Market metrics in the freight brokerage industry are rarely presented in a way that meets the core needs of mid-management. All those over-complicated indexes can leave the user inundated with noise, and, since metrics providers don’t have access to the particular brokerage’s load data, the numbers can be hard to contextualize. A lack of grounding in market metrics can lead to poor decisions on contract and spot rates, which in turn can lead to low margins, strained relationships with shippers, and ultimately the loss of valuable accounts.

What market metrics should do is offer your management team an organized and accessible picture of market behavior and allow you to benchmark your performance against the broader market.

That’s where Illuminate comes in.

Illuminate provides immense business value in more ways than one. Pricing strategists, senior executives, and account managers can all benefit from real-time statistics comparing their brokerage’s rates and margins to overall market performance.

In the hands of a pricing strategist, market metrics can be a powerful tool. Illuminate helps you forecast accurately by analyzing the market index for each transport type. Accurately predicting upcoming trends lets you position your company advantageously in contract negotiations and proactively secure favorable terms.

Lane performance is a key metric for operational efficiency. The rate comparison widget shows how your rates on specific lanes compare to the market, so that an operations manager can identify underperforming lanes and set goals to improve pricing and profitability on those lanes. Pinpointing lanes where the company is underperforming lets you focus resources on turning those around, either by renegotiating rates or by optimizing your operations on those lanes.

Long-term planning requires a deep understanding of both current and future market conditions. A clear view of how your margins compare to the rest of the market can inform big-picture strategy and decisions such as whether to prioritize expanding your customer base or increasing profitability through existing contracts.

Clear, data-driven goals help motivate your team and establish accountability, ultimately enhancing your competitiveness and profitability. By focusing on the areas where they lag behind the market, a team leader can guide their team to make strategic decisions that drive higher margins and increase the overall value the team brings to the business. This aspect of Illuminate is especially powerful when combined with Greenscreens Insights.

Strong relationships with shippers are crucial for sustained business success. Understanding how a brokerage’s pricing compares to the market lets an account manager approach negotiations with confidence, knowing that they are offering competitive rates that still maintain healthy margins. Fair and competitive pricing make for better negotiations and a stronger relationship.

Misaligned pricing strategies can lead to significant financial risk. Assessing how your pricing strategies align with market trends helps you mitigate the risk of financial loss due to pricing misalignment and protect your bottom line.

Not all data is equally relevant at all times. By default, Illuminate breaks down your data by transport type, but you can also filter by pickup or dropoff location, by mileage band, or by timeframe.

Assessing the performance of your contracts can be a whole challenge of its own. You need metrics that parse out contract numbers from spot, along with crucial details like pickup and dropoff market, shipper, timeframe, and transport type. Then, if you want to know how you’re faring beside the greater market, you also need market data, and an accessible way to compare that data to yours.

Instead of going through the whole time-consuming process of manually crunching your contract numbers - often with incomplete data - you can just fire up Illuminate and get answers in real time.

Thoughtfully monitoring market dynamics and adjusting your contract strategies accordingly keeps your business agile and competitive.Reliable contract metrics let you stay on top of current trends and anticipate future shifts.

Contract rates typically lag behind spot rates, an increase in spot rates above contract rates can signal an impending rise in overall prices. However, this correlation may not hold during exception events such as holidays or major storms, where the usual trends may be disrupted.

When you enter contract negotiations, a solid understanding of market conditions and your current standing means you can speak confidently, knowing that you can back up your negotiation points with solid data. You’ll also have a pretty good idea of how the competition is pricing. Referencing contract numbers for your own brokerage and the broader market helps you win customer trust – you can be transparent with your customers about the reasons and data behind your pricing. Preparing for negotiations with data-driven projections of future pricing trends help you secure more favorable terms and conditions.

Illuminate and Greenscreens let you integrate contract performance data into internal reporting systems, providing stakeholders with clear, actionable insights into contract performance. If a contract’s pricing doesn’t align with the market, you can take action to correct it, and with the negotiating power of hard data in your back pocket.

Reliable, accessible metrics help you ensure that your portfolio is balanced, so you can minimize risk and maximize profitability. Breaking out contract stats tells you what percentage of your business is driven by contract versus spot rates, allowing you to assess whether you’re overly reliant on one type of pricing.

A metrics-based approach grounded in objective, quantifiable insights not only gives you a competitive advantage, it helps you minimize risk with smart contract management and a good balance between spot and contract business. Incorporating Illuminate into your strategy and process keeps things transparent and helps with aligning internal teams and ensuring that everyone is working towards the same strategic goals.

Q: How much will this cost?

A: Pricing depends on your revenue band. Please reach out to your CSM or salesperson for specific pricing.

Q: How do you derive the Market Index? Is it RPM?

A: The market index uses a proprietary algorithm that allows us to compare longer haul freight to shorter haul freight all in one view. It takes out the confounding variable of mileage as well as it possibly can so that you can compare across different mileage bands and get a semblance of a real index. We do not use pure rate per mile because the mileage band issue is a big one. What this means is that if you have a lot of long hauls that enter the freight mix then the price will tend to drop in rate per mile but if you have a lot of short hauls that enter the mix that's being considered then the price will increase. The index is meant to show how the market is moving, not what is going on with the freight mix and haul length mix in the market.

Q: Is my brokerage performing poorly if my rates are higher or lower than network?

A: You may be performing poorly or your freight mix may be more difficult to satisfy than the rest of the network. If you are consistently buying higher than the network, it could indicate that your shippers are harder to deal with. Perhaps they have difficult appointment times, transit times,etc. This view indicates how you are performing in general to provide you with a baseline in the future, and maybe goal around the market. It also gives you a ton of underlying lanes that are causing the biggest problems for you so that you can analyze those And action on them where necessary.

Q: How do you know which loads are part of a contract?

A: We build a lane, shipper, transport type pair for every customer dataset. We then make sure that this key has the same or very similar sell rates on it over 3 months. This isolates the contract data. Then we pull the correct data for the contract vs the spot rates for the specific view.

Q: What is the margin figure that is used here?

A: The margin figure represents consolidated data from the entire network of Greenscreens customers. This is an ever-growing data set of tens of billions of freight spend.

Q: Why do you show me the market bias?

A: We want you to see what the bias is across all of our prediction models, so that you can anticipate market changes faster than the model can potentially anticipate those changes. Bias is one of the most important indicators of market changes. You will notice during times of exception like hurricanes or holidays that the bias fluctuates significantly, and you can use that data to offset your pricing.

Q: Why do you show the difference between contract and spot lanes?

A: The difference between contract and spot lanes across the entirety of the market shows where the market is moving. Spot rates tend to move faster than contract rates, because the contract rates are set for a few months at a time. Comparing the two gives you an idea of where the market is going. If spot rates are higher than contract rates, then market pricing is most likely on the rise.

Q: Why show the contract lane percentage vs the market?

A: The contract lane percentage versus the market allows you to see, within whatever margin band you want, how much contract you're running as a percentage of your entire portfolio compared to the market as a whole. This allows you to go around things like low margin freight or high margin freight and understand how you compare to the market instead of just understanding how you compare to yourself. Market fluctuations make it necessary to have a view from outside of your own business, so you can see how you’re performing relative to the market.