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Reduce Transportation Costs

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.

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

How Amber Road Can Help

Amber Road's contract and rate management capabilities help automate ocean and air contract management, so shippers can make precise, cost-based decisions. We do this by providing both a service and technology that helps shippers manage the complexity of cost variables and fluctuations inherent to service contracts.

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.

Features	Benefits
Publishing Services	Our team of highly trained contract analysts translate ocean and air contracts and specially negotiated terms into a series of calculable business rules
Publishing Services	The variables are linked to the ocean carrier's governing rules tariffs to integrate applicable surcharges and to automatically calculate the full, bottom-line rate
Secure, Centralized Rate Repository	Consolidate all global rates and amendments and improve compliance to an approved carrier list
Secure, Centralized Rate Repository	Secure access to rates by role and geographic scope

Logistics

To reduce inventory carrying costs and improve supply chain efficiencies, you need accurate analytics to reduce variability and eliminate dwell time. To optimize trade lane performance, you also need accurate visibility into individual order and shipment status.

Amber Road’s multimodal logistics solution provides a range of capabilities to identify and remove inefficiencies resulting in shorter cycle times and less variability, helping companies reduce transportation costs, while improving service levels and transit times.

KEY CUSTOMERS

BOLLORE Logistics

“Amber Road helps manage our international transportation spending by providing accurate and secure access to all contract terms and bottom-line charges at each step in our logistics process.”

Ocean Specialist
Leading Manufacturer

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