Brokers, large and small, use multiple software systems to handle the day-to-day business of logistics. ERP’s, CRM’s, TMS’s, accounting programs, and even email, are all utilized to facilitate a single transaction. Each of these systems require numerous manual interactions to manage and process every shipment, opening the door to errors and adding hours of human resources. One such component of back-office operations that has drawn focus in the last year is the freight audit and invoicing process – a process that, historically, is fraught with errors and requires a very large labor pool to manage.
Common Errors in Freight Invoice Auditing:
- Mistyped payment and billing values
- Omitted accessorials
- Misassigned document fields/data
- Miscategorized documents
- Duplicate invoices paid
- Missing documents requiring a hold on invoicing
Every error that finds its way downstream is a direct hit on margins that are slim enough to begin with. Compound the cost of these errors with the cost or manual input and spread it over hundreds or thousands of shipments adds up to real money, real fast – and you wouldn’t even notice it. The big impact comes when growth shrinks and the cost of doing business increases, leaving your team to ask ‘how high?” when your CEO or investors say “jump!” Round and round we go, pivoting at every economic swing or product launch or labor shortage we encounter.
Identifying the Slippage
The good news is that many solutions now exist to identify and plug the holes that your revenue may be draining from, and AI has proven to be today’s gold standard in hole-plugging. When it comes to document ingestion, AI has demonstrated a success rate far superior to human transcription – not to mention that AI can ingest, classify, and strip document data over 100 times (or more) faster than a human counterpart. Imagine jumping from email, to Acrobat, to Word, to your TMS and then to your ERP just to store a single document. Or maybe you are still scanning and imaging actual paper documents? Think of the time this process requires. Now imagine snapping your fingers and it’s just done – that’s the power of AI.
The cost savings in labor alone are massive, often in the millions for even a small-cap broker. And because errors are reduced and invoices are accurately verified with your TMS, you can now generate your customer invoices at blazing speed, reducing your days-to-bill and expediting your cash capture. This faster sale-to-cash cycle generates anywhere from 10-30% in added working capital for your business that can be utilized for growth initiatives and better financial stability.
The Benefits of AI Automation in the Freight Audit/Invoice space:
- Reduce errors that impact the bottom line
- Reduce labor dependency and costs
- Faster days-to-bill for added working capital
- Human-free document ingestion and categorization
- Scalability during economic swings and growth