| Contract and Rate Management Issues and Challenges | ||||||||||||||
| Importers and exporters with significant freight volumes usually have multiple contracts with ocean carriers and/or NVOCCs. These contracts cover key points such as volume commitments, rate stability, accessorial applicability, and terms around contract duration, detention and demurrage, dispute resolution, and other concerns.
Since rate and accessorial levels fluctuate frequently, complex calculations utilizing current information are needed to get an accurate and complete picture of shipping costs. Amending multiple contracts and updating dynamic carrier accessorials manually is nearly impossible. Consequently, shippers frequently struggle to reconcile estimated versus actual shipping costs. |
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| Global logistics challenges include: | ||||||||||||||
| ▪ | Locating rates for lanes across numerous contracts with disparate formats and calculating a total shipment cost based on the contract terms | |||||||||||||
| ▪ | Accounting for accessorials that are not fixed in the contract, such as fuel adjustment factors that may change daily | |||||||||||||
| ▪ | Determining all available routes under contract and comparing costs | |||||||||||||
| ▪ | Maintaining current amendments and rate changes | |||||||||||||
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How Amber Road Can Help Our expert contract publishing team analyzes a shipper's service contracts and develops the business rules for calculating rates and applying the correct accessorials. Amber Road obtains carrier accessorial changes and updates them to the applicable contracts in near real-time. Managing contracts and amendments centrally allows shippers to securely share the most current information with business units and trading partners. Our contract and rate management service allows shippers to gain total buy-side contract cost control, implement negotiated business rules, and provide visibility to forward-filed charges. With the growth in overseas production and increasing global logistics costs, Amber Road's Transportation Management solution offers shippers a powerful way to manage air and ocean shipment costs and establish an automated contract management process. |
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