In logistics, in order to get ahead of the competition, it’s often crucial for companies to analyze themselves and take a look at how they can eliminate redundancies and make their companies more efficient. That’s where freight spend analysis can be a shipper’s best friend. This article  will explore this subject and look at five suggestions that shippers can use to optimize their businesses through the use of automation and AI. These technologies can help make the difference for companies looking to have more efficient accounting departments, managers, and operation teams. Having more insights into your freight spending includes paying extra attention to the freight invoices of carriers which could include billing errors, or maybe to see where in the process workflow to improve such as a statement of account processing and running accruals. 

What is Freight Spend Analysis?

Freight spend analysis is an extensive look into all freight invoice data history. Doing an analysis of freight spending allows companies to visualize their data and find where they could save money on their transportation. Categories like routes, freight classes, and carriers used can be analyzed to attain insight into a company’s freight operations. 

Why Should Freight Forwarders Conduct Freight Spend Analysis?

With AI-driven automation, companies can analyze freight spending to help reduce inefficiencies and organize shipping data. When a forwarder is proactive with the shipper, bringing insightful data analysis that can be extracted effectively with the use of automation and AI, then the forwarder is seen as a trusted partner, making the forwarder much more competitive and able to grow their business by being better than competitors.

5 Tips for Freight Spend Analysis Success 

Let’s take a look at 5 ways that Freight Spend Analysis can work at its optimum level.

Automation Technology Can Help Companies Speed Up Productivity

The logistics industry has seen many disruptions over the last three years as well as a significant increase in consumer preference towards e-commerce. As a result, companies need a more efficient way to handle their freight bills. With the emergence of automation and AI-enabled processing, those documents can be rapidly assimilated to produce analyzable data. According to industry reports, companies that implement AI-enabled platforms lower their logistics costs by 15%, cut their inventory levels by 35%, and improve their service levels by 65%. 

You Can Lean on AI Technology to Solve Data Entry Problems.

Advancements in artificial intelligence mean compiling and cleaning up data is not the arduous challenge it once was in the past. In the old method of data entry, information was scattered across platforms and required workers to manually input and track information and documents.  AI-powered technology removes the time spent on manual labor. AI-powered software can take multiple document types (emails and paper invoices) and work across platforms to organize and centralize information related to freight spending. . This also allows company records to be more quickly updated and lets employees use that time to focus on other duties.

Turn Your Data from Unstructured to Structured Data to Digitize

AI technology helps companies streamline their data. Unstructured data poses a lot of challenges when it comes to processing and analysis. It takes time and energy to process this data manually. But when the data is structured it can be centralized and searchable. Which, in turn, makes it much easier to process and analyze freight spending. Expedock’s AI-powered software can help companies convert their data into readable analytics and help them create an audit trail. Rose Containerline, an Expedock customer, was able to save over 80% of its operating expenses by optimizing day-to-day processes with that integration. That one platform makes it easier to compile, read, assess, and make the kind of decisions that save time and money for the company on a regular basis.

Increasing the Ability to See Patterns and Anomalies

Having visibility into your freight spending makes it easier for companies to conduct an analysis of their data using several different categories. Companies can search by trade lanes, SKUs, suppliers, or carriers to see patterns or anomalies in variances between what was quoted and what was said on the invoice. With the click of a button, Expedock’s software can take a particular line item from all of your shipments, for instance “days past due,” and categorize it and prioritize it. This allows the logistics manager to quickly see if any partner is regularly late, or “past due,” and determine whether to stick with them in the future or go with another partner that might save the company money.

Automated Accruals Mean Accuray is Assured

With automated accruals, you can easily make sure your budget is accurate for freight spend analysis. While other software providers have claimed an accuracy somewhere between 20 percent and 80 percent, Expedock’s software platform provides an extraction accuracy of 99.97 percent on documents and emails. This incredible AI technology helps shipping managers eliminate potential errors that come with manual data entry.

AI-Driven Automation Can Keep You on Track 

For all those in the shipping world, it’s vital to analyze your company to locate inefficiencies and reduce operating costs. That’s where gaining insights into your freight spend analysis is important. To keep up on freight spending, the guesswork needs to be eliminated and all decisions need to be informed ones. The best way to answer those concerns is with the AI-driven automation of Expedock. With amazing accuracy, Expedock’s software platform not only helps managers keep abreast of all current matters in an extremely timely manner but also stay on top of what can happen in the future. To watch a demo and get a free trial, visit Expedock’s website today.