Today, NVOCC & Forwarding businesses, irrespective of their sizes, are using freight forwarding analytics tools to determine how data can be leveraged to spot opportunities and solve crucial problems. As logistics data analytics has become more accessible and user friendly, the process of pulling data and analyzing it to accelerate business growth has never been easier. In other words, even if you are bad with numbers, data analytics software for logistics comes with data visualization and reports that will help you comprehend the significant meaning behind the numbers. The rich variety of data that companies generate contains valuable insights and logistics analytics is the way to unleash them.
How does data analytics work in logistics?
Freight forwarding analytics is the process of assessing the wealth of your data to make data-driven decisions. It goes beyond the surface of just seeing what has happened. Instead, freight forwarding analytics also endeavors to reveal critical insights into why things occurred and suggests whether any further steps need to be taken.
1. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a collection of tools and resources to help you and your business monitor website performance in the Google search index. Features include information on search traffic, search appearance, organic visits to your website, average keyword ranking position, and additional educational resources. But what is the purpose of looking at these?
It allows you to track the progress of your marketing efforts and website’s SEO performance.
In Search Console’s Query Report, you will see a list of keywords that you have successfully indexed on Google’s search engine. This is a great feature that allows you to assess the progress of your marketing endeavors. Cross-check this list with your own keyword list to find out where your content is ranked. This way, you can see the importance of your keywords in the logistics industry. Furthermore, if it shows that a particular keyword has a much lower significance than intended, it may be a good indicator that you should revisit the content to optimize it for a higher ranking.
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that you can use to track information about how your visitors interact with your website. You will be able to gain visitor insights and make data-backed decisions. The platform presents the metrics in various forms: lists, graphs, charts, spreadsheets, and more, allowing you to see how your website is performing. Here’s why you need Google Analytics for your Business:
To know where your visitors come from.
Understanding your traffic is essential for creating a successful and efficient marketing strategy. For example, you might want to know which marketing strategies or channels to invest in for your business website and social media pages. Setting up Google Analytics will take you down to the grassroots of where your visitors are coming from. If your website is witnessing a lot of quality traffic from mobile devices, it may be significant to ensure that your website’s mobile experience is pleasant.
To create and track effective campaigns.
More importantly, knowing where your high-quality traffic comes from will allow you to measure the impact of your marketing campaigns. For instance, you may have created an email campaign to target a list of shippers you acquired elsewhere. With Google Analytics, you can keep track of whether or not the emails are bringing in people and turning them into real customers. From the insights, you can adjust your email’s content accordingly to its performance to garner more customers.
3. Call Tracking Platform
Freight forwarders can benefit tremendously from call tracking, especially when phone calls are the lifeblood of forwarding businesses. Even nowadays, most of the quoting process still occurs over the phone. Therefore, it would be important to track your inbound calls to gain a clear picture of your customers’ calling behavior, and find out which marketing campaign or keywords are generating quality leads.
Call tracking involves assigning a unique phone number to each of your campaigns. Inbound calls from the specific number are then tracked through the call tracking system that can be customized based on your needs. In the software, you will be able to see in-depth analytics of the customers who made calls. Let’s say that a customer visits your site after seeing your Facebook ads, and decides to call tomorrow because it is already 11PM. Without a call tracking system, you would not know where the customer comes from and whether the marketing campaign is effective.
4. GoFreight
GoFreight is a freight forwarding software that provides a full suite of solutions that help Forwarders & NVOCCs accelerate business growth. One of GoFreight’s superior features is its freight forwarding analytics that has already helped many forwarders reduce costs and boost revenue. Here are some of the benefits that users have experienced using only GoFreight’s data analytics functions.
Gain the Ability to Measure Accomplishments Against Overall Goals
GoFreight gives you a clearer image of your objectives. By utilizing data visualization, businesses can measure their current and past performance against vital performance indicators (KPIs), and discover hidden business opportunities. Data analytics does not simply just let you examine the number of shipments that are booked with a certain customer. Instead, it goes deeper, and pulls up data as detailed as a shipment’s overall profitability, which assists businesses in making the appropriate adjustments to achieve target KPIs.
Informed Business Decision-Making
Going in the wrong direction can lead to breakdowns and reduced revenue. It is easy to make fast decisions, but it is more important to make smart and profitable decisions. This is why enterprises are starting to use freight forwarding software such as GoFreight to obtain the ability to supplement their decisions with data-derived insights and opportunities. And on top of that, businesses will be able to quickly identify existing issues, and instantly gather data to pinpoint the inefficiencies of their business performance. Freight forwarding analytics empowers organizations to explore and investigate data that help drive future business outcomes.
5. FreightWaves SONAR
Sonar is a freight market analytics platform that combines historical freight market data with real-time market activity to offer freight & spot rate forecasts, and visibility into the freight marketplace. Here’s how you can benefit from using a freight analytics platform:
Benchmarking
You will gain the ability to compare how your forwarding business performs against the entire freight market or your competitors. Through benchmarking, you can evaluate and compare key performance metrics to develop best-in-class services. Furthermore, understanding real-time freight market conditions will enable you to make immediate and impactful decisions. Being constantly updated on market freight rates will prevent you from quoting below-to-market rates, maximizing your potential profit.
Forecasting
Sonar allows you to develop freight market forecasts, project freight rates, and many more for the next 24 hours and even up to a year. Forecasting provides forwarders the ability to gain freight market intelligence that is essential to proactively manage their businesses. Developing forecasts for freight expense across all transportation modes will ensure that your customer quotes are protected from unanticipated carrier rate increases.
Takeaways
There may be many types of data analytics tools for different purposes, but each of them can benefit your business considerably and encourages you to make profitable decisions that will help propel your business forward. Now you may be thinking about which solution to implement to your daily operations.
GoFreight is a good place to start as it contains a comprehensive and intuitive data analytics toolset that is mainly designed for Forwarders & NVOCCs. You will immediately gain the ability to improve your bottom line by making/eliminating necessary changes to your business. Request a personalized demo to see how GoFreight can accelerate your business growth.
