What Is a Digital Freight Marketplace?

Utilizing automation and machine learning, this digital platform allows shippers to promptly find the best rates and match freight to those carriers, more effectively solving transportation challenges and streamlining the entire shipping supply chain.

Modern digital freight matching platforms not only accelerate the freight brokerage process, they provide easy-to-use software that enhances trust-building relationships and drives cost savings.

Key benefits of digital freight marketplaces

If you’re still using paper documentation, Excel spreadsheets, and manual tracking, your operations are perfectly positioned to be improved and streamlined with modern digital freight marketplace software. Some companies are reluctant to change methods that have been in place for decades, fearing a steep learning curve for workers. But freight management marketplace software is designed specifically for this shipping industry and is customized for ease of use and comprehensive operational results. 

There are numerous benefits to going to a digital freight platform, including:

• Efficiency: Streamlines the freight management process, reducing manual work and errors.

• Cost Savings: Optimizes routes and loads, leading to reduced fuel costs and other operational expenses.

• Transparency: Enhances visibility across the supply chain, improving accountability and trust in your provider.

• Scalability: Digital freight technology is easily scalable to accommodate growing business needs and constantly fluctuating demand.

Core Features of Digital Freight Marketplaces

When evaluating different types of digital freight management softwares, here are a few core features to consider.

• Automated load matching: Control your load assignments with instant bid alerts and automated load matching, streamlining the bidding process. Or, toggle this feature off to manually choose preferred carriers.

• Real-time tracking and updates: Get better clarity on operational efficiency by tracking the number of pick-ups and deliveries across different states. Identify high-traffic areas, optimize routes, and streamline processes for maximum productivity.

• Digital documentation and payment processing: Streamline logistics operations by managing all your documentation online. Create, view, and modify essential paperwork like Bills of Lading (BOLs) effortlessly, reducing paperwork and optimizing your logistics management efforts.

• Integration with carriers: The best freight management software makes it easy to add your commonly used carriers, connecting seamlessly to strengthen preferred relationships and ensure best rates from trusted providers.

Visit Planimatik to explore our Digital Marketplace features.

How Digital Freight Marketplaces Work

Digital freight management platforms leverage the power of machine learning to streamline and automate every aspect of the logistics and transportation processes, from load posting to delivery. By connecting shippers and carriers in real-time, the process is both more efficient and more cost-effective.

With features like online bidding, automated load matching, live tracking, route optimization, and paperless documentation, digital freight marketplaces offer a comprehensive platform to improve your shipping operations.

How to Choose the Right Digital Freight Marketplace

When assessing digital freight marketplace providers, you are evaluating the software, but the people behind it. Here are some key considerations when choosing a digital platform for freight management.

• Ease of Use: Software may look exciting and offer a lot of features, but if your team isn’t able to quickly learn to use it, it’s going to be more cumbersome than helpful. Be sure to ask about how long it takes the average worker to adapt to their system, what makes it user-friendly, and how workers can use it to help drive company success.

• Practical Advantages: How will using this platform make a difference in your organization? How will it save costs, drive efficiency, and shorten transaction times? Understand how to reap the benefits of a digital freight platform so you can set goals around its usage and measure progress over time.

• Customer Service: Especially when onboarding to a new software platform, you need solid customer service that’s available whenever you need it to answer questions employees may have about how to fully use all the capabilities of the digital freight platform. If someone can’t figure an aspect of the software out quickly on their own, they need to be able to reach customer service quickly for help. Time is money and productivity can be negatively affected if help is not available.

• Scalability: How will the software continue to grow and change as your operations evolve? Are updates to the software automatic? What plans do they have in the future to increase the usability of the platform?

• Cost: Companies should be fully transparent about what costs you’ll incur by using a digital freight platform, as well as how you can save money over time that will make the investment worthwhile. Reputable digital freight platforms should be able to easily demonstrate ROI.

Revolutionize Logistics with Digital Freight Marketplaces

If you’re using a piecemeal system of different platforms, paper documentation, and hard-to-track logistics, your freight operations are ideally positioned for a digital freight marketplace. This software is specially designed for freight industry pain points, streamlining your operations and driving cost-savings through automated tasks, quicker load matching, paperless documentation, live tracking and improved communications with carriers and bidders.

Planimatik helps freight companies of all sizes optimize their operations with their digital marketplace solution, modernizing the process to make it sleeker, easier, and faster. We can help you cut costs, drive profits, hit sustainability goals, and increase efficiencies throughout every stage of the supply chain.

Contact Planimatik today for a free demo of our digital freight marketplace software.