Invoicing platform Navix announced it has entered into a partnership with top 10 U.S. brokerage Echo Global Logistics to provide support for Echo’s back-office automation goals.
“[Echo] felt that we had a solution that was an industry game changer and supplemented the direction of their technology roadmap,” Eric Krueger, co-founder and president of Navix, said on Tuesday. “Ultimately this allowed them to find opportunities within their workflows, processes, and even some instances where they were looking to improve their processes across the entire organization.”
Navix’s unique position in the market positions Echo to leverage the platform to manage exceptions and find invoice discrepancies before invoicing customers.
“We chose Navix because of its unique approach to connectivity with carriers and technology, which allows us to easily identify the root cause of the exception, and customized business rules which allow us to resolve that in a far more efficient manner for our carriers and clients,” said Pete Rogers, chief financial officer of Echo Global Logistics, in the release.
Evolving past current back-office technology, Krueger explained that Navix uses multiple points of freight intelligence, like pickup and drop-off locations, to quickly find inconsistencies.
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“Maybe it is the first time or the 100th time [a logistics provider] has ever shipped to a specific location,” said Krueger. “Navix can use location data and knows that it is highly likely going to need a residential delivery because we have audited multiple bills with the same delivery address before.”
Having this knowledge supports operations in many ways. Among them: The customer will get a correct invoice and a better customer experience, there is no hassle with short payments in the accounting department, and the credit department will have an updated and accurate balance to work with.
While Echo will already have these capabilities, as the market does eventually turn, these are all operational hazards that need to be watched as brokers open themselves up to business growth and the hurdles that come with that.
“Solving back-office problems should be about proactive versus reactive,” said Krueger of the pain points that are often overlooked at scaling freight brokerages. “It’s structured as a reactive function of their business yet if you want to have better customer service experiences you need to be proactive about finding and solving these problems.”
While brokerages are currently watching their spending and how they approach technology investments, Krueger believes this is the time to execute these expenditures to prepare for scale as the market turns.
“I think it is a really good time to double down and invest in a solution that can immediately improve cash flow,” he said. “As soon as this market begins to tick upwards, the next question is, how are you going to support it? If you add that next client, or millions of dollars in business, do you have the back-office platform to support it?”