25 years in providing Supply Chain Solutions
Rate Search - Quotations - Contract Ratesheet Automation
United Kingdom
“For me, Freightify has been instrumental in accessing competitive carrier rates. We can then communicate with shipping lines and shippers where I can give them instant feedback. We now buy the best we can for Cardinal so we can put us in a good position for us to sell with competitive pricing.”
Regional Manager & Chairman of Partners’ Forum,
Cardinal Global Logistics
Cardinal, once fueled by the entrepreneurial spirit of its founders, has now transformed into an employee-owned model driving exceptional customer service for its 6000+ global clients across various sectors. Cardinal provides a plethora of highly engineered supply chain solutions through its global network of 40 offices including recent expansions into Poland, Netherlands,Belgium and India.
Inefficient In-House System
Cardinal's internal system which was previously developed and used required manual uploads and self-maintenance, causing frequent glitches and incorrect freight rates. Reliance on one person made it unsustainable, leading the team to resort back to ratesheets. Updating the sales team on rates was challenging and time-consuming, and the lack of real-time access hindered decision-making, highlighting the need for a more efficient solution.
“We have to manually upload the rate sheets into our in-house system, which was managed by one of our colleagues. Unfortunately, the system had many technical glitches and errors in displaying the rates, forcing us to constantly compare them with the original rate sheets.”
The strategic shift of major carriers like Maersk towards integrated logistics solutions, promising comprehensive visibility and streamlined services, has become a significant threat to local freight forwarders. However, Cardinal, with a customer-centric mindset, was nonplussed by these threats, knowing its strength lay in providing flexible, personalized, and customized services to its clients, unmatched by these giants that operated within a strict '9 to 5'timeframe. Despite this advantage, Michael noticed that his employees were bogged down by repetitive operational tasks, leaving less time for client engagements, which fueled Cardinal’s growth.
Scaling the business and expanding into newer territories presented Cardinal with a new set of challenges such as an increase in the influx of price requests from clients and sales teams in other locations. This further exposed the inadequacy of existing methods, straining resources and capabilities. Teams often relied on referring to only one rate sheet when building quotes for clients, missing potential margins due to limited options and manual calculations. In addition to that, manual management of rates became unsustainable, unable to keep pace with the growing demands of the business. This was the tipping point for Senior Management Team when they realised relying on existing systems and processes would no longer serve the business and they needed to look out for better options to drive the bottom line and operational efficiencies.
Centralized Rate Search across Multiple Carriers
With Freightify’s Rate Search Module underpinned by the extensive carrier connections, Cardinal has more visibility into the serviceability of carriers for a specific trade lane. In addition to this, Freightify has made it simple to find and compare freight rates (both SPOT and Contract), transit times and schedules from various carriers in one place, saving essential time and effort. It enhances efficiency, streamlining logistics decisions for Cardinal's operations.
“With Freightify, we can see many shipping lines for certain trade lanes that we were not aware of. It’s been aGodsend for us as we can get competitive rates quicker.”
Freightify’s simplified and customizable quotations empowered Cardinal’sSales team to craft and send faster enquiry responses in under 2 minutes. This has significantly improved their time to market enabling them to close more deals. The streamlined rate discovery and quoting process frees employees from tedious tasks, allowing them to focus on personalizing responses to each enquiry and delivering accurate pricing information quickly. The result? Better prices for customers, leading to increased satisfaction, loyalty and ultimately higher volume closures for Cardinal’s Sales teams.
“The sales team used to act like quote machines, focusing more on generating quotes than taking care of customers. With Freightify, we have reduced the time spent creating quotes, allowing the sales team to dedicate more time to their top customers.”
With a 99.8% accuracy, Freightify’s Ratesheet Automation feature, supported by in-house expertise, eliminates the risk of manual errors and ensures consistent accurate pricing. Centralized real-time access to all rate sheets in one place saves significant time and effort. This integrated approach drives better decision-making within the organization, facilitating smoother operations and better customer service.
Taking advantage of Freightify’s Analytics feature, Cardinal was able to find and analyze trends in the rates provided by the liners. This gave them an added advantage in negotiating with liners for further rate reductions.
“Recently, we analyzed the rates of a primary carrier of ours with other carriers and we found that other carrier rates were competitive with a 10-15% reduction. This made us negotiate strongly with our primary carrier to secure lower rates.“
By leveraging Freightify's innovative solutions, Cardinal not only streamlined its operations but also reached new heights in operational performance and revenue growth. The partnership empowered Cardinal to offer competitive pricing, faster customer responses, and improved decision-making. As a result, Cardinal experienced a 4% increase in profit, enhancing its reputation for outstanding service in the freight forwarding industry. With Freightify's support, Cardinal continues to excel, delivering exceptional value to its clients and staying ahead of the competition.