How We’re Building Transportation’s Freight Procurement Continuum

Kelly Williams, Network Strategy product lead for Trimble’s transportation sector, along with Patrick Pretorius, regional sales director of North America for Transporeon, have partnered to build upon the existing freight procurement process to create a continuum of solutions that bridges the gaps in the current system.

At the recent Future of Supply Chain 2023 event hosted by FreightWaves, Williams and Pretorius discussed the current state of freight procurement within the transportation industry, the ongoing complexities shippers and carriers face and how Trimble is incorporating Transporeon’s technology into its own to create a solution that covers every facet of the freight procurement timeline, from start to finish.

The Current State of the Procurement Process

Freight procurement involves securing available transportation capacity to move goods and raw materials from one destination to another. Traditionally, securing that capacity has relied on a complex bidding process that shippers use to award long-term contracts on an annual basis to carriers.

Going into the bidding process, shippers and carriers both have high expectations to deliver on their role in the supply chain and to meet their company’s business and profit goals. It’s a highly competitive and lengthy process that often takes months for reviews and decisions to be made. This can frequently result in conditions, rates and capacity needs being out of alignment at the time of announced awards. For example, a shipper may award 50 lanes to a carrier based on a six or nine-month-old bid, yet the carrier may only be able to take 27 of the lanes at that time due to network changes. This leaves the shipper with 23 lanes to reassign to another carrier.

Both sides face unique challenges during the bidding process. For shippers, they can lack a transparent view of the freight market and be constantly searching for preferred partners capable of meeting their needs. For carriers, they are always preparing bids, competing on price and sometimes sacrificing performance quality to make sure customer expectations are met.

As a result of these challenges, the transportation industry can be fragmented and difficult to navigate, especially when a company is trying to gain a competitive edge. For hundreds of thousands of carriers, finding the right shipper matches and vice versa is cumbersome. The shortage of truck drivers to haul available freight has also added to the pressure.

After going through so many tedious bidding processes over the years and feeling like she was playing “52 Card Pickup,” Williams knew there was a way to clean up the process, starting with bidding the lane when it is impacted by cost, service or capacity issues on already contracted freight.

A New Approach with Engage Lane

Williams’ experience and product expertise led to the development of Trimble’s Engage Lane, an agile transportation procurement solution that assists carriers and shippers in uncovering better ways to move freight – together. This cloud-based solution is designed to close deals in days versus months. It could be viewed as a safety net for the fallout from large-scale bids (up to 30% fall-through), inevitable network changes and fluctuations in the market rates.

Engage Lane goes beyond a traditional contracted procurement solution, impacting three major areas of bidding. The first is streamlining the bid workflow, the second is connecting both the shipper and the carrier TMS to the Trimble Transportation Cloud to create an EDI connection so freight tenders can happen right away, and finally, it holds both shippers and carriers accountable to their lane agreement with scorecards.

For instance, a shipper may have a lane with five loads a week from Chicago to Dallas, and with Engage Lane, they will have visibility to this lane for all qualified carriers within the solution which will enable them to kick off a streamlined bid workflow. Once the shipper and carrier agree to do business together, they can start tendering freight as soon as they are both aligned.

This approach dramatically shortens the process – a shipper could put a lane out to bid through the tool on a Monday, request responses by that Wednesday, and be tendering freight by Friday. It also opens doors for small and midsize carriers to gain access to an expanded list of shippers, resulting in new business and capacity opportunities for both parties. No need to go door-knocking or spend copious resources to get on the right list.

Engage Lane is the second part of the procurement process continuum, following the traditional network bidding process that is the first step. Engage Lane bridges a gap to keep freight moving, and is an integral part of an end-to-end solution that Trimble and Transporeon are building to cover freight procurement at every stage of the process.

Building the Freight Procurement Continuum with Transporeon

Trimble acquired Transporeon in early 2023 to bring their transportation technology solutions to a global network of carriers, shippers and load recipients with an integrated suite of best-in-class sourcing, planning, execution, monitoring and settlement tools. When it comes to the procurement process, Transporeon has the tools and infrastructure in place to manage both network bids and spot bids.

Currently, an estimated 30% of network bid contracts fail and as a result, shippers, carriers and brokers are left wondering what to do next. Given the complexity and demands of today’s markets, it’s impossible to resolve every potential challenge during the RFP and bidding process and that uncertainty costs time, money and frustration. Like any critical system, it’s crucial to have procedures and solutions in place to address problems when they arise.

Trimble’s approach to the freight procurement continuum restores confidence that should a link in the supply chain fail, there is another way to move freight. Going forward, we will capitalize on the natural synergies between Trimble’s Engage Lane and Transporeon’s procurement solutions to create an interconnected series of AI-powered solutions that better meet freight procurement needs as they arise.

Transporeon’s Freight Procurement solution supports network bidding, but if a network bid fails, Engage Lane provides an immediate contract capacity solution as a safety net. If a driver is sick or inclement weather detains a vehicle, Transporeon’s Autonomous Procurement service provides a no-touch spot market solution. This end-to-end coverage ensures that every business involved in the movement of freight can operate with certainty.

Williams notes: “Part of making this easier is not looking at a shipper in the traditional role of a shipper or a carrier in the traditional role of a carrier, but more simply as ‘people creating freight that has to get moved’ and ‘people who can move freight.’ Looking at the entire workflow from end-to-end and solving the issues of fragmentation is what will move the industry forward.”

With network bid, lane bid through Engage Lane and spot bid capabilities, shippers and carriers that are looking to learn about a modern, streamlined procurement process, need look no further than Trimble to bridge the gaps in the freight procurement continuum.

Contact us today to learn how our solutions could help streamline your procurement process.