“Since the beginning of the pandemic, supply chains have been stretched, frayed and sometimes broken,” said Craig Fuller, founder and CEO of FreightWaves. “In addition, many shippers’ freight spend has increased across shipping modes due to altered market conditions.”
Fuller continued, “FreightWaves SONAR Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) platform helps shippers better understand their freight spend and make more informed decisions regarding their freight networks.”
“Now, FreightWaves has made it even easier to identify where shippers’ biggest market opportunities exist to spend less and/or de-risk their freight spend by adding two new views to its SONAR SCI platform,” announced Travis Rhyan, Chief Product Officer at FreightWaves.
The primary purposes of these new views are the following:
- Summarize lane data and group the biggest risks and opportunities with tangible financial results in the form of variance in spend to market.
- Show the amount of spend the SCI subscriber is potentially overpaying in lanes in which carriers have less optionality. (Cost savings)
- Identify those lanes in which the SCI subscriber is paying less than the market rate because carriers have elevated optionality or leverage. (De-risking, which also leads to long-term cost savings)
The two main data sources used in generating these outputs are: FreightWaves’ tender data, which measures compliance and capacity conditions; and invoice data, which is used for benchmarking in over 700,000 lanes.
These new views also come with added visualization tools to help SCI subscribers gain a faster understanding of what their freight patterns look like and draw attention to the lanes in which the greatest cost-saving or risk avoidance opportunities exist.
Summary view
The Summary View is divided into three sections. The top line simply sums the potential freight spend, load count, miles and carbon footprint. This allows an SCI subscriber to make sure the data is in line with what is expected.
The second section summarizes the total freight spend risks and opportunities. The overpayment box is a sum of the freight spend (load count x miles x subscriber-provided benchmark rate) in those lanes in which shippers have relatively favorable capacity conditions but are paying more than the market average rate. The market rate is based on FreightWaves’ database of nearly $100 billion of settled contract invoices from the past four and a half years.
The third section is data visualizations. The map shows an SCI subscriber’s freight network or shipping patterns, while the other visual tool is an interactive distribution map showing the subscriber how much of the freight spend is above or below market.
Opportunity view
The Opportunity View allows a SONAR SCI subscriber to see the “low-hanging fruit” with more granularity.
“Over time, rates can become misaligned with market conditions, either because of lack of maintenance or inability to gauge how the market has changed,” explained Travis Rhyan, Chief Product Officer at FreightWaves. “Now, SONAR SCI subscribers can take a more active and targeted approach in managing how they spend their money or gain validation for their decisions.”
