Parade’s digital quotes simplify and speed up the quoting process.
While digital booking gets a lot of press these days, Parade’s digital quoting feature can offer brokerages major returns. Below, you’ll find a few of the ways that digital quotes add value, generate ROI, and improve margins, representing big returns.
You Get a Funnel of Quotes Fast
Since Parade allows brokerages to reach out directly to a wide capacity network wherever carriers like to find loads, whether that be load boards, via email, or through the Parade portal, you can get your loads in front of qualified carriers quickly. Because carriers can send a digital quote quickly and easily, you’re likely to get plenty of quotes back quickly.
Carriers Can Send Quote When It’s Convenient for Them
Carriers who tend to do their load searching after office hours can send their quote in on their own time. That means you don’t have to call owner-operators who do their own booking while they’re on the road. They can send over their quote when they stop for a break or the night. This can help brokerages promote safety with their carriers.
Speeding Up the Quoting Process Leaves More Time for Maintaining Carrier Relationships
When brokerage reps spend less time on the phone or emailing carriers to collect quotes (though many of those contacts won’t even yield a quote), they have more time for other things. They’ve got more time to haggle a little with carriers to improve the load’s margins, time to chat with carrier reps about their lives and businesses, and more time to check in with carriers on their load preferences so they can send them even better freight in the future.
Digital quotes help to build carrier relationships in other ways, as well. Making quoting simple for carriers is one way Parade helps brokerages nurture carrier relationships. Capacity is tight and carriers have the luxury of picking and choosing the brokerages they work with. Ensuring that it’s easy to work with your brokerage may help provide a brokerage’s carrier network with a reason to say yes to their loads instead of the countless others that come their way every day.
Brokers and Carriers Alike Can Still Call to Negotiate
Just because much of the quoting process is automated doesn’t mean that brokers and carriers can’t communicate in more traditional ways. For instance, phone calls to negotiate a rate can still be part of the process, especially with carriers who aren’t particularly tech-savvy or who prefer person-to-person communication.
Brokerages can reach out to the carriers in their network who prefer to interact over the phone just like they always did. When the broker rep is talking to that carrier, they can add their quote into the Parade system manually.
By adding that quote into Parade, you’re helping the system learn from that carrier’s behavior so that it can get a feel for their trucking capacity and recommend even better loads for them in the future. That quote will also show up with the rest of the quotes collected for the load so reps can compare it side-by-side to make the best decision.
You Can See All Your Quotes in One Place
Remember those quotes that came from several different places? With Parade, brokers can see all those quotes in one place. We give you a ranked list of quotes so reps can see right away which carriers will be the best fit for the load. Parade even has a feature that allows brokers to see right in the quotes whether a carrier is qualified to haul a load for their brokerage, not showing quotes from unqualified carriers to save reps the time and effort involved in checking on qualifications.
This allows for faster, smarter decision-making that often results in the best margins possible for the load and more loads booked.
Reach out to the team at Parade to get a demo of our capacity management tool so you can see for yourself how digital quotes can help your brokerage succeed.