7 Key Australian B2B Freight Trends

At FreightExchange, we’re on a mission to make great technology available to trade businesses. We’re constantly talking to customers and scanning the industry for new developments.

Here are seven of the big trends we’re excited about in 2023.

💸 It’s not just Freight Tech. It’s Fin Tech too.

Freight management used to be about printing labels fast or booking the cheapest rate. However, logistics operations are resource heavy in procurement, finance and customer service, not just the warehouse! That’s why, in the past 12 months, we’ve seen more CFOs taking the lead on streamlining business operations. It’s now about ensuring that customer services and finance processes are more efficient too.

That’s why we’ve seen increased demand for solutions that connect systems across all parts of the business. By connecting their ERP, for example Netsuite, MYOB Advanced, Business Central and Pronto, to their warehouse system, for example .WMS, to their eCommerce systems, like Shopify and WooCommerce, customers are reducing the effort required to manage revenues and costs across the board.

🚛  Fewer carriers and simpler operations.

As part of the focus on streamlining operations, we’ve seen more businesses using a smaller set of carriers. They no longer want the headache of procuring, understanding, re-negotiating and updating multiple carrier rates. Nor do they want to reconcile and pay numerous carrier invoices each week.

🤓 Freight systems need to make smarter recommendations.

In 2022, we saw more customers asking for greater smarts relating to shipping, while keeping operations simple and robust. Companies are more interested than ever in understanding how others in the industry operate and adopting methods that work through benchmarking and improving systems.

👾 Software and support are in. Saving 10c a shipment is out.

While buying the cheapest rate is still important, more customers need a product that works seamlessly with great support first, as long as rates are competitive.

🛒 Flat rate shipping is out. Carrier quoting widgets are in.

As fuel costs have increased, businesses have moved away from offering flat rate shipping at the check-out. They now want to give accurate quotes online to minimise losses from misquoting delivery costs.

💁‍♂️ Consumer apps are changing attitudes to B2B apps.

Business owners are demanding the level of transparency and technology they get from Uber. Customers now expect to be able to get real time information on where their orders are. Real time, self-service quoting, booking and tracking is now considered a must have, not a nice to have.

🏦 $100mm operations are still running on excel.

Businesses with large scale operations are still re-keying data, booking freight on multiple carrier portals, managing subcontractors and relying on busy warehouse teams to keep customers up to date and make the right decisions about shipping. While this is a tried and tested approach, management teams are now demanding more operational transparency.

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