A freight forwarder knows how hard, complicated, exhaustive and how much time it takes to create a quote, using traditional methods. Why keep doing it that way, when e-Pricing focused on freight forwarders allows you to make the job much easier and in just minutes?
Top shipping companies have been offering e-pricing tools to their customers for some time now, which includes freight forwarders, of course. However, for their everyday work, it is not enough that a few shipping companies, through web tools, help them with just a quarter of what they need when managing rates and contracts.
Ideally, everyone involved in the process of freights sales should have standardized its processes online. But for that to happen, it seems to be taking a long time, because all of the actors in international trade have to enter the new era or at least belong to a shipping digital ecosystem, which despite being rapidly evolving, it is still not yet completed.
What does an e-Pricing software do for freight forwarders?
It is understandable that not all freight forwarders who want to start their digital transformation have the possibility of developing their own digital systems or solutions. For them, there are other solutions, such as custom softwares.
Those referring to e-Pricing (which is still a term unused in the maritime industry, although CMA CGM already uses it in its web platform), we could define them as digital solutions for maritime freights, which offer real-time access to rates and all the information that a freight forwarder may require to manage a quote and close a service contract in just a few minutes.
Not all customers are the same, neither are their needs, so the work of a freight forwarder when quoting will never be the same twice, even if it is the same client. Behind a request for a quote, there is a complex process only to determine what type of transport it is required, containers, routes, schedules, ports, customs, surcharges, storage, etc.
That is when e-Pricing softwares enter the scene to facilitate the work. How? Very easy, through intelligent algorithms that are responsible for:
- Simplify data of ports, shipping companies, customs, etc.
- Standardize the terms to be used.
- Manage rates and contracts with multiple service providers.
- Generate quotes automatically.
Thus, closing the sale with a client is much faster, easier and more efficient.
The best thing is that the software does everything in just minutes, helping freight forwarders to save time, lower operating costs and speed up customer engagement. So what you used to look for among hundreds of emails, different spreadsheets and/or between several PDF files, now can be done almost instantly, if you have the appropriate e-Pricing software adapted to your requirements.
Cargofive software offers all of the features mentioned above, plus, it also offers faster visibility of the shipping rates within the system itself, it stores the specific sales process of each client, through its own CRM functions, which helps freight forwarders to have an allied tool when drawing up more assertive sales and business strategies, focused on growth, productivity and higher profits.
To sum up, what e-Pricing offers to freight forwarders are a lot of benefits. It is time now to take advantage of technology in our behalf, to hire the custom software that best suits our business, and start enjoying the benefits of digital transformation as soon as possible.
