What is A Freight Management System and How It Benefits Your Business?

What is a Freight Management System?

A Freight Management System is an online software platform designed to streamline every aspect of freight transport, driving cost savings, improved efficiency, better collaboration, improved customer service, and more transparency throughout the entire supply chain.

Many modern Freight Management Systems are customizable to businesses of any size, and are easily scalable as an organization and operations grow.

These systems are designed specifically to enhance and improve shipping and transport logistics, from planning and bidding to execution and tracking.

How Freight Management Systems Benefit Shipping Businesses

Leveraging automation, smart tools, and robust analytics, freight management software automates every part of your operations to make you run smarter, faster, and leaner.

Better data throughout every step of the logistics process makes every shipment a well-informed and well-managed journey.

Automation of previously manual tasks can help you save time on processes such as choosing carriers, booking, tracking, and invoicing. With instant access to historical data and key metrics, you can streamline and manage your shipping operations to better align to business goals.

Key Features of Freight Management Systems

Real-Time Tracking for Enhanced Visibility

A freight management system helps you gain better total control and understanding of every shipment and its status. Cloud-based software provides an up-to-the-minute view for improved efficiency and clarity of all of your freight operations.

Freight management systems can filter and organize your shipments based on any criteria, enhancing the clarity of operations. Sort by performance parameters that are most important to your business: analyzing and tracking costs, dates, trailer utilization, trailer type, and overall monitoring of pickups and deliveries.

With real-time tracking data, live customer service, instant communication with carriers and up-to-the-minute analytics, you’ll never have to be in the dark about shipment status again.

Automated Documentation and Error Checking

Whether you still rely on paper bills of lading or manually punch data into Excel, an online freight management platform streamlines and centralizes your documentation, reducing errors and increasing efficiency.

Modern freight management software automatically checks for relevant regulatory and compliance issues on every shipment, flagging you about potential problems before they become an issue.

Rate Management

A freight management system can also elevate the rate management process leveraging the power of online data. These systems provide you with a custom dashboard view where you can comprehensively compare carrier rates and let carriers instantly have ownership of a load if they meet the shipper’s pre-selected criteria, speeding the process up from bidding to acceptance.

With views to historical rate data, you can make better-informed decisions as new rates are presented. Being able to capture and lock in freight rates for LTL and FTL, among other modalities, in a constantly fluctuating market gives you more control in a fluid environment.

Custom Analytics and Reporting Capabilities

Online freight management platforms allow shippers to easily access freight operation data, with an easily-understood snapshot of logistics performance.

Track average costs, filter data by dates, monitor pick-ups and deliveries, gain insights into trailer utilization and more. Using software to track key performance indicators (KPIs) empowers you to make small changes that can make a big difference, helping you operate at peak efficiency and optimum financial performance.

How to Choose the Right Freight Management Software

Assessing Your Business Needs

Your freight management software journey starts by identifying what specific needs you have that aren’t being met with your current operations, what requirements you must meet, and what goals you want to set or meet for your department’s operations, as well as to better align operations to overall company goals.

Many businesses start with a simple goal of reducing shipping costs by using an online platform that is easy to begin using right away, with minimal business disruption. Or you may have company-wide sustainability goals that drive waste reduction efforts and focus on increasing operational efficiency. Whatever your goals are, your freight management software can be dialed in to help you better meet those goals and targets.

Online freight management software can also help you extract relevant customer data that can be used for marketing and sales purposes, as well as data that can be used to evaluate and improve customer support efforts.

Comparing Costs

The total cost of ownership of a freight management system depends partly on how much and how efficiently you take advantage of all the tools that are provided. You should maximize the value and functionality of a Freight Management System so that your business is running as optimally as possible, your relationships with shippers are strong, and your goals are being met and even exceeded.

Benchmarks can be set up for customized reporting on ROI, generating the data you need to show demonstrated results and improvements.

Evaluating Ease of Use

When considering a freight management system, the user interface and user experience are some of the most important areas to focus on. Design and implementation must be accessible to the average employee.

The advantage of modern freight management software is that these cloud-based systems can process thousands of data points in only seconds, but should still be easy for any employee to operate and understand.

You should select freight management software that will be easy for your workers to understand and use, taking advantage of all of the functionality that can improve your operations.

Getting Started with Freight Management Software

An All-in-One Solution to your Freight Business Challenges

The right freight management software streamlines every aspect of freight transport, including planning, execution, and optimization of operations.

Planimatik is a Transportation Management System (TMS) that prioritizes planning and revolutionizes your shipping. Gain complete control over your entire shipping process with our intuitive tools and streamlined workflow. From start to finish, master every stage of shipping effortlessly.

Contact Planimatik to Get Started

During our free product demonstration, we can discuss your particular challenges and how our intuitive, easy-to-use Freight Management System can be leveraged to address and improve every aspect of your business.

We offer a free trial to new customers so you can find your way around the system without risk.

Our personalized onboarding sessions ensure little to no downtime of your business, support cross-training efforts, and ensure you’re utilizing every aspect of the system that can improve logistics operations at your organization.

We value our customers, offering an unparalleled level of customer support, including dedicated software specialists available anytime to ensure your operations remain seamless and that you’re maximizing the value of the product.

Contact Planimatik today to get started with improving and streamlining every aspect of your freight operations.