UNCERTAINTY and volatility pervade the global trade landscape. The deepening tariffs tit-for-tat between the US and other nations, primarily China, is disrupting traditional trading patterns and supply chains.

Simultaneously, Brexit is forcing companies operating in, into and through the EU28 to navigate a bewildering set of contingencies if any of their supply chain makes contact with the UK, which is in its fourth year of negotiations to leave the European Union. At the same time, passthrough costs from carriers as a result of IMO 2020 are requiring shippers to re-evaluate their supply chain and identify efficiency gains to counter this price increase.

These factors, among others, are forcing some companies to look outside their normal client-contractor comfort zones to explore new freight forwarding partnerships.

Due to their position and role in the supply chain lifecycle, freight forwarders are a shipper’s natural first ally in managing the complexity and potential costs of tariffs, regulatory changes, and carrier relationships. To find the freight forwarder that’s most suited to their needs, companies often turn to an RFP (Request for Proposal). 

However, companies frequently are confronted with RFPs that include information so disparate that the selection process itself can be unbalanced and onerous.

To help companies through the current trading maze, global freight forwarder Flexport is holding a series of ‘how to’ webinars to help companies get the most — and best — from forwarding and logistics.

The next live webinar, titled Running a Value-driven RFP — 4 Ways to Win, will be delivered by members of Flexport’s pricing team who will explain best practices for an effective RFP process, and how to avoid some of the common pitfalls that arise when comparing freight forwarder proposals.

Jeroen Vetter, Pricing Manager, and Anna-Lena Goerke, Air Business Development Manager, will cover:

● Structuring your RFP process;

● Requesting differentiated proposal simulations;

● Spotting misleading proposals;

● Establishing criteria for a best-fit forwarder.

Audience members will walk away from the webinar with detection tools to help them identify, among other things, forwarders’ proposals that appear too good to be true, offer inadequate services or hide fees.

Jeroen and Anna-Lena will share their experiences and take questions from webinar attendees.