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A3 FREIGHT PAYMENT: Helping Companies Better Manage Overall Transportation Spend “We joke that we should know your freight invoice processing better than you should,” says Ross Harris, chief executive of cer with A3 Freight Payment. Yet, this also is the goal the team at Memphis-based A3 pursues. Its approach encompasses not only the freight bill audit and payment process, but also leverages A3’s spend management solutions. Through optimization and scenario modeling, A3 helps clients better manage their overall transportation spend. On average, A3 clients can cut about 6% from their freight spending through the freight audit, while savings from spend analytics average about 18%. Many of A3’s customers tend to be high-volume shippers who need more than canned solutions. A3 combines freight payment, spend analytics, and business intelligence tools to deliver comprehensive, customized spend management solutions. It can support 18 languages and offers global invoice processing. “Our core solution offers several features unique to this space,” Cameron says. One is complete electronic payments, which offer time-de nitive settlement and better reporting functionality for logistics service providers. In addition, shippers know their freight funds are tracked more accurately than is generally possible with paper checks. Data normalization and arti cial intelligence solutions enhance the accuracy of the data reporting A3 can offer its customer base. Along with searching for mistakes, A3’s optimization analysis reviews processes to identify changes that could lead to savings. This includes optimizing routing, utilizing least-cost carriers, consolidating shipments and orders, and shifting carriers, modes, or service to identify ways to save money while meeting service level requirements. It’s not just its technology that differentiates A3 Freight Payment. Its
Our data normalization and artificial intelligence capabilities enable accurate analysis and quantification of scenario modeling for our customers. -Craig Cameron VP, Sales and Marketing A3 Freight Payment
team of experts will analyze shippers’ transportation data, including accessorial charges, their use of premium services, rate anomalies, minimum charge shipments, and other expenses. Based on their ndings, they’ll recommend strategies to eliminate excessive network costs that frequently go unnoticed, and then will monitor these continuously to keep waste in check. Offering Effective Solutions A3 is seeing growing interest in its supply chain nancing solution, Harris says. Through this solution, A3 enables its clients to extend payment terms with their carriers, while ensuring the carriers are paid quickly. When it comes to safeguarding clients’ funds, A3 takes its responsibilities seriously. “We provide a bankruptcy remote structure that protects our customers,” Cameron says. If something should happen to the rm, shippers’ funds would be protected. A3 Freight Payment also can provide its clients with a Service Organization Control or SOC 1 report. This offers written documentation of the internal controls at a service organization as they pertain to the user entities’ controls over nancial reporting. A SOC 1 report not only offers shippers assurance of A3’s internal controls, it’s also becoming a requirement within many public companies. It also can help clients reduce the scope of their own freight function audit, Harris says. Through its data normalization and arti cial intelligence capabilities, along with its routing compliance
solution, A3 helped a leading electronics manufacturer identify $1.2 million in savings. Shipments were identi ed as non-compliant and re-rated to quantify the cost of the incorrect carrier selection. Additional scenario modeling showed where the least-cost carrier was not being utilized, and the impact that contractual minimum charges had on the routing rules. The shipper was able to utilize information from the analysis to correct operational de ciencies and update routing instructions to achieve savings. “Our data normalization and arti cial intelligence capabilities enable accurate analysis and quanti ed scenario modeling for our customers,” Cameron says. AFS LOGISTICS LLC: Providing a Comprehensive View of Freight Expenses Over the past nearly two years, AFS Logistics has invested in transforming its proprietary systems, creating a “cloud-native, state-of-the-art solution with enhanced pre- and post-auditing capabilities,” says CEO Nightingale. AFSmartAudit, part of the new, integrated AFSmart Technology Suite, offers shippers a comprehensive view of freight expenses across all transportation modes, so they can ef ciently identify and resolve overpayments, billing errors and discrepancies, while also evaluating new opportunities to streamline processes. Another module, AFSmartClaim, automates the creation, tracking, and management of overage, shortage, and damage claims.
76 Inbound Logistics • September 2022
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