Freight rates for shipping and transporting goods are going through the roof. What happened and why do we see such an unprecedented surge in freight rates? Freight rates for shipping containers from China to Europe and the US have gone up to the unseen levels. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI), which is […]
Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about the complexity of freight ratesheets distributed by the shipping lines to the market and the problems they create. This year, it remains one of the most popular posts on the Quotiss blog. Turns out, a lot of logistics companies are still looking for ways to simplify […]
by Marcin Zarzecki, CEO of Quotiss This is the second part of the article, which covers the numerous errors in freight ratesheets distributed by the shipping lines. In the first article, I illustrated that there is a clear lack of unified standards across the carriers. Even within the same shipping company different offices use different formats when […]
by Marcin Zarzecki, CEO of Quotiss There are many good things one can say about container shipping and its global impact on the world economy. But shipping lines are also very well known for sending very complex and unstructured freight ratesheets. During my time in Maersk, where I spent over 10 years in the sales […]
What is the exact dollar value of the logistics software? Every freight forwarder knows that the logistics business is mostly driven by price. In such a competitive market, any opportunity to improve profit margins should not be missed. Technology can significantly improve efficiencies internally, resulting in greater profitability. These improvements mostly come from the reduction […]
It’s not a secret, that when it comes to shipping and logistics, there is a lot of potential for optimization. Freight forwarders have to deal with the enormous complexity of the freight ratesheets they receive from their suppliers. Most of the freight quote requests are still handled via email in MS Excel, Word, or even a […]
The most popular computer software in all freight forwarding companies around the world is undoubtedly Microsoft Excel. Released in 1985, Excel became a superstar tool, helping businesses become more efficient. Its advanced formulas turned manual processes that took weeks to complete into something that takes only a few hours. Today, the situation has changed. In […]
Everybody loves pizza! Over 5 billion pizzas are eaten every year in the world. It is a 30 billion dollar business, and more and more new pizzerias are opening. Probably, one of the reasons is that the ‘pizza model’ is universal and extremely simple to replicate! No matter which country you go to, pizza looks […]
In the previous post “Pricing Challenge in Container Shipping” we mentioned that it’s not easy to structure freight tariffs and send instant freight quotes. The reason being the high complexity of the transportation costs: up to 25 variable charges plus the overall rate volatility caused by the supply and demand imbalance. Looking at the whole end to […]
Among other daily routine tasks, sales teams in both shipping lines and freight forwarding companies have to set up and manage the PRICING for the services they offer and send freight rate quotes to their customers. The industry is known for being very slow in quoting freight rates, and there are important reasons why. What […]
