Global logistics company CH Robinson has launched Procure IQ, a new tool that leverages data from the world’s largest shipper and carrier community to disrupt the traditional one-size-fits-all annual bidding approach to buying freight transportation.
Developed inside Robinson Labs, the company’s innovation incubator, Procure IQ provides a personalised, data visualisation of an individual customer’s shipping lanes, or routes, integrated with CH Robinson’s freight marketplace data, unlocking the optimal way to purchase transportation.
By bringing together premier technology, that is built by and for supply chain experts, the group applies data science to comprehensive data sets to deliver shippers smarter solutions that cut costs and drive greater reliability.
Designed for large shippers of US truckload freight, the free tool disrupts the traditional transportation-buying process by providing an opportunity to analyse each specific freight lane through a comparative pricing, volume and service analysis rather than solely purchasing transportation lanes in bulk during an annual bidding process.
According to CH Robinson, Procure IQ allows a shipper to discover the most efficient way to buy with the ability to analyse each individual lane.
“People are looking for technology that gives them an improved way to purchase all kinds of things from airline tickets to car insurance,” said CH Robinson chief executive and president Bob Biesterfeld. “Why should buying freight transportation be any different?”
Procure IQ works by inputting customer shipping needs and data, such as lane origin and destination and volume estimates, and then integrating that with CH Robinson’s dataset filled with billions of transactions from a community of 200,000 unique carriers and shippers and 18m annual shipments.
Using this information advantage along with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence, Procure IQ provides shippers a custom visual analysis with tailored recommendations for optimal procurement and capacity strategies for each shipment.
“We are disrupting a decades-old way the entire industry buys transportation in order to drive better outcomes for shippers,” said Biesterfeld. “At CH Robinson, we are laser-focused on solving customers’ toughest supply chain challenges, which is why we are accelerating the release of our technology.
'As customer expectations and market volatility reach new heights, we will continue to deliver against our US$1bn tech investment to bring smarter solutions that help our shippers increase efficiency, reliability and gain a competitive edge.”
