After selling its brokerage unit to NFI in June to focus on its SaaS endeavors, Transfix announced Monday the release of its RFP Workflow Tool, a software solution designed to help brokers and 3PLs manage contract pricing and freight bidding opportunities.
Jonathan Salama, co-founder and CEO of Transfix, emphasized during a conversation with FreightWaves the two primary challenges facing brokers today: securing more freight and maintaining strong margins. Transfix’s strategy has been to develop targeted software modules that address these pain points, and the RFP Workflow Tool is one of the company’s first steps in that direction.
“The RFP process, whether it’s with a small or large account, can be complicated and long. The process also often leaves your inbox, with work being done in different spreadsheets and data stored in different places,” said Salama of the hurdles of managing RFPs in freight. “Our focus is to fix problems like this by developing targeted software modules.”
Unlike traditional methods that require brokers to sift through historical data manually, Transfix leverages machine learning and proprietary AI-driven predictive models to provide instant, highly accurate pricing in 3 to 5 seconds, according to the company.
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The tool uses a structured, Kanban-style interface, which leverages visual boards and tasks to manage workflows. The inclusion of margin forecasting in Transfix’s technology also ensures that pricing strategies are not only competitive but also sustainable over the long term. Brokers can process bulk RFPs, with the software handling tens of thousands of lanes via Common Separated Values (CSV) uploads, automatically validating entries to reduce errors.
Salama also shared elements of Transfix’s 2025 technology road map. Those include a generative AI launch debuting internally in the coming weeks, with a full market release anticipated shortly after. The AI component is expected to further streamline the RFP workflow by automating responses and optimizing bid strategies based on historical performance and market conditions.
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This launch is just the beginning of Transfix’s broader technological evolution. Looking ahead to 2025, the company is focused on refining spot rate generation, developing predictive models for securing more freight, enhancing automated scheduling capabilities and building custom reporting dashboards for brokers.
“There’s always going to be more to do, and we want to take feedback from customers and understand how we can make our products better. Once we get significant scale with planned products, we’re going to start looking at what impacts rates and what impacts the economy of a broker and how we can automate their ability to understand whether or not they should accept or reject the tender from a shipper,” said Salama.
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