The silent revolution in forwarder tender management.

Interview with Inga Schlegel and Belinda de la Torre, the driving forces behind the Tender Management Platform of Freightender, an innovative solution for forwarders.

A lot is going on in logistics and forwarding. Apart from consolidations and M&A activities, digitisation and the increasing use of software and saas platforms enjoy a lot of attention of forwarders.

There are many different topics of focus: operational systems where companies like Wisetech, Descartes, Mercurygate and Freightify are active, integrations with rate and booking portals like Portrix, Magaya and Freightos. Collaborative platforms such as Parnity and Freightcollab.

Then there is the fascinating area of tender management. A process which is often hidden but yet meshed in with Sales, Trade Management. Account Management and and many tender and pricing managers and analysts, often around the globe. Traditionally the process of pricing and responding to tenders is carried out by a lot of manpower, excel work and ongoing back and forth e-mailing. Very time consuming, often cumbersome and rather expensive.

Freightender is a logistics technologies company that next to other procurement applications has developed a comprehensive solution to help forwarders streamlining their tender management operations and below is a Q&A with the two women who are behind this solution. Two former forwarder professionals with vast experience in pricing, procurement and tender management in the forwarder world.

Inga Schlegel, a 17-year forwarder veteran and now the product lead for the Tender Response Solution(TRP) at Freightender and Belinda de la Torre, Account Director with a 10-year stint at a major forwarder under her belt.

How does Freightender help forwarders and what is the TRP solution about?

Inga: TRP has been designed to support the tender management inside a company, being able to manage a large number of tenders on an on-going basis. It especially helps with process efficiency, offers a structured approach for tender managers as well as quoting parties and increases visibility and transparency on all sides. In addition, it is an “all in one” system that collects and stores all data under one roof.

It is rather surprising that such an important process is not yet highly automated or streamlined within most forwarder organisations, why is that?

Belinda: I would say there are mainly 3 contributing factors:

Up until now there were no good solutions in the market. The pricing process is highly complex and can be very different on every forwarding organization. To adap to every organization it requires a lot of knowledge and a very smart design to make it flexible whilst practical and user friendly.

Forwarder organizations are very slow to react to change and most are very old fashioned. It does require a visionary and someone with some guts to push for change.

In line with point 2, forwarders are more inclined to throw people at a problem than to find a real solution. Some decide to go with shared services centers that take years to work if at all and end up costing millions, some go for in-house solutions that have a very similar result. Forwarders very often think too short term and not always strategically.

How does your forwarding or more specific, your experience in pricing and tender management benefit your customers?

Belinda: Tender response is very much a niche job; unless you have done it long enough you would have little understanding of the challenges a forwarder has to overcome to do this efficiently. Understanding this from the inside helps me being able to be part of the process of the customer. Supporting the customer is not just about showing them how the tool works, but about understanding what is the best way in which they can use it.

Inga: It helps a lot if you understand the process and pain points of your customers. If you have “seen it all”, you can guide your customers in all aspects so they really get the best out of the system as well as their own processes.

What is the unique proposition of Freightender in this space, what do you do that others can’t do?

Belinda: Freightender has been built with a deep knowledge of the freight forwarding industry and that really shows. Our unique vision to bring a standard to logistics procurement, having a solution for both shippers and forwarders to work on this space, place us in a really unique position.

Which type of forwarders can benefit from the Tender Response solution?

Inga: I believe that mid-size forwarders and global players will definitely need a digital solution for their tender management. If you want to participate in a large number of tenders with a certain size, you need to be able to easily manage your data and keep track of your activities. This is not feasible with just excel sheets, e-mail and shared drives.

Every forwarder is different and may have many different requirements, how do you cope with that?

Belinda: This is a very interesting question actually. Having an insight on how all the different forwarders handle the same process has helped us to develop an improve our tool. We have turned what others could have perceived as a problem into our advantage by designing a tool that offers great flexibility but also helps the forwarders driving improvements on their processes.

Is it difficult to show the value proposition or the return of investment of your solution to forwarders?

Belinda: Actually, it is very simple, as long as you are showing it to the right people. Anyone working closely in Tender Response can see immediately the benefits. Unfortunately, the challenges a lot of forwarder organizations have is that they need to jump through hoops to acquire an external solution. Decision-making can be slow and are often made by people too far away from the complexities of tender management.

What do you see in the market, are the forwarders ready for this solution, are they too busy with other technology implementations or is Tender Management a hot topic?

Inga: We are or have been approached by more or less all big forwarders. There is definitely interest in our solution and Tender Management is a hot topic for all organizations as it is the easiest way to win big volumes. However, what we also see is that forwarders are often lacking resources to evaluate the existing solutions properly and therefore decisions are taking a long time.

What about the competition? Do you see competition and how do you qualify them?

Belinda: Not really. There are other solutions in the market, but they tackle different aspects of the Tender Response process, they are not really comparable.

There are many start-ups in logistics and many solutions for forwarders, where do you see yourself as a company or as a solution for Tender Management?

Inga: If we were talking about football, I would say we are playing Champions League with both — the company as well as our solution for Tender Management. Of course there is competition but with the engagement from everyone in the company and the vision we have in general, I really believe that we can be a top player in the logistics sector.

Belinda: Clearly, there is a huge gap in the market on this area, and it is for a good reason it has not been really covered before. Forwarder organizations are really challenging to work with, it takes someone with a lot of courage and vision to go for it and break in this market. Many start-ups solve small problems, but I would say Freightender is the only one addressing THE problem.

Want to know more about Freightender or want to see a demo of one of our solutions, feel free to contact us!