What makes routing inbound freight difficult for our customers is that FOB routing terms must be made in advance of shipping using fragmented and inadequate data. At time of purchase, the buyer does not know the size or scope of the product being shipped. The vendor knows this at the time of shipping but communicating this data back to the buyer who then makes a new FOB terms decision based on this data who then informs the vendor of their decision is lengthy and costly both in time and money. Additionally, the buyer sets an arbitrary weight break based on often misguided assumptions for orders that can be shipped via parcel or LTL without real time decision making tools. Inability to monitor shipment visibility for vendor routed orders add cost to buyer teams as well as customer service (for both buyer and vendor). Phone calls and emails are the generally acceptable means of communication between trading parties and does not return an immediate response nor does it stop the cost of interruption of parties involved in the communication flow. Article after article tells us that combining real-time decision making and communication channels between partners is some “Pie in the sky ordeal”, that no one has figured out how to make all this happen since the inbound routing process is too “Complex”.
