By Haley Evans, SVP, Broker and 3PL Services at TriumphPay
Booking freight may be brokers’ primary trade, but building and maintaining carrier relationships is their forte. Fostering connections is crucial in garnering success in this industry — anyone can book a load with carriers, but it takes a bit of skill to get them to keep coming back.
Charisma only goes so far in this hypercompetitive, digitally connected industry. The freight market is moving faster every year, as 50%-60% of the loads that brokers assign to carriers are factored, prompting brokers both small and large to keep up with the tempo of today’s digital beat.
With the rise of FreightTech solutions, many freight brokers are finding their antiquated instruments inadequate to play this new freight symphony.
FreightTech has traditionally been a luxury product for those with the deepest pockets and willing to write the biggest checks. As many of the largest brokers have bankrolled their own back-office solutions, the same can’t be said for a great deal of small and midsize brokers.
At TriumphPay, we have flipped the switch — making the payments process easier for the entire industry.
As a FreightTech leader, we provide affordable payments solutions that connect brokers, shippers, factors and carriers through automated processes. Using the latest payment processing technology, TriumphPay has created a payments network that processes and manages carrier payments with incredible speed and accuracy.
What was once a multimillion-dollar obstacle for smaller players is now an affordable, easy-to-use way to automate carrier payments cost-effectively.
The FreightTech age has been challenging for sure, but a greater future lies ahead for brokers. Since entering the industry in 2019, I’ve seen that the amount of innovation going into improving the broker experience has been tremendous.
The payments process, which was once an afterthought of shipping, has become a top priority for brokers. They strive to maintain carrier capacity, provide a great carrier and shipper experience, and drive even greater efficiencies in an industry logged in constant transformation and digital evolution.
Here are three reasons why brokers are choosing TriumphPay:
Improved visibility and payments experience
It’s rather frustrating to think about just how disconnected brokers and factors are with each other. Despite working together daily, sharing information between both entities is tedious.
Answering verification and payment status phone calls all day isn’t exactly how brokers want to spend their time. But with TriumphPay, playing phone tag can be avoided altogether.
Through the latest payment processing technology, TriumphPay supplies a carrier network with the automation tools needed to easily submit invoices and get paid the same day.
Providing carriers and factors with an easy-to-use invoice presentment and payment solution, along with the visibility to see all of their invoices, allows brokers to focus on areas other than answering verification calls or processing notice of assignments (NOAs). In addition to providing this visibility, the TriumphPay team works with carriers and factors on a broker’s behalf.
Improved cash flow and liquidity
While the speed of delivery is the most visible aspect of trucking, operating behind the scenes is a race of equal importance: the speed of payment. As brokers and factors both want to pay carriers as fast as possible, TriumphPay helps both sides ensure they deliver in record time.
TriumphPay handles and expedites all payments, factor inquiries and NOAs, making sure each party is correctly paid.
Moreover, brokers can expedite invoice auditing with TriumphPay, which uses optical character recognition and machine learning technology to read carrier invoices, rendering the auditing process three to four times faster. Auditing invoices more quickly means exceptions are identified sooner, the feedback loop to carriers is shortened, carriers get paid faster and brokers can bill their customers sooner.
With multiple payment options available, like QuickPay, our mobile app allows carriers to submit payments and paperwork from virtually anywhere while providing supply chain financing on those payables.
An extension of the back office
In the digital age, a broker’s back office shouldn’t look like a trading room floor with people shuffling paperwork from one desk to another, but this is the reality for many brokerages.
It’s not uncommon to see brokers today receive and accept carrier invoices primarily via email and then proceed to print them, comparing ink to computer data to ensure accounting accuracy.
Brokers are in the business of booking freight, not building out integrations. But the latter is often the case for those struggling to gain efficiencies and grow their margins.
Integrating with industry participants to improve efficiency can be an overwhelming task, not to mention an expensive one, especially when an exponential number of back-office integrations are needed. A single integration connects only one broker with one factor, which means connecting with an entire network of factors requires thousands and thousands of integrations.
Wouldn’t you prefer a centralized payments platform that requires a single integration to access an entire network of factors and carriers, streamlining the whole payments process?
TriumphPay’s payments network connects all industry participants — brokers, carriers, factors, and shippers — to automate invoice presentment, audit and payment of freight invoices. With this automation, participants can stop worrying about paying or being paid and focus on what they do best.
Yes, growing your brokerage at scale can be achieved without adding headcount when you form strategic partnerships with FreightTech leaders working to improve the industry.
More from TriumphPay:
Four reasons why factors turn to TriumphPay
