SCDigest
Editorial Staff
SCDigest Says: |
 Gentile made the point that many carriers formerally grade their shipper customers using similar type attributes on a regular schedule (quarterly, annually, etc.)
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Over the past decade or so, procurement professionals have increasingly advocated “Voice of the Supplier” programs, in which companies regularly survey and interview members of their supply base to better understand how they can improve their own supply chain and procurement process.
Should more shippers be taking a similar approach with their carrier bases?
Yes says John Gentile, a former transportation executive at Owens Corning who recently retired to start his own consulting firm.
“Shippers know all about grading carriers, but do you know most of the carriers are also grading you as a shipper every day?” Gentile asked the audience at the recent Logistics and Transportation Summit sponsored by transportation technology provider Shipper’s Commonwealth.
What makes the transportation market so different than most is that when capacity tightens, it can be hard to get top notch service even from contractually obligated carriers – and there are already signs that the supply-demand balance is moving back towards the carriers’ favor versus the extreme over capacity the US market has seen during the last 2-3 years.
“With all of today’s supply chain complexity and demands on transportation, don’t you want to be served by the very best carriers there are?” Gentile asked the attendee. “The best carriers are going to focus on the best customers.”
Gentile then led the audience in an interesting exercise. He listed seven different attributes of shippers from a carrier’s point of view, and asked the audience to distribute 100 points among the seven in terms of how they believed carriers would do so from their own vantage.
 The seven attributes were as follows:
- Operational efficiency (how well a shipper enables a carrier to utilize its assets)
- Compensation/rates
- Receivables (how fast a shipper pays)
- Legal (number of legal headaches/actions, contracts difficulties, etc.)
- Claims levels
- Relationship/culture
- Long term growth potential
Go ahead and take this small quiz yourself by allocating 100 across the seven attributes.
Below, you will find how the audience at the summit responded, and what Gentile found in a 2009 survey of carriers.
(Transportation Management Article - Continued Below)
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