Six Easy Ways Supply Chain Visibility Can Drastically Reduce Intermodal Logistics Costs

In times when people are able to track their 8-dollar pizza in a second-by-second manner, the visibility expectations of intermodal shippers for a USD 30000 container shouldn’t come as a surprise. 

However, the intermodal complexities, lack of process collaboration, and data inconsistencies are rife in cross-border eCommerce, leading to poor visibility. As the global cross-border eCommerce market gears up to hit the USD 2.25 trillion mark by 2026, this need for visibility is going to assume a dire stance and become a business differentiator because “trade fidelity” has evolved over the years.

This visibility has different implications and considerations for businesses and customers, where businesses seek operational and process visibility apart from the visibility into shipment movement. While real-time tracking of key milestone events ensures dynamic and exact ETAs, operational visibility spurs excellence and efficiency, ultimately leading to increased profits and reduced costs.

Let us examine how businesses can achieve this via smart intermodal logistics management platforms with in-built aggregations and integrated functionalities.

Smart Intermodal Logistics Management: Reducing Costs with Real-Time Visibility

Smart intermodal or multi-modal logistics management platforms come with in-built integrations with shipping lines and freight forwarders that are directly accessible from an integrated dashboard. Hence, the businesses have extremely precise control over the operations and processes right from the start, such as RFQs, spot inquiries, documentation, billings, invoicing, and tracking.

These platforms offer granular tracking of key milestone events, that can be relayed to the customers for highly engaging and insightful information regarding dynamic ETAs. So, all the stakeholders can check and track every milestone, such as shipment pick-up, shipment loaded, shipment reached the port, shipment pick-up done at the destination port, etc.

Such step-by-step visibility allows businesses to save costs in various ways:

1. Automated Freight Procurement 

The freight procurement space has become intensely competitive and recent studies reveal that 97% of shippers plan to increase their budgets for freight procurement in 2022. Further, 52% of them will increase their budgets by 25% or more y-o-y.

Automated freight procurement enables businesses to check the prices, dates, availability, spots, and every other thing related to the shipping line via an integrated dashboard. These shipping lines can be ranked and prioritized on the basis of multiple parameters, such as previous shipping experience, costs, time, SLA etc.

Businesses can also leverage automated bidding to book the shipping lines and save all the crucial resources – money, time, and effort.

All the documentation related to billings, invoicing, and bookings is digital and can be tracked, shared, and exported in multiple formats. They can compare various shipping lines in terms of prices, dates, and lots of other criteria and opt for the most profitable shipping line.

2. Predictive Analytics 

A smart intermodal logistics management platform comes with predictive analytics that helps businesses track whether a specific booking is vulnerable to delays and high detention and demurrage costs. They can check whether congestion at a particular port is going to hinder their ETA SLAs and which shipping line is the best option for specific deliveries, such as 10-day deliveries, bulk deliveries, hazardous or consumable materials, etc.

Predictive ETAs can also help reduce costs and save time by allowing the businesses to adjust plans to reduce detention costs or late fees and manage appointments and resources in a better manner. The predictive pickup ETAs ensure that the trucks are available at right time for shipment pickup and help in optimizing the trucking operations as well.

With such granular insights, businesses can avoid cost bleeding because of port congestion, detention, etc., and can orchestrate timely and profitable deliveries.

3. Real-Time Shipment Tracking

The businesses can track every shipment throughout its movement across multiple places and transportation modes. They can check whether the shipment is picked up from the port and which type of vehicle is carrying it. 

In case the shipment pick-up time exceeds a certain threshold, they can directly contact the exact person responsible for the pick-up and ensure timely deliveries as well as avoid costs because of demurrage or detention.

This precise control over the shipment movement stays throughout the journey and can be exercised till the point of delivery. 

Smart multimodal logistics management platforms also come with in-built integrations for drayage that allows efficient and swift movement of goods from port to destination warehouse or hubs irrespective of the port congestion. By embracing real-time shipment tracking capability global businesses are enhancing customer experience by 64%.

4. Proactive Tracking of Incidental Costs

Incidental costs such as extra storage costs, detention, and demurrage add to the operational costs and can bring down the profits significantly. With multi-modal visibility, all the stakeholders can not only get automated notifications and alerts for any such costs but they can also proactively track these costs for more profitable operations. 

They can check whether a cargo is going to get delayed owing to some issue in the carrier or customs, and can take steps to avoid the avalanche effect of cost bleeds for the remaining portion of cargo movement. This ensures efficiency and cost-efficient freight movement at all times. A global Fortune 500 exporter is leveraging smart logistics management tools to reduce incidental costs by 80%. 

5. Seamless Collaboration Across International Logistics Stakeholders

Robust and comprehensive collaboration among supply chain stakeholders leads to operational efficiency that reduces resource consumption in achieving goals or completing tasks. With a smart platform for seamless collaboration, all the parties – carrier, freight forwarders, shipping lines, warehouse management, etc., can communicate in a single place, that’s one dashboard providing visibility to all.

All the alerts, updates, and data insights are readily available in a single place and can be seen on a role-relevant basis. This also cuts down the ad-hoc operational costs, such as calls, man-hours spent in getting updates, etc.

6. Tracking CO2 Emissions Across Modes

Digitization helps gain visibility of emissions across different legs of the supply chain and cargo movements. This enables businesses to identify CO2 red flags and use capabilities like capacity optimization, and route optimization to shrink trip volumes, empty miles, eliminate diversions, etc. 

Apart from offering a vision into the operational inefficiencies, such insights also have a positive impact on cost and sustainability.

Intermodal visibility translates into fewer freight claims issues, improved customer SLAs, fewer to negligible compliance violations, reduced risk of delays, and better carrier rates. It ensures a firm grip over the operations and cargo movements and helps businesses save time and money at every leg of the journey. With a granular vision of cargo movements and intermodal operations, businesses can undoubtedly save resources and steer towards sustainable and profitable growth!