Emerge announced Monday it has upgraded its freight procurement platform with a new solution, Emerge Benchmarking, which accumulates sources of real-time freight data to help shippers evaluate their RFP processes and execute their procurement with better market intelligence.
“Historically, shippers used benchmarking tools to show how they are performing compared to the overall market and to explain to their higher-ups why they are paying 50% more than the previous year,” founder and CEO Andrew Leto told FreightWaves, “although I believe that having a good benchmarking tool is the first step to a successful procurement event.”
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Leto went on to explain that benchmarking freight rates to the current market can help a shipper understand, prior to releasing an RFP, what lanes it is competitive on and what lanes it isn’t, which allows the shipper to avoid pricing out already aggressive lanes that leads to wasted time for both the shipper and its carrier network.
Secondly, if a benchmarking tool is used properly, on a consistent basis throughout the year, shippers can avoid paying higher contract rates when markets take unexpected swings like we saw in late February when, for the first time since 2020, the spread between contract and spot rates went negative.
To learn more about FreightWaves SONAR, click here.
According to Leto, with this new integrated benchmarking tool, shippers will instantly know whether they are above or below market and will suggest changes to bid schedules based on predictive analytics from freight forecasting solutions including FreightWaves SONAR.
“Emerge Benchmarking will pull shippers data and data from major benchmarking platforms like SONAR and before you go to bid, will recommend lane by lane whether you should bid on a three-, six- or 12-month cycle,” said Leto.
Leto explained that lanes are “living and breathing,” constantly changing due to uncontrollable factors to the shipper such as capacity violatitly, acts of God and demand swings.
Now shippers can simply use their SONAR credentials, or receive a free trial of the freight forecasting platform through Emerge, and Emerge Benchmarking will enable shippers to enter their RFP processes with the analytics they need to fully optimize their bid operations.
Even more important to Leto, Emerge customers will be early adopters of what he believes is the future of procurement: shorter, less-time consuming bid exercises.
“The cost of trucking is dramatically going down and we’re hitting a recession that is not going to get any better,” he said. “It’s surprising how many shippers are running annual bids when they should be running three-month bid cycles on almost all of their lanes.”
Watch now: How to think and grow rich with Andrew Leto
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