The Problem
When a new branch opened, someone had to evaluate which LTL carriers to use. That meant pulling shipment data from multiple places, building a spreadsheet from scratch, running cost comparisons by lane, and writing up a recommendation. Every time. 14 hours per evaluation. 84 evaluations a year.
Ocean freight was the same story. Three rounds of negotiation per annual bid cycle. Each round meant 11.5 hours of spreadsheet work per analyst, because their procurement tool could hold data but could not actually analyze it. The analysis happened in Excel, manually, every time.
The harder problem: no one really knew if they were picking the right carriers. There was no on-time delivery history in the system. No SLA tracking. No way to see which carriers had been consistently reliable versus consistently difficult. Decisions worth millions were made on rates and gut feel because that was all that existed.
And when a contract was finally signed, it took three weeks to get the new rates live across the network. Fuel surcharge tables, lane pricing, accessorial rules -- all of it updated by hand across systems that did not talk to each other. Ocean freight rates move in days. The team was always chasing a market that had already moved on.
What Freehand Did
The freight procurement team now runs carrier evaluations in under 5 hours, not 14. Freehand pulls the shipment data, builds the comparison, and surfaces the analysis. The analyst reviews it and decides.
Ocean bid rounds that used to require days of spreadsheet prep now happen in one place. Carriers submit bids in any format, Freehand normalizes them, and the team compares options side by side in real time. Three rounds of manual Excel work became one structured review.
Every carrier evaluation now includes a performance scorecard built from actual historical data -- delivery rates, SLA compliance, billing accuracy. The team stopped guessing and started deciding from evidence.
Rate implementation that took three weeks now happens in days. When a contract is signed, the rates go live. When the market moves, the team can move with it.With less time buried in prep work, the team engaged three times as many carriers in the last ocean bid. More options, more competition, better outcomes on a $50M spend category.