Rolf Bax
October 08, 2015 - 09:27
In the ever evolving world of logistics and transportation it is imperative for shippers to keep track of business developments that can influence your day-to-day operations. When it comes to freight audit & payment, the practice tells us that logistics and operations managers are wisely curious about the abilities, techniques and tools of competitors to solve their data and audit challenges.
Updated: 6.9.2019
Therefore, we decided to make a list with 10 important checkpoints to consider when looking at your current or future outsourced freight audit & payment partner.
Today, well-developed Freight Audit & Payment providers have technologies and capabilities far beyond their original function of verifying, correcting, and the payment freight bills. The reason for this? The demand for all-around logistics data is increasingly becoming important to logistics operations and financial departments. The in-house capabilities often turn out to be limited don't match the strong demand, so many shippers turn to outsourced freight audit & payment providers for the ultimate data solution.
Besides the initial savings on freight spend by ruling out overbilling (3-7%), companies are looking to become lean and low-touch when it comes to freight payment and demand strong analytical capabilities from providers that meet the challenging and ever cost-cutting supply chain environment. With strong data in their back pockets, coming from the clinical freight audit process, shippers gain a stronger position in carrier negotiations, benchmarking processes and gain cost-to-serve visibility.
Traditionally, carriers have more data on transportation which gives them a strategic benefit, however, with the help of the data coming from the freight audit process, shipper are leveling the advantage point.
We highlighted this part because it forms often a stumbling block for decision makers when they approach outsourced freight audit & payment. With outsourced Freight Audit everyone is a winner, but it depends on your company size how much you gain. Smaller companies with a spend of less than 2 million typically gain around 2X the cost, most companies with a freight spend above that up until let's say 30 million easily get a return of easily 5x the cost and the large companies with large regional or global freight budgets will see returns of no less than 20x of what implementing and running a freight audit program will cost them. This is actually seldom realized as Freight Audit typically has a low priority within many organizations as it is perceived as commodity.
1) Savings from 3 to 7% of freight spend
2) 100% invoice control
3) Invoice processing for all transportation modes
4) Full account coding
5) FTE (full-time employee) savings
6) Centralization of contracts and rates
7) Full transparency in processes
8) Valuable management information for better decision making, benchmarking and tender processes
9) Efficiency in freight audit processes
10) Certified services:
ISAE 3402 Type I - certificate for EU
ISAE 3402 Type II - certificate for States
Founded in 2002 and based in Breda, the Netherlands - Kiev, Ukraine, - Mönchengladbach, Germany Málaga, Spain, Brazil and Woburn, USA with Freight Audit as core business. ControlPay already provides cloud-driven technology and services since 2004. Many global customers and carriers are served this way in over 100 countries around the globe. Over 250 FTE in our staff. Several decades of global & European logistics experience in-house. Strong multilingual staff of invoice auditors that work with Customers through our proprietary automated freight audit system.
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