Feb.13--Large forwarders have made little progress with their online freight booking platforms, according to the annual "State of Online Logistics Sales 2016 Mystery Shopping Survey," conducted by Freightos.
However, behind the scenes, Freightos CEO Zvi Schreiber said forwarders are scrambling to catch up with early movers like Kuehne + Nagel and Delta Airlines.
For the "mystery shopping" experiment, Freightos interacted with the online booking portals of the world's top 20 global freight forwarding websites, and requested identical quotes for a less-than-container-load (LCL) shipment from a city in China to Chicago, reported New York's Air Cargo World.
The quote request included sufficient information for a forwarder to respond with a quote, including load type, harmonised system (HS) code, weight, dimensions, incoterms and a statement that the shipper would compare the quote with a direct competitor.
The results indicate the majority of the world's top forwarders are not equipped to offer fast, automated freight quotes through online portals.
Despite incessant talk about innovation in IT and digitisation throughout the forwarding industry, the results from 2016's survey were actually worse than the conclusions from 2015. According to Mr Schreiber, "the results from this year were abysmal. With the exception of Kuehne + Nagel, there was no improvement. In fact, the average quotation actually took longer."
Source:Shipping Gazette