A Simple, yet Powerful Freight Rating System for the Non-Vessel Operator Common Carrier (NVOCC)

In today’s ever changing competitive market, NVOCCs and freight forwarders that want to compete effectively need to have access to both costs and revenue. Fast, efficient access to carrier buy-rates can mean the difference between profit or loss, winning or losing deals.

Descartes Rate Builder™ Price Management, a module of Descartes Rate Builder™, is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that helps NVOCCs and their freight forwarder customers quickly and efficiently manage carrier buy-rates and surcharges. This web-based solution provides global buy-rate visibility, securely and safely within their organization.

Knowing that in any logistics execution decisions are based upon rates and contract commitments, a central database that identifies route options and total freight costs can ensure conformance to planned transportation spend budgets. Global buy-rate visibility also supports cost-based quoting; giving NVOCCs and freight forwarders the necessary tools to determine both profitability and sales efficacy.

Cost-based quoting drives profitability and competitiveness into the sales process by arming sales with all of the information they need to make critical and timely shipping quote decisions.

Descartes Rate Builder Price Management is part of the Descartes Global Logistics Network™ (Descartes GLN™), which enables the world’s leading transportation providers to connect to their trading partners and reliably exchange information to drive delivery performance and high levels of customer satisfaction.

This advanced web-based solution helps NVOCCs and their freight forwarder customers to:

  • Improve the speed and accuracy of the carrier buy contract management process
  • Provide unprecedented global buy rate visibility within an NVOCC’s organization
  • Provide ‘at a glance’ carrier buy-rate comparisons to determine optimum base for quote creation
  • Produce reports to analyze buy-rates, quotes and other information within Descartes Rate Builder
  • Monitor trends in regards to customers, trade-lanes or commodities
  • Provide tools to allow for better carrier procurement negotiation and quoting decisions
  • Bolt-on Descartes Rate Builder™ Ocean Freight Audit service to automate invoice receipt, audit and approval processes

Features of Descartes' Freight Rating System

Web and Desktop-based Buy Contract Management Tools

Web-based tools and the ability to use spreadsheetbased buy contract imports make managing complex carrier buy contracts simple and efficient. Carrier governing surcharges and other reference data can also be quickly and easily updated via online forms or spreadsheet import, simplifying the contract management process. This allows business critical information to be stored in a central database while allowing decentralized access to a single source of cost information.

Simply Powerful Searching

Web-based forms allow users to access, search and view rates from all carrier buy contracts. Users can run adhoc searches or save commonly used ‘favorite’ searches, reducing clicks. Search results are presented to the user in a simple, convenient list organized by container size which allows for the easy comparison of carrier buy rates.

Easy, Cost-based Quoting

The drag and drop costbased quoting feature ties quoted rates to carrier buy rates, providing instant ‘at a glance’ profit analysis to the user. User-based profiles set margins automatically while also customizing the way quotes are created to meet the varying needs of NVO customers.

Safe and Secure

DRB’s host of tools such as https and role-based access controls enable restricting access to critical business information as well as defining what the user can see and do within the system.

Integrated Reporting. Descartes Rate Builder Price

Management provides the ability to create and build key business analysis reports, including the ability to:

  • Analyze profit margins per quote or quoted rate
  • Determine quote win/lose ratios
  • Identify quoting trends that drive new procurement decisions
  • Upload external data to provide advanced reporting options

Back Office Integration

The combination of XMLbased data transfer from Descartes Rate Builder Price Management and the superior messaging capabilities of the GLN allows for enhanced data integration options. This feature allows integrated DRB rate, charge and reference information to drive critical logistics and finance related business processes within those back office systems.

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