Tag Archives: Capacity

Managed Procurement Services Allow Companies to Optimize Transportation Investments

truck-procurement-freight-capacity

Transportation sourcing is a significant challenge for many companies. Typically, the procurement process to identify potential new carriers and award business requires a major investment of resources. The transportation team must develop a request for proposal (RFP), follow up on carrier responses, evaluate multiple award scenarios, and implement new carriers into the mix. In many cases, companies do not have a dedicated resource to manage the freight procurement process, resulting in usage of key personnel from other areas to support the sourcing event. This is disruptive to current operations, and prevents the development of functional expertise to drive continuous improvement in the transportation network.

Lack of carrier profile data, vetted capabilities and industry benchmarks are also common issues for many companies.  Without comparative data points, companies do not know if carriers are costing too much or if lanes are inefficient.  Capacity can become an issue but it remains unclear if that is due to the current carrier’s inefficiencies or if more carriers are required to meet demand.

Managed procurement services that combine transportation procurement skills, knowledge of carrier capabilities, and supply chain expertise, can optimize a company’s transportation investment.  These types of procurement services provide industry benchmarks and innovative technology to more efficiently and effectively handle transportation procurement.

Typically the managed procurement process begins with a holistic review of a company’s lanes and rates to determine which need attention to best deliver on overall corporate goals. By comparing performance internally against external industry benchmarks, managed procurement service providers focus on out-of-tolerance conditions, identify new carrier opportunities and discover strategic cost and service improvement opportunities.  Once a company’s current performance is analyzed, a transportation procurement project plan is created.

This entry was originally posted on Logistics Viewpoints, read the full article here >>

Transportation Sourcing Doesn’t Have To Be A Painful Process

As the economic recovery continues to manifests, several things are certain – fuel costs will eventually rise, truck capacity will tighten, the growth of trucking fleets will hinder due to increasingly constrained driver availability and pricing control will begin to shift away from shippers.

With base rate increases and fuel surcharge fluctuations on the horizon, best-in-class companies understand the need to become carrier-friendly and to establish strong carrier relationships in order to weather these future challenges.

Since the majority of transportation expenditures are incurred through long-term carrier contracts, strategically sourcing transportation services is foundational to successfully managing supply chain costs.  But conducting a freight procurement event has traditionally been a tedious and time-consuming process.  So what if companies could easily configure a web-based tool to handle the level of complexity of transportation sourcing?

LeanSource™, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) based e-sourcing platform, gives organizations the ability to source carriers and other transportation providers quickly and easily, even without a Transportation Management System.  With LeanSource, companies can solicit and optimize carrier bids, and award freight rates and capacity in an automated, streamlined, and repeatable manner.

LeanLogistics’ proprietary optimization engine handles robust award scenario development and ensures that only executable options are generated for LeanSource users.  Companies can evaluate scenarios side-by-side using embedded dashboards and reports to make better award decisions.

From seasonal volume profiles to equipment requirements to incumbent carriers to lane-based shipper targets, LeanSource considers key business factors for greater evaluation into market rates.  Additionally, companies can elect to add LeanDex™, transportation rate index, for greater evaluation and benchmarking capabilities.

LeanSource™ was easy to set up and very efficient to use, which enabled a quick and positive RFP experience for our carriers through a process we can duplicate in the future as the need arises. We were also happy with the support from LeanLogistics that helped us achieve a successful event.
–Director of Strategic Initiatives, Leveraged Execution Providers (LXP)

The results not only consider transportation costs, but include available carrier capacity, carrier risk, and carrier partnerships. LeanSource gives companies access to leading transportation industry technology in order to structure and execute sourcing events online that deliver real, measurable results without the substantial commitment of time, resources and financial investment.

This entry was originally posted on Logistics Viewpoints, read the full article here >>