ItsMyCargo
Automating Quotation and Booking for Freight Forwarders

Manually analysing mailed shipper requests, determining optimal routing, sorting through contracts to find the best carriers, carefully calculating the involved costs, and finally aggregating this information into a quotation—this has been the workflow for freight forwarding companies since their dawn in the 1830s. Today, however, with the broader logistics industry embracing digitalisation, shippers expect higher speed, accuracy, and simplicity from their freight forwarders.

ItsMyCargo, a developer of white-label quotation and booking software, is playing a catalytic role in helping freight forwarders meet the expectations of shippers and agents. The symbiosis of a user-friendly solution and proprietary carrier partnerships is enabling freight forwarding companies to boost their business and take the helm of digitalised logistics.

“When we first got in the business, we were able to reduce the time it took to calculate quotations for ocean freight to half a minute. That, at the time, was an amazing accomplishment. Today, our pricing engine can accurately calculate quotations across all modes of transport in seconds and present them intelligently for the convenience of the shipper. As the market continues to evolve, so do we,” says Robert Sieg, co-founder and CEO of ItsMyCargo.

ItsMyCargo software comprises a customer portal, an API system, and the pricing engine, all of which work in tandem to facilitate a seamless quotation and booking experience. When a shipper makes a quote request, the pricing engine instantly calculates and compares shipping rates from various carriers in order to determine the optimal rates for the shipper. The freight forwarders—at their own discretion—can display multiple offers from which the shipper chooses the best one. Meanwhile, the freight forwarders can also show one quotation that is the most cost- and time-effective. If the shippers have preferred carriers, the software can even take that into account when displaying the quotations. ItsMyCargo software cuts valuable time spent on manually comparing and aggregating carrier rates down to seconds, significantly boosting the productivity of freight forwarders.

The way shippers view quotations in the customer portal resembles an online shopping experience. The applike interface of the portal brings an unparalleled level of visibility for shippers, allowing them to view the nuanced benefits of the various carriers. This allows them to pick the best option based on their financial and operational requirements.

The customer portal can generate quotations for air, sea, and rail, making it a more holistic solution than the many market vendors that focus on a single mode of transport. In addition to these primary functionalities, the portal is also equipped with multilingual and multicurrency features, enabling shippers to go through the quotation process in their preferred language and currency.

ItsMyCargo’s API functionality further augments the software’s integration and scalability, making it possible to integrate with most of the enterprise software that freight forwarders use. Any updates done in the ItsMyCargo software are automatically ref lected in connected systems, making the entire workflow seamless and eliminating double work.

“There are some limitations to the vendors that our software integrates with, but we have been adding more and more vendors to the list and will continue to do so in collaboration with our customers,” says Sieg.

Our pricing engine can accurately calculate quotations across all modes of transport in seconds and present them intelligently for the convenience of the shipper

These functionalities, together, translate into a powerful digital solution for freight forwarders and enable them to push the boundaries of their productivity. A case in point is an Austrian freight forwarder with a 100-person workforce that sought to enhance its offering to shippers. ItsMyCargo integrated its software with the client’s ERP platform and designed a brand-aligned online shop, which incorporated the client’s existing carrier services and combined them with the carrier partnership network of ItsMyCargo. With 10 to 15 minutes saved per quote request, the freight forwarder and their customers alike are experiencing how technology is enabling a truly digital customer relationship, something that seemed unthinkable only a year ago.

ItsMyCargo continues to add new functionalities to its software to pave the way for a more digitally-connected infrastructure for freight forwarders. The footsteps of ItsMyCargo in the freight forwarding space will inevitably inspire more innovators to solve the unaddressed problems in the logistics sector and empower even smaller and mid-sized players in the big-tech-dominated industry to thrive.