5 Reasons Why Outsourcing is the Future of Freight Processing

The freight forwarding and logistics industry is one that, historically, has been deeply rooted in the customs of traditional business practices, built on a foundation of leveraging close, ‘belly-to-belly’ relationships, employing blue-collar workers to help stimulate local economies, and acting as a major proponent and driver of the ‘American dream’.

However, while the majority of these guiding principles remain intact, the rising influence of external factors, such as market and consumer demands, have forced freight organizations to look internally and reevaluate how closely their internal structures, systems, and processes align with today’s digitally-driven marketplace.

For many, this shift has opened their eyes to the amount of organizational, operational, and financial inefficiencies that are occurring across core functions of their business – including IT outsourcing, billing, freight rate auditing, AP/AR processing, track and trace, carrier onboarding, analytics and more.

Now – acknowledging you have a problem is the first step – but identifying a robust, safe, cost-efficient, and effective way of remedying such hindrances is another story. This is where freight process outsourcing solutions come into play…

5 Strategic Benefits of Leveraging Outsourced Freight Solutions

1. Innovation Without The Price Tag

More times than not, investing in new and innovative technology requires organizations to incur significant upfront costs for both the technology itself and for the internal resources needed to properly implement, manage, and maintain said systems. Conversely, outsourcing enables freight organizations to invest in innovation without the burden of financing the technology or supporting resources. This means freight organizations are able to leverage all of the capabilities, reporting features, and analytical data offered through newer, more intelligent software solutions without the high price tag. As a result, business leaders can reallocate their budget towards more strategic initiatives that are core to their business.

2. Expertise & Accuracy

Rather than overburdening employees or reallocating internal resources to serve business functions that don’t fall within their core competencies, freight organizations can choose to redistribute those duties and responsibilities to outside vendors that possess a greater level of expertise, specialization, and experience. Not only does this reduce the amount of internal resources needed to manage and maintain core business functions in-house, but it also allows organizations to dedicate more time, energy, and resources to serving more strategic and critical business initiatives.

3. Efficiency

Simply put, with greater expertise and accuracy come greater efficiencies. By leveraging freight process outsourcing, organizations can minimize the amount of time spent performing administrative tasks and the time spent correcting the errors that often occur from manual entry to streamline their internal operations. As a result, business leaders are able to expedite order-to-cash fulfillment times and significantly increase overall production output, ultimately creating greater supply chain efficiencies and instilling more confidence in customer relationships.

4. Agility & Flexibility

Without the need to invest in costly technology or excessive amounts of internal resources, organizations open themselves up to achieve greater levels of organizational, operational, and financial agility. The impact of this is two-fold; first – freight organizations have the flexibility to adapt to growing or changing market demands on a dime. Second – they can do so without concern for wasted investments or an overstaffed or overburdened workforce.

5. Stronger Bottom Line

When all is said and done, all of the aforementioned can be boiled down to one critical metric – a stronger bottom line. And at the end of the day, all business leaders really care about is the bottom-line profitability of their organization. Investing in innovation and efficiency is necessary to staying relevant in today’s competitive climate. Process outsourcing is one of the only ways to do this without creating huge organizational and financial burdens.

As the freight industry continues to become more immersed in the digital business culture that has surfaced in recent years, more and more organizations will look to invest in the technology and resources needed to better support growing market demands. However, due to low resource capacity and financial hindrances, this is much easier said than done.

Freight process outsourcing offers modern organizations a seemingly endless list of benefits. From cost and organizational optimization to increased efficiency and shared risk, outsourcing offers a wide range of strategic advantages that facilitate more effective, productive, and cost-efficient freight operations.

For more insight into how business process outsourcing can help your organization become more agile, efficient, and cost-effective amidst this era of ever-changing business and market demands.