Are You Prepared to Scale Your Brokerage?
Scalability is a crucial trait for today’s modern, successful brokerages. Without it, your operations could be at the whim of the market—which has been quite volatile over the last few years.
For example, what if a brokerage decided to make several new hires around the turn of the year in anticipation of higher truckload and spot rates for 2025? If a market-shifting event occurs that affects rates nationally or even regionally in a key market, that brokerage could be in trouble.
A reverse scenario is possible, too, with outside market forces that cause a bonanza for brokered loads and not enough manhours available to adequately address them. That can cause trust with partner companies to dip and affect the bottom line.
Of course, every brokerage wants to scale its operations. But it’s also possible for a broker or 3PL to not be as automated and scaled as it thinks it is. To be truly scaled, a broker shouldn’t leave extra automation opportunities on the table.
In one recent example, a brokerage was using a non-Transflo automation platform and achieved a peak of 42% automation on document processing for carrier invoices and billing the customer. In other words, a little over 4 of every 10 loads delivered did not require manual auditing processes at peak scalability. However, that automation rate only sat at 25% on the typical day for the last 12 months.
When the broker started using Transflo’s Workflow AI platform, the automation rate rose to 75% and stayed there. In the coming weeks, the broker is expecting 80% automation—almost double the peak of the competitor platform.
Your brokerage doesn’t have to approach automation with a half-hearted strategy that results in mediocre results. And you can already be thinking about the issues you can address with significantly fewer manual audits. Let’s look at a few benefits that can be obtained by achieving wide-ranging scalability through automation with Transflo.
Eliminating task inefficiencies
Manually reviewing documents ad nauseam probably isn’t why anyone in the industry got into the brokerage business. Historically, though, those repetitive tasks help ensure that brokers, carriers, and factors get paid accurately and efficiently.
Now, automation can tackle these manual processes and free up time for the items that help build business relationships and get loads delivered promptly. Additionally, that extra time helps put employees on the tasks that help the broker or 3PL the most.
For example, if a member of a brokerage team has 20 years of experience in carrier sales and is a high performer, that broker isn’t operating in a very scaled way if he or she is forced to take on more repetitive items that don’t add a lot of business value for hours each day.
Some solutions on the market will promise a litany of ways to automate the manual tasks but will ultimately fall short. For the best possible scalability, brokers should make sure a solution they’re using has:
- Lights-out processing that handles documents and invoices, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- Automated duplicate invoice rejections
- Touch-free exception resolution that can be tailored to a broker’s most important and most frequent exceptions.
- Automated carrier and operations emails that keep partners in the loop and prevent a team from having to send hundreds or thousands of manual emails.
A team that understands the industry
The brokerage and 3PL world—and all of transportation as a whole—is a unique sector with many nuances that can’t be mastered in a week or even a year. So, if you had the choice between a platform conceived, developed, and refined by a team of experts with years of experience in brokerages and one that builds software in a vacuum, wouldn’t you choose the option led by fellow brokerage experts?
You have that choice with Transflo.
Our brokerage team has worked in the industry and has substantial knowledge of the sector, including roles in sales, technology, operations, and finance. When a broker is having issues with speed to cash, DSO that’s too high, and can’t put in the hours for improved customer and carrier relationships, our team has been there before.
Additionally, because we’re familiar with the pain points at brokerages and 3PLs, our learning curve will be minimal, and we can approach a solution in a different way than a provider who is learning about the common issues brokers face.
Configurability
Another issue common with brokerage software solutions is that a broker will sign on to use a platform, get it implemented, and then rarely ever speak to the vendor again. You wouldn’t want that lack of communication from a carrier or shipper, so why allow it when a crucial subset of your operations and data is in the hands of a software vendor?
From the vendor side, one major reason for that is because many platforms on the market are simply plug-and-play and what you see is what you get. In other words, there won’t be much to change and work with your brokerage on from the vendor side, so why bother?
It doesn’t have to be like that. Your brokerage deserves a vendor who will work alongside you for greater success. That’s why Transflo has a configurable solution and takes a consultative approach with its broker customers.
For example, if you work with unique types of freight and many different carriers, your audit rules and exceptions might not work well with a one-size-fits-all solution. From there, you’ll probably have to manually audit and review the items that don’t “fit” that size. So long, scalability.
With a more configurable approach and solution, those rules and exceptions can be modified, producing results like Transflo recently saw with its customer in achieving 75% automation.
Scale up with the right solution
Scaling your brokerage requires more than just ambition—it demands the right technology and expertise. Transflo’s Workflow AI platform empowers brokers to automate at scale, eliminating inefficiencies and improving operational agility.
With industry-specific insights, configurable solutions, and a consultative approach, Transflo ensures you’re not just automating, but optimizing. Don’t settle for mediocre scalability. If you’re ready to scale smarter, Transflo is here to help.