Traditionally, sourcing mainly focused on obtaining the best price for your freight transportation. But this no longer the case. Today, strategic sourcing in logistics procurement refers to the set of tasks related to finding the right carrier for a specific type of freight on various lanes, ensuring not only the best pricebut also requested availability and delivery requirements for the shipments.
Strategic sourcing contributes to the competitiveness of a business’ supply chain and requires its management to reflect the long-term future and not just immediate needs. Strategic freight sourcing, thus, requires managers to conduct an in-depth analysis of the existing data and previous procurement activities within the business, identifying the best carriers for each lane. It involves taking into account several aspects, from the lifecycle of the goods to the corporate strategy, including the customer needs, and the relationships with suppliers and carriers. Long story short: strategic sourcing is a challenging and usually long process, filled with time-consuming tasks like emails, calls, and data collection from several sources.
Sourcing software puts an end to these tedious tasks. It enables smart decisions to help organizations leverage their supply chain excellence by standardizing sourcing requirements, evaluating the data, and sharing information withthe different stakeholders. For larger projects and strategic freight procurement, a strategic solution can run exercises such as spot bidding for single shipments, all the way to complex tender events for long-term contracts. It can also support the complete tendering process with RFQs, repetitive bidding, and full scenario analyses.
