How The Perfect Relationship Can Revolutionize The Logistics Industry
Cotransa is a company founded in 1972 with more than 200 employees, which offers services in Europe and Latin America. It is positioned as one of the most important logistics companies in Spain and is expanding to the American continent. It offers air, sea, and land transport services, as well as customs and logistic services, and distribution.
Its main challenges have revolved around the modernization of its business processes, challenges overcome thanks to digitization and managing to offer its customers the best service at the most competitive cost.
In conversations with Nacho Roche, Director of Cotransa, and Ariana Bergado and David Mateos, members of the support pricing team, we will tell how Cotransa opted for digitization as a means to enhance its logistics processes. By making this decision, they streamlined their commercial development, boosting their scalability and efficiency. The company also established itself as a defender of the idea that digitization does not come to destroy the way of doing business of traditional freight forwarders but rather to transform them.
Now they can better develop the relationship with current and potential clients, offering them added value in essential services such as faster and more personalized attention. In turn, they have increased their income by being able to spend more time attracting new customers.
“Our quoting process was much more archaic since we quoted through excel. A pdf was generated from excel, and we sent that to the client. With Cargofive it is much easier because you can see the rates and local charges directly on the platform” – Ariana Bergado.
Understanding that Cargofive can satisfy their needs in the short, medium, and long term, Cotransa has used the platform most profitably, exploiting its functionalities and integrating it across areas.
Here’s an article about the top carriers in the logistics industry
A paradigm shift in service provision
By using Cargofive, Cotransa significantly improved its value as a logistics service provider.
The instant visibility of rates that Cargofive provides is vital to give a quick and accurate response to the customer. They find all the available market prices in seconds.
“The main advantage that Cargofive has in the search and quote part is that we now have a total vision of all the contracts we have, with all the prices, and without having to go one by one searching by folder. We have everything in sight of a second.” – David Mateos.
A process that could previously take days for the freight forwarder, jumping from call to call, especially on less travelled routes, is now simpler and more efficient, saving up to 90% of quoting time.
Heading into the future with opportunities as the north
Even in a scenario of economic recession, there are still opportunities that can be seized thanks to digitization. Being able to choose the best available rates at the most timely moment cushions the impact of global financial stress on a freight forwarder’s expenses.
Cotransa plans to exploit one of the advantages of digitization: data analysis. By looking at usage statistics on the Cargofive platform, they can analyze their number of quotes, the type of quoted routes, and the number of users who benefit from the platform by using it as a sales partner.
For Cotransa, standardizing the quoting processes using Cargofive is imperative. In this way, commercial agents will be able to dedicate more time to strengthening links and increasing the client portfolio.
From his point of view, it seems pointless to have access to the advantages of a tool like Cargofive, and have only a few people from the commercial area using it to the maximum. Taking the same platform statistics as a reference, it would not be a coincidence that the best-performing commercial agents are those who use the tool.
“We are an agile company. I am proud of the change we have made at Cotransa. We went from being an old company to a more modern one. That is why we have bet on generational replacement. The market forces you” – Nacho Roche, Director of Cotransa
One of the main successes of Cotransa, a company with more than 50 years of experience, has been the modernization of its commercial processes. The fresh perspective provided by new generations, combined with the experience of professionals with more time in the industry is key.
The Cotransa team has understood that digitization and automation platforms such as Cargofive did not come to eliminate the work of the traditional freight forwarder, but rather to modernize it and make it competitive in the face of new market requirements. Technological tools and users live in symbiosis, supporting each other to achieve goals.
Logistics has always been an industry of risk and innovation
In the late 1950s, it was impossible to think of a more efficient way to handle maritime cargo. Traditionally, the goods were transported in giant cloth bags that were unloaded by a single crane and manually with port workers, taking up to three weeks to unload a ship.
Few trusted the idea of Malcolm McLean, who after having worked in logistics, wondering if a more efficient method of loading and unloading from ship to truck was possible, finally had the opportunity to demonstrate that the determination and creativity of a few would change the logistics industry forever.
McLean would invent the intermodal container as a solution to the problem of ship loading-unloading time, saving up to 70% of the time per ship. The industry would never be the same after that day.
Digitization is the new revolution in the logistics industry. Just as the invention of the intermodal container transformed the efficiency and predominant means of transportation of its time, digitization brought with it processes of automation, visibility, transparency, centralization, and development that provide the same disruptive value that McLean’s invention provided at the time.
Read here to further understand the challenges for the logistics industry in 2023.