According to Wikipedia Logistics is the management of the flow of goods, inforamtion and other resources, including energy and people, between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet the requirements of consumers. So getting it there at the right price is an enormous challenge.

The constantly fluctuation cost of fuel is causing less stable freight rates and creating concern and worry? in the executive suite about transportation expenses. As such many senior executives are looking to e-procurement solution providers to automate and reduce costs in the execution of their shipping plans.

Reverse auction tools,? electronic RFI?s and other e-procurement tools are being used regularly in order? to? optimize bid collection by helping companies organize detailed information about their shipping patterns so they can? compare daily or weekly offers from vendors.

Believe it or not many companies continue to use time-consuming manual processes to schedule shipments and have not even consolidated their rate tables into spreadsheets let alone assembled data with easy to use e-procurement tools. Many companies also continue to use static rules based on full loads to LTFL to a destination to decide which carrier they should use. The problem with this is that rate, routes, and a particular haulers availability change daily if not more often.

Call your e-procurement solutions provider and ask how they can help.

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