Case Study
Predictable pricing is possible
Asking ‘how much?’ shouldn’t be a guessing game.
Experience the revolution in budgeting accuracy with Eastern Shipping Worldwide's TrueQuote Pricing. For a Home & Office Furnishing Manufacturer besieged by inconsistent service and billing discrepancies from previous freight forwarders, TrueQuote Pricing emerged as the beacon of reliability. Achieving 100% pricing accuracy, Eastern Shipping Worldwide empowered the manufacturer with meticulous budgeting forecasts, setting a new standard in precision and trust.
SERVICE
TrueQuote Pricing
INDUSTRY
Home & Office Furnishings / Multi-media Accessories
COMPANY DESCRIPTION
Designer and manufacturer of functional furnishings for home and office. Products include media accessories and display solutions to support the computer and presentation needs in the modern work space.
Challenge
For many years, the profiled company used the services of a large freight forwarder. Throughout that time, the company experienced service inconsistencies that were far too common and the impact far too wide.
Chronic personnel changes at the forwarder resulted in slow response times, general support disruptions, and overall service inconsistencies.
In addition, the pricing and quoting that was provided at the onset of each booking never matched the final billing. The invoices always included unexpected charges that were more than the agreed upon amount.
Although the Company was shipping into a single location, it became cumbersome for them to track multiple invoices every week. Just chasing those billing inconsistencies cost their accounting team many hours of time and frustration.
The lack of consistency, compounded by fluctuating rates, extra GRI, PSS, detention, demurrage, and chassis fees, made it impossible to plan ahead, budget accordingly, or generate reports accurately.
In particular, narrow profit margins on many of the Company’s products meant that managing the shipping process was vital to controlling costs in the final leg of the supply chain.
With company growth projected to reach 40% year over year, the Company was determined to gain better control of their shipping process and budgets.
They decided to expand their provider network in an effort to get ahead of these issues. They turned to Eastern in hopes of achieving better consistency and fixed rates for the existing lane, as well as additional new lanes.
Solution
The Eastern team conducted a thorough cost analysis to identify the TrueQuote for the customer. By specifying the TrueQuote from the onset of the booking, the customer had pricing they could rely on - from the initial estimate through the final invoice — with no overages, added bills, or extra fees. Just consistent, accurate quotes for every booking.
Results
With Eastern’s TrueQuote pricing method, the customer’s frustration was eliminated, and the Company was able to better streamline the administrative aspects of each invoice with reduced audit times. TrueQuote pricing even helped the Company to improve the quality of their data reporting, making it easier and more accurate to budget their transportation costs. Today, the Company consistently receives billing that directly matches the quoted rate 100% — a pleasant turnaround from something they had never previously experienced!
“The competitor’s quotes always seemed too good to be true. And in the end, after adding up all the post-shipment bills, the actual total was a heavy dose of reality.”
— Owner & President, Profiled Company