Why ocean freight visibility is a must for forwarders

Achieving visibility over your ocean freight isn’t easy. Barring telescopic vision, you can’t know with certainty what’s happening halfway around the world. However, as logistics tech evolves, real-time visibility is becoming more widespread– and therefore, more necessary to compete.

Evolving customer expectations

Providing visibility into the shipment journey is becoming an increasingly common ask for international freight forwarders. In a survey by FreightWaves and Logixboard, 81% of shippers said that online shipment visibility is “table stakes” or “a critical part of how we evaluate a forwarder’s offering.”

This request isn’t exactly new. Customers have always wanted more visibility over their shipments, but it hasn’t traditionally been widely accessible. The difference now is that new tech is expanding across the market, enabling shippers to be pickier in their decisions.

As supply chain digitization accelerates and digital-first competitors become more prominent in the industry, refusal to offer enhanced features like visibility is putting you at a disadvantage. In fact, in the FreightWaves/Logixboard survey, 46% of shippers said that they’ve stopped working with a freight forwarder in favor of another with better technology.

Establishing trust with partners

As any FF knows, investing in relationships is essential to success in this industry. Consistently providing visibility is a key factor in building connections to withstand constant competition and movement in the market.

Transporting cargo across the globe is far from an exact science– especially in ocean freight, where bad weather is the cause of 80% of delays. In this industry, mishaps are bound to happen, and unexpected delays are bound to arise. How you communicate and manage those situations will determine your customer’s experience.

For instance, while shippers certainly prefer on-time shipments, they also want to be updated promptly if something is running late. However, when delivering updates manually, it can be tempting for forwarders to push back bad news to avoid upsetting the customer. While this may avoid a tough conversation in the short term, it can seriously damage their reputation in the long term.

When you provide real-time visibility into your global freight services, you don’t need to worry about when to alert your customers about an updated ETA. At the same time, since they have access to the same shipment information as your team, they can trust that they’re always getting immediate updates.

Operational efficiency

Not only is ocean freight visibility a top priority for your customers, but it can also pay off internally by improving efficiency and saving time for your team.

As discussed, replacing manual alerts with a visibility solution can strengthen trust and relationships with your customers. However, it can also improve productivity for your team by eliminating time spent delivering those updates.

In theory, each update only takes about 30-seconds to send, or less if you set automated triggers. However, the cost of losing work can be much higher. According to a report by Qatalog and the Idea Lab at Cornell University, people report taking an average of 9.5 minutes to get back into a workflow after switching apps. By cutting down on tedious, manual tasks assigned to your employees, you can give them more time and energy to focus on more complex projects.

In addition to cutting down on manual tasks, the benefits of a centralized visibility platform can enable more productive communication. Since your team will share a view with customers, you can run more efficient customer meetings without prepping piles of materials beforehand. Additionally, your single source of truth can even improve internal collaborations by eliminating time spent fussing over details.