In the past, a freight forwarder’s time was often spent manually searching for capacity and the best rates for clients. Fragmented communication during the booking process often created small errors that, at times, inevitably led to completely paused bookings. These dated ways of conducting business through ineffective communication have cost forwarders time and money.
There is now a solution for booking air cargo digitally — cargo.one enables thousands of forwarders globally to view live routes and rates across dozens of airlines with a click of a button, with the ability to instantly book and confirm air freight shipments.
The cargo.one booking platform enables forwarders to search, book and track shipments on one platform within seconds. The free platform only requires a three-minute registration upfront.
cargo.one can help reduce the time spent juggling data in spreadsheets and emails by providing a live view of all rates, quick ways to send quotes to customers and allowing adjustments throughout booking and shipping.
“The most successful digital distribution is implemented with customer-centricity at its core. Digital cargo booking platforms must deliver to freight forwarders a superior overall experience — which is driven by both the user experience on the platform and also the quality of supply,” said Moritz Claussen, founder and co-CEO of cargo.one.
Chicago-based LLS Team focuses on time-sensitive shipments. The company said cargo.one has helped it cut the time spent quoting and booking air shipments by 50%.
“I have timed our bookings and they take less than one minute. In this way, we reduced time spent on air cargo consignments by half. This has made us a lot more agile and freed up a lot of time to better manage customers,” said Brandon Hultine, air export manager at LLS Team.
Over time, the evolving and fast-paced global logistics industry led LLS to rethink its processes and consider whether phone and email bookings were restricting the company’s performance. cargo.one helped LLS reduce time wasted on telephone tag and manual research and increase time spent with customers, Hultine said.
“Time sensitivity is critical for us. In the past, our bookings were on the phone, meaning many hours a week were spent in phone queues. Sometimes there was a miscommunication and the desk agent or airline agent missed something — you would play tag back and forth until it’s corrected,” Hultine said. “Booking online solves this. There’s immediate, real-time confirmation in seconds.”
He said the switch to cargo.one was a seamless transition from start to finish and has, since day one, met all needs across the entire LLS team.
“It’s been well received. My favorite feature is that all the shipping addresses and details are right in front of you. Any updates if bookings have changed, or any issues like AWBs and cargo.one are proactive,” said Hultine. “Across the team it’s been a welcome change, and having a market view of all the airlines has transformed how we work.”
He added that in the times that the team has needed it, cargo.one’s support team has been “very helpful and very responsive.”
Utilizing this new digital booking platform has introduced LLS Team to new business. This has created a space for the company to establish new airline relationships, allowing for increased competitiveness and overall growth for the company as whole, according to Hultine.
“There’s definitely been an increase in securing shipments this way. Knowing how the platform has helped us, I would say it’s increased our revenue overall,” he said. “As cargo.one expands with more origins and destinations, we will book further. Within general cargo, there’s theoretically no limit to the potential, so it’s possible that 100% of our air bookings could be done via cargo.one.”
cargo.one’s commitment to US forwarders is strong — to empower them with access to the best market rates, the highest quality end to end customer experience, and the ability to win more air cargo shipments with a click of a button.
“cargo.one will launch more large airline partners onto the platform in each quarter during 2022. We are co-developing some very exciting new solutions and products with airline partners focused on enhancing experiences and outcomes for freight forwarders,” said Claussen. “More than ever, we’re proud to do our part to build a digitally integrated global air cargo marketplace.”
For more information, visit cargo.one’s website.