Freight management is the process of planning, organising, and controlling the transport of products from one location to another. It involves managing all aspects of the transportation process from end to end, including quoting and booking freight, managing the freight throughout the delivery process, and dealing with any post-delivery issues. Effective freight management aims to optimise your supply chain, reduce operational costs, minimise the transit times for your customers, and enhance overall freight delivery efficiency.
The process involves selecting the most appropriate transport option for each order, negotiating freight contracts with carriers, tracking shipments, and ensuring compliance with any regulatory requirements – such as Dangerous Goods. Freight management systems like Cario, will leverage advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, GPS tracking and data analytics to streamline operations and provide real-time visibility into the movement of goods.
Businesses, manufacturers, retailers, and logistics companies rely on effective freight management to improve the customer experience, reduce their freight costs, and importantly maintain a competitive edge over their competitors.
Effective freight management offers businesses many advantages. When done well, it will optimise transportation costs by streamlining operations, reducing wasted time, and consolidating shipments, leading to significant cost savings. This consolidation and streamlining of freight deliveries also leads to more sustainable carbon friendly deliveries – which can be measured in a Carbon Calculator like Cario Connect.
Managing freight effectively will enhance customer satisfaction through efficient deliveries and improved shipment tracking, increasing customer loyalty and retention.
Additionally, it enables better risk management, as potential disruptions to freight deliveries can be identified and mitigated proactively. This results in improved business continuity and far better outcomes for their customers. By having proactive alerts and notifications, a business can monitor their freight by exception – removing a lot of the customer service overhead associated with freight management.
Freight management systems allow companies to manage their freight with software rather than people. This software enables a company to simplify their freight operations, eliminating the manual task of identifying the best freight carrier for each delivery. Good freight management software provides operational visibility to where your freight is at any point in time. Real time reports can help negotiate better freight rates, and optimise freight spend. By taking advantage of freight management system, a company can automate all their routine freight processes – saving them time and money. This provides businesses with the ability to scale as their business grows, hiding the complexity of managing multiple carriers, rates and destinations in an easy to use interface.
Customisation of freight management software depends on how the software was developed. Cario, was developed to be a very agile and flexible freight management system. As a result, Cario is very customisable, and can be configured in different ways, based on a company’s specific freight management requirements. Throughout Australia and New Zealand, Cario is customised in a range of different ways, depending on the implementation and the companies needs. This allows companies to get the best freight solution for their specific environment. Cario has been designed to fit into a company’s software architecture – rather than the other way around. This means Cario can integrate with any Enterprise Resource Management (ERP), Warehouse Management System (WMS) or eCommerce platforms. Some of the platforms Cario integrates with include SAP, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Pronto, MYOB, Xero, Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and many more.
Freight Management software contains a lot of complex algorithms and calculations to be able to provide the capabilities that they do. In Cario, this complexity is hidden beneath an easy to use interface that ensures a Freight Management system user does not need to have any technical knowledge at all. The Cario Freight management system interface is very intuitive, and allows companies to self serve most functionality, such as add new carriers, update freight rates or surcharges, and edit tracking and POD data.
However, when implementing freight management software, we recommend using a company that has local Australian and New Zealand support as it is important to get your account set up correctly, with any necessary ERP and WMS freight integration available for your particular environment. Good FMS companies will also provide training on the system if required.
Many companies decide that having a Freight Management system isn’t enough, they instead would like to have a full-service freight management provider – also called a freight broker. Freight Brokers, such as Freight People, will provide a company with a full-service offering, including best of breed freight management software and implementation services, dedicated customer service team, and invoice reconciliation capabilities.
When using a freight broker, a company no longer needs to have their own customer service for their freight. Instead, they are outsourcing all freight queries and issues to the freight broker. The freight broker will be responsible for dealing with missing and damaged freight, freight pricing negotiations, and anything to do with the Freight Management software.
When choosing a freight management services provider, it’s critical you choose someone that you trust, and that has good local support.