organization, regardless of the domain, involves some tasks that are redundant and rely on human elements such as data entry or invoicing. However, such tasks are highly time-consuming and often prone to human errors.
Therefore, ensure that your freight management software allows you to automate the workflows, minimize redundances and errors, and ensure fair resource utilization, saving time and money.
Static functionalities or features usually work with set variables to get the job done. Take static route planning, for example. It finds the shortest route from the source to the destination, and that’s it. In case you need delivery insights or want to add any last-minute deliveries, you cannot do that.
That’s why you need dynamic finalities. Dynamic features such as dynamic route planning find the most optimized route from the source to the destination. You can accommodate last-minute deliveries, track your packages, ensure communication between drivers and customers and even manage returns efficiently.
Yet another important feature that you should look for is vehicle capacity utilization. While traditional freight management systems offer route optimization to ensure optimum vehicle capacity utilization, you cannot add multiple constraints, eventually leading to trucks returning half-empty.
However, ideally, you should be able to add multiple constraints, such as temperature control, vehicle capacity, shipment size, weight volume, etc., for effective route planning and reducing the total miles driven, leading to utilizing the vehicle to its full capacity.
Real-time monitoring of your shipments is essential for plenty of reasons. For instance, with real-time monitoring and alerts, your customers can keep an eye on their packages. And if there’s a delay, the customers will be informed of the updated time of delivery and the reason for the same improving customer experience.
In addition, with real-time monitoring, you’ll always know the freight’s route. If the freight route changes, you can get in touch with the driver and ensure that they follow the best possible route that saves fuel, money, and time.
Predictive analysis is another crucial ‘must have’ that you need to keep an eye on. A freight management software with predictive analysis could send you alerts in case of unprecedented events or issues, such as incidental damages that might impact the delivery ETA or other milestones. This way, you can manage the situation better and prevent detention or demurrage.
Now that you know what to look for in freight management software in the UK, you can make an informed decision. However, if you’re short on time and cannot put in the research, you can rely on a custom and end-to-end freight management platform: Shipsy.
Shipsy is a smart AI-based end-to-end freight management and orchestration platform that helps shippers and logistics companies manage their shipments from start to end in an efficient, flexible, and scalable manner.
With numerous orders moving each day across different modes of transport, businesses need a hawk’s view over their shipments to ensure everything is moving as expected. Shipsy helps with that by integrating all the stakeholders involved in the supply chain, offering granular insights into the shipments.
In addition, Shipsy offers you analytical insights using which you can predict contingencies such as detention, incidental damages, demurrage, etc. Also, with Shipsy’s completely automated system, you can automate bidding and other redundant tasks such as preparing invoices, sending RFQs, etc, reducing the chances of error and improving operational efficiencies.
Furthermore, you can find an optimized route for your freight, ensure the vehicles are being utilized to full capacities, store documents digitally and achieve better overall results in your business, such as
If you’re wondering how Shipsy can help you achieve the above results, click here to book a free custom demo.
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