Today, FreightWaves announced a SONAR data integration with GoodShip, a digital freight procurement and analytics platform that allows shippers and carriers to measure and optimize contract freight networks more easily and accurately than ever before. GoodShip, founded by Convoy veterans Ryan Soskin and David Tsai, raised a $2.4 million pre-seed round earlier this year.
“We’re excited to layer the powerful data and insights of SONAR into GoodShip’s multiplayer analytics and procurement platform,” said Ryan Soskin, co-founder and CEO of GoodShip. “This partnership is an important step toward giving shippers and carriers unprecedented precision and resilience in middle mile transportation.”
FreightWaves SONAR market data, including TRAC spot rates, are now used by GoodShip to benchmark network and carrier performance against a broader set of peers. GoodShip users can see how their own transportation spend and service metrics compare against large transportation datasets representing billions of dollars in freight spend to better understand risks and opportunities in their network.
“Our SONAR customers are looking for ways to apply our data to their operational decision-making process and over the last six months, we have integrated SONAR data with a variety of our industry’s top technology providers. Our partnership with GoodShip will allow mutual customers to go from analysis to action in a more efficient and intelligent manner, giving them more time to focus on improving their businesses,” said Spencer Piland, FreightWaves’ CFO/COO.
Annual RFP cycles have long been a point of contention in the North American transportation industry, which can experience pronounced volatility and cyclical inflections. Enterprise shippers move their freight through a combination of contract and spot arrangements, seeking to balance cost and service while maintaining strategic relationships with transportation providers so they can access capacity as needed.
As cycles inflect and rate pressures move the underlying market, either side of the marketplace can be tempted to walk away from contract freight: when spot rates are high, capacity may stop showing up for the agreed rate, but if spot rates are low, shippers may circumvent contracts to save money.
To more efficiently mark their freight to market, shippers have increasingly resorted to mini-bids and quarterly RFPs, but this creates a lot of extra work, not only for the shipper but also for their transportation providers who are tasked with responding to lengthy RFPs and pricing thousands of lanes on request. It also makes the process of bidding on freight more competitive, with more opportunities to win — or to lose — favor with important customers.
For these reasons, data analytics have been crucial to successfully pricing freight in the new, faster-paced environment that has materialized in the past few freight cycles. Shippers need timely analytics to identify potential trouble spots ahead of time and find transportation providers at a price that works for both sides of the market. FreightWaves’ industry-leading market data will be a key component for GoodShip’s customers in benchmarking their networks against current market conditions.
“By combining FreighWaves SONAR market insights with the power of the GoodShip platform, we enable shippers and carriers to digitally procure, measure, and optimize contract business more easily and accurately than ever before,” said David Tsai, co-founder and CTO at GoodShip.