As a logistics manager, you keep goods moving efficiently. But communicating with multiple carriers, tracking shipments, comparing rates, and dealing with inevitable delays and disruptions can be overwhelming. 

So what are the biggest logistics challenges you and your peers face? We asked our customers - logistics leaders at manufacturing, wholesale, retail and ecommerce companies across Europe - to share their key pain points and how implementing a transport management system has helped. 

Here's what they had to say. 

 
Many logistics managers expressed frustration with the constant back-and-forth, fragmented communication with carriers, and the amount of manual, repetitive tasks their job involves. Virve Sidron, Head of Supply Chain at Viru Elektrikaubandus, summed it up: "At one point, we felt that logistical information was getting more and more overhead every day, and sending emails back and forth with different carriers became exhausting."

Sounds familiar? If you're managing shipments via phone, email, and carrier portals, you know how quickly things get disorganized. As Toomas Veskus, Onninen's Baltic Logistics Manager put it: "Everything happened by email, but it became complicated because there are many parties and we are working in two shifts - in the end it was no longer understood whether some issues had already been addressed, are being addressed or are just beginning to be addressed."

A multi-carrier shipping software brings all carrier interactions into one platform. Cargoson integrates with all your carriers' systems, which means automatic data exchange for transport orders, pricing, updates, waybills, tracking, and more.

Suddenly, you've traded hours of phone calls and Outlook digging for a single source of truth. Rates, transit times, pickup status, and delivery updates are always just a few clicks away. As Virve noted, "Cargoson provides very good visibility. All information is together on one page, easy for a logistics person to manage. Contacts, tracking, analysis - everything is just a click away."

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When managing orders across multiple carriers, it's hard to maintain a clear picture of where everything is at any given moment. Updates get lost in the email inbox, and tracking down a specific order means logging into multiple systems.
 
As Bolt rapidly expanded their electric scooter operations across Europe, keeping track of everything became a real logistical challenge. "We had previously managed all our transport partners and booked shipments through emails or their e-environments, but due to the rapid growth of the company, it was very difficult to keep track of what was going on," said Bolt's Logistics Manager Helen Erg.

A TMS like Cargoson aggregates real-time tracking data from all your carriers into a single view. You can see the current delivery status and location of every transport order at a glance, across all freight modes and logistics partners.

What's more, this centralized data capture enables cross-carrier analytics and reporting. With Cargoson, "all shipments, regardless of the country of origin or destination, are in one place and easy to manage," said Helen. "The added bonus is the statistical side - we can extract data about our transport volumes and with which transport partners we cooperate."

Read more: Optimizing our scooter logistics with Cargoson | Bolt Blog

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Prices come in different formats, and surcharges like fuel (BAF) change monthly. Requesting, calculating and comparing rates, surcharges and transit times manually from multiple carriers eats up valuable time. Vadim Tarassenko, Nefab's warehouse manager, summed up a common frustration: "Before we had to contact potential partners one by one, now everything happens automatically through Cargoson."

Merly Sepri-Eha, head of VBH Estonia's supply chain unit, also emphasized the need for "quick and easy comparison of freight costs and transit times".

Read more on VBH's blog (in Estonian): "VBH Estonia uses Cargoson's freight management software | VBH Estonia OÜ".

As Cargoson co-founder, Aivo Kurik who has decades of experience working with road transport price lists on both sides put it: "The European road transport price list is like a restaurant menu with 10,000+ dishes."

Cargoson' freight rate management software solves this by centralizing your carrier rates: your contracted price sheets across all carriers are digitized and stored in one secure database. When it's time to book a shipment, you simply enter the origin, destination, and shipment details, and the system instantly generates a side-by-side comparison of your carrier options, rates, and transit times.

You can upload price sheets in any format - PDF, Excel, you name it. Or, connect directly to carrier pricing APIs. Cargoson has a powerful price calculation engine that can calculate prices from even the most complex price sheets.

To get a quote, just enter the shipment details. Cargoson automatically generates prices and transit times for all your carriers, including spot quotes for urgent loads. 

"All cargo requests are sent through Cargoson as it helps to organise all the price offers in one place. Price offers can always be found, and they are not lost as it was before when we used email," said Roberts Mazkalnins from PrintOnPack.com.

You also get price statistics to leverage during annual freight procurement and rate negotiations. Merly from VBH noted this has "made transport tendering much easier."

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Your logistics needs are changing over time, and that often means bringing new transport partners into the fold. But the traditional process of onboarding carriers and implementing new rates is clunky at best.

Training your workforce to use an additional carrier website on top of the existing ones can be challenging. Building yet another carrier integration with your ERP, WMS or eCommerce platform is neither cheap or fast. Exchanging price lists, lane and contact information and other crucial data via massive spreadsheets or PDF attachments, then manually entering all that info into your system is time-consuming. And any time you need to update rates or add services, you're back to square one.

A TMS with built-in carrier integrations makes onboarding carriers much smoother. Cargoson can connect directly with all your carrier APIs to automatically import rates and other key info. Setup is often as simple as providing your carrier account credentials.

All shipment data is exchanged automatically. And any time your rates change, those updates flow seamlessly into the system, so your team is always working with accurate information.

Roberts from PrintOnPack.com highlighted: "When we started searching for a solution Cargoson had the best offer in all aspects, prices were super friendly and responsive, customer support was at the top level and implementation was faster than we expected."

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Fuel prices are up 20% from last week. Your go-to carrier is suddenly at capacity. A customer needs an urgent delivery. Sound familiar?

So, how do you adapt when your carefully planned routes and rates are suddenly out of date? Calling carriers one-by-one for new quotes? Manually updating complex spreadsheets? 

Vadim from Nefab faced this challenge: "The last few months have been challenging, with conditions changing due to rising fuel prices. Managing this would have become too complex for us."

That's where a modern TMS comes in. With all your carrier information in one place, you can quickly adjust when conditions change. Need to switch carriers for a single shipment? Request and compare quotes with a few clicks. Have to onboard a new carrier fast? Just add them to the list of your carriers and start ordering.

"Cargoson has helped us expand the circle of our transport partners," Vadim shared. "The system allows you to ask for a spot price and find the optimal solution." 

With the right tools, adapting to change doesn't have to be a struggle.

If these challenges sound familiar, know that you're not alone. And you don't have to keep flipping through spreadsheets and emails. Implementing a transport management software (TMS), designed for logistics professionals like you, could be the single most impactful step you can take to reduce friction and take control of your supply chain.

Thousands of logistics leaders across Europe are already leveraging Cargoson's TMS to manage working with multiple carriers. They're saving time, money and headaches every day by digitizing and automating key processes, from booking to tracking to integrations to freight rate management.

If you'd like to see how a TMS could transform your own logistics management, we invite you to book a free, no-obligation demo of Cargoson. One of our expert team members will walk you through the platform, show you exactly how it would work for your unique needs, and answer any and all questions you have.

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