Predictive Analytics in Freight and Transportation Management
In the transportation industry, data and statistics can aid in optimising your freight management and processes. This, however, is only possible if you obtain useful information and apply it appropriately. One great way to do it is through predictive analytics. Predictive analytics refers to the use of your freight data, including sales, transit history, carrier failure patterns, and weather conditions, to proactively anticipate future outcomes.
Predictive analytics in freight and transportation management is a practical tool that helps you identify customer demands, streamline operations, and improve customer experience. Read on to learn more about how predictive analytics assists in optimising freight and transport management.
Benefits of Predictive Analytics
History – this is the basis of predictive analytics. By looking at the past, as well as real-time data, you can look into the future more accurately.
So, how does predictive analytics benefit your freight and transportation management and positively impact your business in general?
- It predicts and reduces risks. By looking into trends and patterns, transportation analytics can anticipate potential risk areas, create alerts to notify you, and help implement actions to reduce the impact of these risks.
- It improves decision making. Historical data and analytics allow you to consider the many factors that can affect your operations, enabling you to make better decisions for the business.
- It reduces costs. Perhaps, the biggest benefit of predictive fulfillment or analysis is it can help you earn more and save more. By making more informed decisions about orders, inventory, and even service failures, you can reduce operational costs.
- It optimises processes and improves management performance. Predictive analytics helps manage resources and streamline workflows. Business analytics in transportation enables companies to look deeper into customer segmentation, product demands, pricing, and purchasing. It allows businesses to pinpoint patterns and trends, prevent service failures, and improve performance for maximum profitability.
- It boosts collaboration and control. The opportunity to gain reliable insights into market trends, real-time shipments, customer demands, and workforce needs brings together the experiences, knowledge, and skills of various people within the supply chain.
Insights into Market Trends
The freight market is volatile, and when it comes to shipping rates, nothing is set in stone. This volatility is one reason why finding shipping services at fair and affordable prices is challenging. Predictive analytics provides a way to navigate market volatility by analysing historical pricing and trends and looking into updated price ranges and real-time trends.
Predictive analytics allows businesses to make better decisions that consider both cost reduction and customer satisfaction. Decision making based on reliable data and analytics boosts productivity and amplifies team confidence.
Preventing Service Failures
Being able to predict service failures is critical to a business. With transportation analytics in place, you can implement efforts to manage service failures before they actually happen. Service failures that involve carriers or machinery can result in exceedingly high costs and adversely affects the overall customer experience.
For example, a shipment is delayed due to extreme weather conditions. If you spend $50 for every single load that is delayed, it would only be a matter of time before it adds up to thousands of dollars of excess costs.
More often than not, supply chain professionals are not aware of late shipments until they are already late. Utilising your historical and real-time data and statistics, business analytics in transportation provides you with real-time shipment insights, as well as alerts to minimise the impact of failures or prevent them altogether.
Flexibility in Labour Hire
The workforce is an essential part of any business. Logistics companies, in particular, are constantly challenged with a high-demand labour shortage. The scarcity of a workforce is even more threatening to logistics operations when service failures happen and inaccurate customer demands are recorded. The inability to proactively predict these problems leave many companies stuck and ineffective to respond with adequate labour hire.
With predictive analytics in the logistics industry, businesses can leverage real-time information to anticipate errors and demand volume. This allows for time and opportunity to optimise labour levels and respond to customer needs effectively.
Predictive Analytics with Cario
The market is saturated with the newest logistics systems that claim to help companies with their freight and transportation management. However, not all shipping solutions are built the same. Only a few have the deep integrations with the local carrier network, to provide reliable service and tools, including end-to-end supply chain visibility.
Predictive analytics in the logistics industry is vital in optimising your freight and transportation management. That is what Cario offers, and so much more!
As the leading freight management platform in Australia, Cario provides an all-in-one solution to manage your supply chain, automating your freight decisions and streamlining your operations. Although Cario is designed to be cost-effective and self-service, a team of consultants is always available to help with more complex solutions.
Cario is a smart freight platform that not only simplifies the quoting, booking, and tracking of freight but also provides transparent real-time data and analytics. Predictive fulfillment with Cario allows you to make data-driven decisions, monitor shipments, and enable your customers to self-serve with track and trace features.
Cario’s mission is simple: to make freight easy and let you take control of your supply chain, no matter how small or big it is.
Looking to optimise your freight and transportation management through predictive analytics? Contact Cario today to learn more!