There is a reason why digital freight matching technology use has risen considerably among freight brokers and logistics companies over the last year. Digital freight matching is one of the most impactful technologies that you can use in your freight broker or 3PL. With digital freight matching, you can locate and secure both in-network and out-of-network faster, which helps you increase efficiency within your own business. Digital freight matching also can help you reduce your operating costs, build a loyal carrier network, and better meet your shippers’ transportation needs. What you may not know is that when used properly, digital freight matching offers a level of scalability that cannot be matched by load boards and other capacity sourcing methods.
Read on to learn how to master digital freight matching to grow your brokerage.
Focus on Education, Training and Employee Buy-In During Implementation
The crucial first step in mastering digital freight matching to grow your brokerage is providing adequate training and education. When implementing a digital freight matching platform, it’s important to educate employees (and carriers) on how the technology will benefit them in their day-to-day work. Communicating the benefits that digital freight matching can provide is an essential step in fostering buy-in with both employees and carrier partners. It’s also important to have the right people in place within your organization to ensure success.
“It comes down to your hiring, your process and standards,” said Leonard Express’ Chief Marketing Officer Mike Riccio in a recent webinar with Trucker Tools and TIA. “Then really training those people and continually training and educating those people so they understand what your specific strategy is and what you’re trying to accomplish because that’s always very different depending on what kind of operation you run.”
Reduce Expenses and Increase Revenue Through Greater Productivity
One of the primary benefits of using digital freight matching technology is that it allows internal teams to locate and secure capacity faster. Digital freight matching technology can eliminate the need to use load boards, which often require significant amounts of time and resources. With digital freight matching, you also don’t need to send emails or telephone carriers to find out what capacity is available in a specific lane on a specific day. When you use a digital freight matching platform like Trucker Tools’, team members can locate both in-network and out-of-network capacity quickly and then move onto the next task.
If you’re using digital freight matching technology, you can target your communications only to those carriers who are likely to have available capacity in that particular lane. This is much more efficient than sending blanket emails to every carrier you know or posting to load boards, which often casts too wide a net. The productivity and time gained through digital freight matching ultimately reduces the costs associated with covering a load, which is good news for your profit margins.
Use Automated, 24/7 Load Booking for Efficiency, To Become Broker of Choice with Carriers
Using automated load booking tools within a digital freight matching platform can help you grow your brokerage, as well. Trucker Tools’ load booking tool Book It Now® integrates with your transportation management system to shorten the rate negotiation and load booking process for your team. When an owner operator books one of your Book It Now® loads through the Trucker Tools app, the appointment is automatically scheduled in your TMS. The same holds true when a carrier books one of your Book It Now® loads through Trucker Tools’ free carrier software platform. Once the load is booked in your TMS, an automated email is send to the driver/carrier confirming the load booking details and providing them with suggestions for reloads and future loads.
It’s important to realize that tools like Book It Now® also shorten the rate negotiation and load booking process for drivers and carriers, too. Book It Now® saves owner operators and carriers time, which is important to their profit margins when capacity is tight, as it is currently. With Book It Now®, owner ops and carriers have 24 hours/day and seven days/week access to your loads. They can book loads at times that are most convenient for them. The convenience and efficiency offered by Book It Now® can help you become a broker of choice among drivers and carriers.
Provide Sustained Value to Carriers, Shippers with Digital Freight Matching
The benefits of digital freight matching technology go beyond a single load. With a well-designed and properly implemented digital freight matching platform, you can provide value to your carrier and shipper partners again and again. That ability to provide value to your partners helps you build out a solid carrier network and makes you better equipped to meet the needs of your current shippers, as well as prospective shippers.
We’ve already discussed the value that digital freight matching offers drivers and carriers. The value that this technology provides to your shippers is that you can secure capacity faster for your customers’ loads with digital freight matching. Also, if one of your customers wants to add a new lane, you can easily research capacity options in that specific lane with digital freight matching tech. Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform notably includes predictive freight matching, showing you future capacity before it’s ever publicly posted elsewhere.
For more on how to scale your business with technology, see How To Use Technology To Scale Your Freight Broker Business. Schedule a free demo of Trucker Tools’ digital freight matching platform, real-time visibility platform and Book It Now®.
