Freight and Logistics: Services Overview

Accenture offers holistic, industry-specific solutions that enable higher levels of collaboration across the global value chain.

A deepening phase of globalization that we call the “multi-polar” business world will affect every aspect of operations in the freight and logistics industry. This new, increasingly complex, environment will present significant growth opportunities and competitive threats.

Accenture brings both a depth of industry experience and ground-breaking research to companies in the freight and logistics marketplace looking to achieve high performance.

• Outsourcing—As business models evolve to enable industry players to capture a larger slice of the global pie, outsourcing has become an important operational component. According to a study by Accenture, more freight and logistics companies are turning to it. Why? Outsourcing reach and frequency allows freight and logistics executives to not only maintain control over business results—but increase it—with visible returns within the first year of outsourcing. 

• Freight handling—This core area of operations requires systems to increase operational efficiency and optimize asset management. Communications between shippers, receivers and the end customer need to be significantly improved to handle the complexity of an increasingly global marketplace. Winning companies will be those that can create real-time control of freight acceptance as well as proactive alerts throughout the shipment lifecycle to minimize operational disruptions.

• Freight reservation management—The key to high performance in freight reservation is to elevate core booking and inventory management capabilities to a new level of sophistication. The solution: systems that offer a high degree of configurability to adapt to the ever-changing needs of the multi-polar business world. These systems will optimize shipment routes and maximize margins. And they will increase overall efficiency by ensuring best routes and reducing the need for spot-market purchasing. Client satisfaction will rise thanks to self-service features like auto-booking functionality.

• Dynamic route generation—Government and carrier rules that are complex today will only be more so as the business continues to broaden its global scope. Key to winning in this environment will be possession of advanced dynamic route generation tools to support cargo reservations and operations. These tools will increase overall efficiency by reducing stops, hand-holds and holding times. And they will make assets more efficient, reducing service and maintenance time.

• Billing and cost management—Most freight and logistics companies fail to optimize their pricing, which results in significant loss of profitability. High-performance companies will be those that have a framework for decentralized and centralized pricing decisions. The end result: greater control and minimized revenue leakage through centralized accountability, traceability and consistent application rates throughout the shipment lifecycle.

• Cargo O&D revenue optimization—In this, a critical process for capturing value, freight and logistics providers often lack full network cargo revenue optimization and dynamic economic evaluation of shipments at the time of booking. To thrive in the future, companies must acquire the ability to produce short-term sales pricing, short-term ad hoc pricing and medium-term capacity allocation.