Unwanted Costs Affecting Freight Forwarders

Hidden freight forwarding costs are the secret costs that you are not aware of is causing your revenue loss. They can be as simple as duplicate invoices or demurrage and detention costs due to poor schedule management. Take a closer look at your routine tasks when moving freight to understand if any of those costs are even necessary. Here is some of the most uncommon hidden freight forwarding costs:

Poor time management

Your team may coordinate inter-department manually for tasks that can be easily automated. Important updates must reach the concerned departments rather than people looking for them. Clear and quick communication helps make your customers' shipments remain compliant and meet all cut-offs.

The cost of poor time management is slow shipment processing

Ineffective sales and marketing process

It is not uncommon for many small to medium size forwarders' sales and marketing teams to have limited budgets and expect to perform exceptionally. Unorganized processes and data create gaps resulting in sales leads not getting nurtured. But with a healthy pipeline of prospects, losing a few customers won't cause an unnecessary panic situation.

The cost of ineffective sales and marketing process is missed business revenue

Using multiple or outdated software

Outdated software is prone to bugs, slowdowns, restarts, and can even data crashes. This can make employees struggle to meet cut-offs and also affects their productivity. With freight ERP, your team gains a single source of truth – one integrated database for all business functions.

The cost of using dated software is being left behind in the competition

Duplicate invoice payments

You don't want to pay for anything more than once. But as a growing forwarder, managing increased volumes of invoices can cause worry if not tackled properly, as it can cause duplicate payments. Whether duplicate invoices come from the inefficiency of your staff or error due to manual data entry, duplicate invoices make smooth shipment processing a challenge.

The cost of duplicate invoices is reduced credit period or strains vendor relations

Trusting poor data

To make quick decisions, you need accurate financial and operational data. Incorrect data increases compliance risks and puts your organization's credibility in trouble. For example, an incorrect VGM manually entered compromises the safe carriage of containers at sea. When your employees work with freight management software, you experience trusted data in real time.

The cost of poor data risks your credibility

Uncovering every cost in operations

Hidden and surprise costs can put a dent in the flow of your daily operations. How can you have absolute clarity of your finances and operations? Eliminating multiple and isolated software resolves several visibility bottlenecks. Integrated systemsbring real-time data access and make processes transparent and controlled.

The cost of no clear visibility of operations is unexpected setbacks

Uncover hidden freight forwarding costs with technology

Today's customers demand cheaper, reliable and faster service. Inflexible systems add many blind spots to your progress. Embracing digitalization and automation brings a higher degree of monitoring ability and timely shipment delivery. You need a system that gives clues about:

• your financial health and give future estimates

• increasing profitability

• making your processes more efficient

• building a healthy sales pipeline

Freight forwarders' costs include those that aren't obvious and can yet affect your company directly or indirectly. Start your transformation by implementing freight software and achieve freedom from unwanted costs hurting your revenue.