Challenges of freight forwarder management that you can improve

The challenges of freight forwarder management are one of the biggest ones in the industry, handling a grand amount of partners around the world is not an easy task for forwarders.

With the many partnerships and the range of services offered by the forwarders, management can be challenging, especially when you don’t have a management tool to assist your freight forwarder to keep track of all the process. 

With COVID-19, according to Money Times, e-commerce shopping has increased by 47% in Brazil during the first semester of the year. With this massive increase in online shopping, not only in Brazil but across the globe, forwarders worldwide had to improve their freight forwarder company quickly to handle the volume of shipments. 

Along with the increase of shipments, comes the need to improve the management in the freight forwarder, otherwise, there are high chances of each shipment going wrong.

However, managing is not a strong suit of the freight forwarder industry, and that is what makes the whole process harder and slower. 

Main management challenges faced by forwarders

1. Handling a great amount of information

During a business exchange between freight forwarders around 300 emails can be exchanged for 1 simple cargo to be moved. In 300 emails a lot of information is received and can be confused, which can lead to mistakes and that can slow the cargo movement. 

All the accompanying shipment information requires a lot of attention, especially because each country has different rules and regulations on how they accept cargo and documentation. 

Once you are dealing with a new partner in a new country you must ask everything about regulations and documentation so nothing gets delayed. However, if you are dealing with an old partner the smart thing to do is to keep a record of all the previous documentation and regulations, this way you can faster the process. 

Investing in management software will help your forwarder company to keep track of all the information about your partners and will give you the power to make quicker decisions. Parnity has a great management tool, click here to know more about it.

2. Complexity of operations 

As we mentioned before within one business exchange with a forwarder partner 300 emails can be exchanged, not to mention the phone calls, the lack of information on the websites and etc, all of this makes the logistics process slower and harder.

Investing in technology and automating the process is the best way to start simplifying the forwarder’s operations. Many software solutions for freight forwarders will help improve the performance of the business, resulting in customer satisfaction, efficiency, and speed. 

3. Last-minute quotations

Having last-minute quotations can delay the work process when you don’t have any options to quote, or even if you have the options but don’t know where to find their emails, phones, or websites. 

Being prepared for the last-minute quotations is important in a freight forwarder company, due to the amount of time that they happen. That is why your forwarder should keep track of all the potential partners you may need in these situations. 

Keep all these potential last-minute quotes partners gathered in one single place, and if possible in one that their information will always be available and updated to you and your team. With Parnity you can do all that, click here to know more.

Freight forwarder management system

Freight forwarder management can be very challenging, but once you choose a platform to help you with your forwarder’s biggest challenges you will be able to improve the profitability of your company and make more forwarder partnerships. 

Parnity is a digital logistics network with an add-on feature of freight forwarder management it’s CRM for forwarder partners – called Freight Forwarder Management – is a solution for freight forwarders to stop using spreadsheets and start improving their management. It is a new solution in the logistics market for you to be able to manage your forwarder partners in the most intuitive and enjoyable way.

We even like to call it PRM = Partnering Relationship Management, due to the importance of managing forwarder partners. 

With Parnity’s PRM tool you are able to:

• Organize your current freight partners through a CRM board by country, modal, service, quality, or… whatever you want (really!). By organizing your partners through categories your pricing team quotation process gets easier, this way you already know which services your forwarder partner offers and how he can help you.

• Add new partners to your OWN logistics network. Find a forwarder on Parnity’s search in a lane that you haven’t developed yet, and add them to YOUR OWN partner’s list. No need to spend hours looking for new partners outside Parnity, find forwarders in 10 seconds and add them to your network for future business.

• Rank your forwarder partners from top to bottom using your own personalized criteria, either by country, modal, service, or whatever you want. This will help to know which freight partner you should prioritize during quotations, leading to faster decision-making.

• Visualize your forwarder partners in a single place, you can choose to view them on a single list, or you can see them divided by lists of country. Save time finding your current forwarder partners, having them divided by country you and your pricing team will always know who to quote for each region.

• Share your CRM board with your entire team to facilitate the operation inside your forwarder company. Can you imagine having your whole team on the same page? Let your entire team know who to quote for each business operation, this improves productivity.

• Analyze your current partnerships, upload your current partnerships data to get access to a business intelligence tool, and be able to analyze all your forwarders partnerships data. Management can make better decisions based on accurate, up-to-date metrics.

Start using Parnity and improve your freight forwarder management. Watch our Quick Tour to have an overview of our system.