Five Shipping Reports Freight Leaders Love!

Everyone has a boss. As a logistics manager, you’re in a unique spot because you’re the company expert on freight, but you likely still need to explain what you’re doing and how the logistics function is performing to someone you work for.

There are many reasons bosses ask for reports related to shipping. Freight spend is a big expense for many companies, and delivery performance is essential to customer satisfaction. So, the more transparency you can provide the leadership at your company, the better. And you can’t expect your boss to do the digging.

If this is your situation, there are several reports you can provide to your manager to give them a good picture of what’s happening in the shipping department and, of course, what a great job you and your team are doing.

But first, it’s important to know that in order to provide reports that are actually valuable - your data needs to be easily AVAILABLE and in REAL-TIME.

Loadsmart's freight management platform, ShipperGuide, is the ideal software that centralizes a company’s shipping operations and brings all of its data together in one place. And, because of its connections to carriers and other applications, the data is continuously updated. This ensures the data you need for reports is available and real-time. Leveraging ShipperGuide’s A.I. functionality, you can use natural language questions (e.g., Can I see…? or Show me a bar chart of…) to generate the reports your boss wants.

We suggest you start with five reports that we think your boss will love.

1 – What are we spending on freight?

Tracking how much your company is spending on freight is a fundamental but valuable benchmark to start with. This is valuable because, without a baseline, a company cannot measure future improvements or changes. Budget predictability and measuring it against past performance is also important. ShipperGuide keeps all quotes, loads tendered, and shipments in one place so costs are tracked accurately and quickly reported on. The platform also allows shippers to track, and increase visibility on a lane basis, so access data on spend per lane, average rate per load, and average rate per mile. 

2 – How do our costs compare?

Your boss may be curious about what the company spends and how it compares to market averages. Every company wants to pay as little as possible for shipping, but realistically there is a floor to rates. Yet knowing what those rates are is not so easy. ShipperGuide makes it possible to understand market rates and report on how you compare by providing these market benchmarks right alongside your data.

3 – How are costs trending?

Businesses and markets change, but bosses want to know that costs are heading in the right direction. Reports that show how costs have changed based on factors such as shipping mode, product line, or location are all valuable. Identifying these changes is the first step to better cost and delivery optimization. ShipperGuide can generate reports highlighting cost trends broken down by details that offer actionable insights.

4 – Is there accountability?

As the shipping volume of a company increases, it’s harder to make sure the best routing decision is made for every shipment. The more decentralized a logistics function becomes, the harder it is to maintain accountability for making the best choices. ShipperGuide reports can ensure accountability, such as when logistics planners are, or are not, booking the lowest rate.

5 – Are carriers performing?

Carriers need to be accountable, too. On-time delivery and pickup percentages, damages, detention, etc., are all data points that can be used to evaluate carrier performance - and for shipments moved by Loadsmart, this data resides in ShipperGuide.  Reporting this information to your boss can illustrate how well you’re managing the carriers based on key metrics. And you can use that data to optimize the company’s carrier selection process and improve performance.

In Conclusion

Data and reporting are powerful yet underutilized tools for logistics managers. ShipperGuide and its A.I. reporting capabilities is an easy way to provide the reports leadership needs (even if they don’t know it yet). And aside from these five examples, users should create customized reports based on specific requests that match the business’ priorities.

And if you are looking for a place to get started - click here to see what's possible with ShipperGuide’s A.I. reporting capabilities in this short demo video. What reports will you be building?