The game “two truths and a lie” is a creative way to get to know someone better. Sharing the truth while throwing in a fib is a fun and engaging way to break the ice. Who doesn’t love that game?
But when it comes to your shipping audit provider, the fibs are no longer fun. Your invoice management solution is no joking matter, and you deserve to have the full story with no bullship.
We’re exposing 6 lies your shipping audit provider is telling you.
6 Lies From Your Shipping Audit Provider
1. “Gain intelligence from your invoice”
Shipping audit providers talk a lot about gaining intelligence from your invoice. A natural question arises from that statement, “what does intelligence mean?” The carrier invoice has one purpose, which is to get paid.
Often the invoice from the carrier is incomplete and inaccurate. It’s hard to gain intelligence with an invoice directly from the carrier or from an audit provider whose technology isn’t built for data management.
Invoice “intelligence” isn’t really gained until you have cleansed, standardized, and normalized shipment data. To get a comprehensive view into your carrier invoices and performance, a shipper or 3PL should rely on a data-driven audit provider to see the shipment details. Once the invoice is clean, then you can start to use it to make strategic decisions.
Most audit providers’ technology is not equipped to handle data management. Traditional providers are just performing an audit and aren’t giving you any tangible intelligence to help you advance your operations.
A clean invoice can power advanced analytics and reporting, including:
- Carrier performance
- Budget forecasting
- Routing optimization
- Spend management
See how you can use predictive and prescriptive analytics to power your decision-making and drive real results.
2. “You have bad data”
As data management experts, we love this one, but unfortunately hear it all the time.
Oftentimes freight audit providers will try to blame poor analytics and reporting on you for having “bad data,” which is more of a reflection of their technology not being built to handle data integration, standardization, and normalization.
Up front of course, many shipping audit providers will tell you their technology can handle any volume and format of data. However, cleansing the data to conform to their outdated technology is a time-consuming, manual, and wasteful process, because the analytics and reporting outcome you desire may never come. At least, not without added change fees.
Data quality is critical. Your freight audit provider should have ownership over the quality of the data.
A true data-first technology will be able to ingest any volume of data in any format. Not only will the audit be done accurately and timely, but you will also be able to use the clean invoice to power advanced insights and reporting.
3. “Auditing is a complex and complicated process”
Every carrier has its own price structure with unique rates and rules. There are also many different variables that feed the price structure, including linehaul rates, equipment variables, accessorials, and more. Traditional freight audit providers often try to lump accessorials together; in doing so, you lose the full story of the shipment.
Oof! That sounds like a lot to validate, audit, and manage. However, having technology in place that is built on a robust data management platform turns this “complex” process into a streamlined system without losing visibility to performance and cost data.
Auditing doesn’t have to be a headache-inducing topic. It can be an efficient process designed to save you money and reduce manual efforts. Make auditing easy with the right partner, technology, and operations in place.
4. “Pieces of the audit will still require manual intervention”
The traditional freight audit process is typically manual, painful, slow, and sometimes requires teams of people to manage exceptions. Gone are the days of manual auditing!
Today, flexible cloud-based solutions can effectively audit shipments, allowing teams to reallocate resources. Shippers and 3PLs can eliminate manual intervention while enhancing business processes.
Data-driven business rules and sophisticated algorithms allow for streamlined data cleansing, mapping, and auditing. Audit providers ensure more accuracy and validity by deploying robust technology to find root causes and take corrective actions, so exceptions don’t continually recur.
5. “150+ data point audit”
In theory, that sounds great, “Wow, really, 150+ data point audit for every shipment!” As the age-old saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it’s because it probably is.
A 150+ data point audit for every single shipment is an exaggeration. While it sounds impressive and exciting, the truth is there aren’t 150 data points necessary to audit a single shipment.
Our challenge to you: Next time you hear “150+ data point audit,” call their bluff. Ask for a detailed breakdown of all 150 data points for the audit.
As the parcel and freight audit provider market is saturated and competitive, make sure you follow best practices and conduct a side-by-side competitive comparison of audit data points and outcomes. People can lie, numbers can’t.
6. “Our audit technology can replace your team of auditors”
Your dedicated, talented team members are indispensable. However, they shouldn’t be spending time checking invoices or validating your current audit provider.
Your team should be focused on building and maintaining relationships with carriers, developing strategies, and putting out the daily fires that often arise in the supply chain and logistics industry.
Technology will find more opportunities for savings and recovery faster than the human eye. Although a manual audit is no longer necessary, your team is a critical piece of your puzzle.
By leveraging technology, a knowledgeable team, and optimized processes, you’re better primed for contract negotiation and reviewing new potential carriers to diversify.
Enveyo’s 2 Truths and A Lie
There is a lot of noise and lies within the industry from shipping audit providers who can’t execute their many overpromises.
We’ll let you determine what’s bullship and what are facts. Here are our two truths and a lie:
- Our approach to logistics optimization is data-first. By leveraging quality data, systems integration, and comparative and prescriptive analytics, organizations drive their supply chain operations forward.
- With Enveyo, you can hold carriers accountable for contractual cost obligations and recover revenue that would have been lost with traditional tools.
- We hold a secret map of the lost city of Atlantis.
You got us; number three was a lie. We aren’t very good at lying, which is why we pride ourselves on these three pillars: data, technology, and trust.
- Data — There is nobody better to ingest, integrate, standardize, normalize, and cleanse your data.
- Technology — Innovative and purpose-built technology built on a robust data management engine.
- Trust — No bullship here. No lies here. Just trusted software supported by trustworthy people.
See how you can reduce your freight spend and automate manual processes with Enveyo.
