Current Trends and the Potential for Automation in International Transportation Management

Managing international freight shipping operations presents a set of challenges that potentially expose shippers to risky and costly misfortunes. Changeable rates and hidden surcharges, inefficient shipping routes, missed delivery-to-transit commitments, lengthy timelines, capacity constraints, size and weight factors, and safety and security issues are among the problems that test the air and ocean shipping landscape.

Decisions shippers make concerning freight partnerships involve careful and thorough evaluations that assuredly must spotlight these issues. Solutions enabling shippers to better understand, negotiate, and adhere to contract provisions can avert many of these financial and operational threats.

The findings of a recent market research study conducted by Logistics Management magazine, on behalf of Amber Road, formerly Management Dynamics, reveal that better informed decision making on freight route planning, carrier selection, shipping scheduling and costing, load planning, guidelines compliance and auditing, invoicing, and reporting results in greater logistics operational efficiencies and yields significant cost savings. Curiously, solutions to better understand and manage these tasks have yet to gain widespread traction among the vast majority of shippers. The research further shows that many shippers have yet to automate these critical freight management and transportation procedures.