AEB study: Many companies struggle less with maintaining their rates than with a lack of transparency regarding freight costs. Find out why.
The dominance of manual processes doesn't just mean a lot of work. It has an impact on many aspects of the logistics process. Freight costs are required not only after shipping today, but often much earlier. For example for the following:
If freight rates are not up to date, consistent, or directly available within the SAP-related process, challenges arise: Decisions are made based on incomplete data. At the same time, the administrative burden is increasing - especially in multi-carrier environments with different rate models, surcharges, and service types.
An even more interesting picture emerges when looking at a second question: Which areas of freight cost management require the most effort today? The responses indicate a clear prioritization (see illustration).
What stands out is: The greatest pain does not lie in a single technical detail, but in the lack of visibility into actual freight costs.
This is highly relevant. After all, a lack of transparency has multiple consequences: It makes it hard to compare shipping options, cost control becomes tedious, retroactive calculations take longer, and logistics and controlling often work on different information levels.
The survey suggests that many companies aren't just looking for a better place to file their rates. They need a way to incorporate freight costs earlier in the process.
Three points are crucial here:
Outdated rates can quickly lead to incorrect evaluations and unnecessary coordination effort.
If the information is stored outside of SAP or outside the actual shipping process, its operational value decreases significantly.
Only then can services, lead times, and prices be meaningfully compared.
This also shifts the focus of freight cost management: away from simply filing away rates, and toward a structured, process-oriented use of cost information.
From our perspective, the survey reveals a clear trend: Freight cost management is increasingly becoming a matter of transparency and data availability.
Companies don't want to have to track transportation costs retrospectively. They want to be able to evaluate them as the process unfolds - right where decisions are made in SAP systems and in the shipping department.
This is exactly where the new freight rate features of AEB's Carrier Cloud for SAP solution come into play: AEB maintains and keeps a company's individual freight rates up to date; freight costs are made available early in the process and, for selected carriers, can even be used for early rate shopping.
The benefits: Less manual maintenance, a clearer overview, and a better basis for both operational and business decisions.
For more information about this solution, go to Multi-carrier shipping in SAP® and Freight Cost Management from AEB.
