I wrote in June about how there is tremendous interest in transportation procurement tools since companies are looking for the opportunity to reduce costs given the tough ecomomic conditions.  I recently read a report that cites that Transportation Procurement remains hot and shippers are putting more of their freight spend out to bid with the savings averaging 12%. 

Transportation procurement does not require a large software investment and can be ideally managed with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that automates and standardizes the procurement process. Companies generally utilize a transportation procurement tool at a tactical level where the focus is on a select number of lanes instead the entire network.  There are a number of SaaS vendors in the marketplace including i2, JDA, LeanLogistics, Manhattan Associates and MercuryGate. 

Given the poor economic conditions, companies are looking for the opportunity to reduce costs and one hot area that is ripe with potential savings is to conduct transportation procurement bids. The process involves sending bid packages (aggregated forecast of shipments) to carriers, they submit their bids (often involving multiple rounds) and then you evaluate the bids and award the business.

There are a number of software solutions in the Transportation Procurement space that will automate and optimize the whole process.  These procurement solutions do not just consider carrier rates but optimize the results considering carrier performance, capacity, seasonal variability, equipment requirements, service level and business rules.  The benefits realized from these solutions include more reliable capacity with fewer rejected shipments, higher on-time delivery performance, drastically reduced procurement time with a substantial cost savings.

This link has an interesting article from Adrian Gonzalez of ARC Advisory that discusses this topic in further detail: http://logisticsviewpoints.com/2009/05/21/transportation-procurement-is-hot-right-now/